We’re looking at supporting more generic controllers soon, possibly including off-the-shelf MIDI controllers, joysticks, and other HID-compliant devices. What I like about these items here, is it’ll give folks some more choices and price points. But we’ll see.
Most of the common functions in wfview are already bound to keystrokes, so many hardware devices exist which can send keyboard shortcuts with a single button.
I have Windows, Mac OSX, and 7610, 705 and 9700 available, along with Icom’s RC-28 controller. Happy to assist if remote access to my gear is helpful.
Additionally, there was a very interesting thread on emulating a RC-28. The thread yields more information about how the mouse driver was made talk to the RC-28 hardware. Especially the bi-directional nature of the button LED’s. The thread author gives hints on how he found the correct approach to talk to the RC-28. https://www.eevblog.com/forum/rf-microwave/icom-rc-28/25/
My interest in this is in using Icom’s very well designed RC-28 – so I would be in support of creating / testing an open source driver for Icom’s hardware for Mac OSX / linux.
This is very interesting indeed. And nice to see how it works from the inside.
If it really is HID-compliant, it shouldn’t be too hard to make it work.
I’m honestly tapped out right now with the number of things we are working on. It sounds like the OEM Icom device presents itself as an HID-compliant device under linux, is this correct? Perhaps plug it in and run dmesg to see what it shows. I’m no expert, but I think there are ways to use libusb to read from such a thing. Does anyone here know much about how to do this?
Maybe we can contact the guy that made the emulated RC-28, he may have insight into how to access one from userspace.
the eevblog article is IMHO about replacing the hardware, without changing or modifying Windows PC side software from ICOM.
My RasPi says:
usb 1-1.2: new full-speed USB device number 4 using xhci_hcd
usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0c26, idProduct=001e, bcdDevice= 0.01
usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
usb 1-1.2: Product: Icom RC-28 REMOTE ENCODER
usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: Icom Inc.
usb 1-1.2: SerialNumber: RC-28 0203950
hid-generic 0003:0C26:001E.0002: hiddev96,hidraw0: USB HID v1.11 Device [Icom Inc. Icom RC-28 REMOTE ENCODER] on usb-0000:01:00.0-1.2/input0
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0c26:001e Prolific Technology Inc.
One example for a USB rotary encoder I found here:
to control audio volume.
73
DK3DUA
P.S:
With
usbhid-dump -e all -s 001:004
I can see all send streams from device (press/release the 3 buttons, turn the wheel).
Having played with remote HF for 35 years, the RC-28 ability to work despite the focus of the client desktop is the Holy Grail. I tried using an old Griffen I had last weekend and gave up after an hour.
My understanding is is that wfview will operate the same way once we get that controller mapped in. Phil definitely has the lead here as he’s already got something working with the ShuttleX controller.
Just to let anybody who is interested know, there is a branch of wfview on gitlab called “shuttle”, this contains initial support for the ShuttleXpress and ShuttlePro2 controllers. It actually works remarkably well and currently supports tuning using both the jog wheel and shuttle. Fast tuning can be accomplished by pushing the shuttle all the way over.
I haven’t built a binary for this so anybody who is ‘desperate’ to try it, will need to compile it themselves.
I have added some code to detect the RC28, but the lack of an actual RC28 makes it quite difficult to test
I have a ShuttleXpress and you can give a function to each key, also PTT works when you have configured it. But I only used it with the Icom RS-BA1 software on windows.
You can find some info from this on qrz.com forum and on youtube.
for example this video (it is not my video btw):
I just checked with a simple USB (encoder) knob I had laying around, it works fine with wfview, the same as with Icom RS-BA1 software.
I have to point the mouse cursor to the setting I want to change I can then turn the know and it changes ie. the frequency like a real VFO knob.
This version has no extra button’s but I can try the express shuttle later which has the extra buttons.
(Remark: I’m working on a MAC with no special drivers orso installed, but should work on Windows too I think, as it did for me with the Icom software)
I installed the shuttlexpress today on my Windows 10 laptop, and this seems to work.
I programmed some keys and can use it for example for PTT on / off, tuning VFO etc. (for Mac I couldn’t make it work yet)
I have already added direct support for the shuttle express/pro in the shutttle branch of wfview. This works without any additional drivers (the shuttle software must not be running) and means that wfview doesn’t need to be in focus. It also supports all platforms.
This will be included in a future release of wfview.
I’ve built my own controller which connects via the Remote Port. I’m looking at how I might use the USB port instead … I’ve got a spare Uno plus a USB host shield and have at least got some connection info using an example sketch, but now stumped trying to discover how to initialise then establish a USB connection to the internal CI-V bus.
