wfview on Xiegu X6100 Armbian

You’ll have to change the frequency command in both the client and server sides.

If you want to send a log file, you have to paste the resulting URL in your message. We don’t own or operate termbin; it’s a third party used by lots of F/OSS other programs.

—E
de W6EL

I tried to build Windows development system and even though there are excellent tutorials, I failed to set it up properly. So I will need to build another Ubuntu box.

I changed the frequency command in both the client and server sides and remote frequency change worked.

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I didn’t know how termbin works. I will try to figure out and will send logs.

Any success communicating with Xiegu?

Termbin: just press the button in the Log window and you will see how it works. It will, after a second or two, give you a URL. You then paste the URL into your reply here. That simple.

Not sure on the other front, but I am happy to provide a list of commands that would help. You’ve already helped us with the frequency one.

—E
de W6EL

RF/AF/SQ/TX controls work.

Log: https://termbin.com/edg04

Tested on X6100 Armbian

RF/AF/SQ/TX controls work.
Need to connect DEV/HOST ports with USB cable.
Too bad the radio is full of birdie. No reception.

Log: https://termbin.com/gg70

Armbian as server
Ubuntu remote client
RF/AF/SQ controls work.
Operation got very slow. The CPU may not be powerful enough to handle long operations.

log: https://termbin.com/f3iq

Very interesting, thank you for sending these.

I think the ultimate use on the Xiego will be our headless command-line server, which would make it accessible remotely with wfview. The CPU usage is a lot lower for the headless version.

For this to work, the X6100 needs a virtual serial port that can connect to the wfview server, which should be pretty easy; it can just mirror whatever is going out over CI-V. And of course an audio interface. Plus the command for spectrum data.

–E
de W6EL

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For the sake of completeness, I ran the modded version on Pi OS. (Pi 400)

Log: http://termbin.com/af08

Some people don’t see the point of running wfview on X6100 Armbian. I agree. It started as my curiosity. Now I am more interested in wfview expanded to work with X6100 for all supported environment. So the title of this topic stays the same but it’s not meant to be focused on X6100 Armbian.

Well, it is pretty cool though that you were able to!

It would only take a little bit of work on the UI program to get it working with wfserver. I think that’s where the real utility of the ground you’ve broken is.

–E
de W6EL

A happy new year.
Curious to know when we will see the official support for XIegu X6100.

Happy new year to you as well!

I’ve yet to get a clear answer on these two questions about the current state of the X6100:

  1. Does the X6100 respond to RIG ID requests, and if so, what does it respond with?
  2. Can the X6100 operate CI-V Transceive mode?

Those two questions determine what we can do with the X6100 with it as it stands. If it responds to Rig ID requests and if it identifies as something other than an IC-7100, then we may be ok to add it in to wfview. If it doesn’t, then it gets tricky since the X6100 either doesn’t respond to Rig ID or responds and identifies as a different radio. Again, I don’t have the answer since I don’t own one.

Anyway, if we can somehow tell from inside wfview if the connected radio is an X6100, then we can add support for its features.

As for the other things we have discussed, such as spectrum and streaming audio, we will need Xiegu to add some support for those features. If they’ll do it, then we could really have a neat system. We are of course happy to tell them precisely which commands and replies to add – I have all this well-documented in a few google documents and ready to go for anyone/any company that wants to add greater compatibility with wfview and/or wfserver. It’s probably not much work to just add it in, given how much functionality the X6100 already has.

–E
de W6EL

I haven’t written here awhile.
I installed modded wfview 1.61 on Raspberry Pi 3 and the same mod, which I mentioned above, still works with X6100 with a little latency. I have difficulty installing it on X6100 Armbian with some missing libraries errors. I must say the performance on Pi is better than on Armbian.

FYI, Oleg Belousov (R1CBU) has published several versions of new custom firmware for X6100. In TOADS channel of Discord, he mentioned he was contacted by a Xiegu dealer in Russia saying they would try to connect him with Xiegu engineers in China. If you are interested in getting more info on X6100, you may want to contact him. He is often seen on Discord TOADs xiegu-x6100-hacking channel.

Hi Crazycats100,

I saw your video on youtube :-).

I’ve kind of taken a different approach to this. I made a new page in the manual called “Built for wfview”. This page details the required commands and features for basic compatibility with wfview. It’s my hope that vendors will see how simple this task can be.

The page outlines both what commands to add, as well as how to run the wfview headless server (“wfserver”) inside the radio, if a pure network connection is a desirable feature. Compiling wfserver is pretty simple. To use it, you need to provide it access to the CI-V bus via a pseudo-terminal, and access to the radio’s audio (likely using loopback devices but perhaps directly to the device itself).

I think if we document things clearly enough, it should be possible for OEMs to implement the required commands and even to run our wfserver on their hardware, possibly without modification. If they find it needs mods, we’d be all ears to incorporate such things into the source.

Please, pass on the linked URL to anyone interested in working on this. With the Xiego, it needs very little in terms of commands, and running the headless wfserver in the background should be a piece of cake. An evening’s work, I would imagine.

–E
de W6EL

Hi, Elliott.
Being away for a while.
I wondered you guys worked with Xiegu X6100 developers since their latest firmware 1.1.7 added wfserver functionality.
Ok, I am looking at the WFSERVER setting and your name is listed. That answers my question. Great job.

Sweet,

Was it preloaded or did you d/l and install?

It’s here: https://www.cqxiegu.com/productinfo/790911.html

Ahh I see it on their chinese-language site. Last tab is Downloads (“下载文件”).

I want to say, this is really exciting. We put a section of our website up a while back to show what it would take to add wfview support to radios, and Roeland encouraged and helped the Xiego developers understand how to do it.

It is my hope that more radio manufacturers consider adding support for what is becoming a bit of an open standard. Ham radio is the original open source technical hobby, and work such as this continues in that spirit.

–E
de W6EL

Downloaded and installed right after I heard about the new firmware.
We waited for almost 9 months and wfserver is the only thing they added, no Bluetooth or bug fixes.
I tested wfserver briefly and it seems to work most of the time, except the transmit button didn’t work.
Maybe we will need to change the thread title. Running Armbian on X6100 is fun but the CPU is too slow to do any serious stuff.
I run either the original firmware or R1CBU firmware these days.