Virtual Serial Port Pro From Eltima - Control Your Transceiver From Multiple Apps Simultaneously

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I was recently contacted by Helga from Eltima Software who design software and apps which can be used in the field of amateur radio. Helga offered me the chance to take a look at a couple of software solutions of interest which are Virtual Serial Pro and Serial to Ethernet Connector.
Helga has been involved in the research of what can be achieved using the Eltima Virtual Serial Pro com port application in regard to Amateur Radio and has written an interesting article called How to Control Ham Radio Transceiver from Several Apps at a Time.


1. Virtual Serial Port Driver: creates pairs of virtual COM ports.
2. Serial Port Splitter (Virtual Serial Port Driver Pro): helps to create bundles of virtual serial ports and set custom port parameters, allows managing real and virtual COM ports.
3. Serial Port Monitor: displays, logs, and analyzes RS232/422/485 COM port activity.
4. Serial to Ethernet Connector: allows sharing serial ports over Ethernet, LAN, and the Internet.


I believe that this could be of interest to Hams who have multiple transceivers, satellite antenna controllers, regular antenna rotators and run data modes and packages like Ham radio deluxe, TRX Manager, WX to IMG etc. This of course would be only useful if you like everything on at the same time in your shack all functioning simultaneously or if your PC has limited or only one serial port. For myself I have been playing around trying to configure a couple of apps that run my YAESU FT-847 and West Mountain RIGblaster plus.



I will be taking a look at the Serial to Ethernet software next which could be a winner for Hams that operate remote stations which is something that I fancy having a look at once I have found a suitable app or program to run/connect to my station via the Eltima serial to ethernet connector.

If any of you are running a remote station and using an android app to control your station I would be interested in hearing what your results are and any recommendations you may have.

I shall continue to play around with the software packages kindly sent through from Eltima Software solutions and I would like to thank Helga for getting in touch and offering the Ham radio station of M0YKS a chance to look at something that could be beneficial to a lot of radio amateurs.Follow the links for detailed info if this is something that interests you.

Best 73 catch you all again soon and thanks once again for visiting Ham Radio dot Blogspot dot com.

Comments

tomb said…
Unfortunately, no matter what the advertising claims, the use of virtual port splitters is highly dependent on which applications are running. Some apps, like N1MM don't really care what data is returned from a query. As long as they have a match sometime during the listening that is good enough. There are many situations where this splitting of ports fails. For example when two applications write to the port at the same time, expecting a result. If this happens the query or command will fail and what happens next is dependent on what the software does with it. Some will retransmit the query, some will ignore it. The result is that eventually this will fail. You can ask any developer of ham radio software and they will say the same thing. Collectively there are 100's of thousands of users out there so we know what we are saying in this regard.
The only way to ensure proper sharing of serial ports access from multiple applications is via a managed approach where any time an application send a request to the radio, only that application will receive the result. None of the others. This cannot be managed with a port splitter. You need an intelligent application moderating the access to the serial port. Same thing if a request is made to change something on the radio. For example, changing the frequency. If another app is sending a query at that time, the radio will not understand what it is doing. What has to happen, is that anytime there is a write to the serial port, no other application can write until that write and possible response is accomplished. There are other situations where this all fails such as when there are multiple commands needed to perform a single task. If another commands comes in during this, the commands will fail.
All of this can be managed if the application doesn't care about errors and just keeps going. The result is a unresponsive app. In a high RF environment, errors over a physical serial port can and do happen. The apps should validate each and every command to ensure reliability.
Where the port splitters can work reliably is when the radio is in auto-information mode where the app just listens for data being delivered. There are very few apps that do so, being mostly utilities like antenna tuners. Sorry, but you should save your money in all cases except for the last. You will be right back to where you were with LPBridge.
Tom Blahovici​ author of Win4K4, WinIcom and Win4Yaesu suites.
6:31 pm
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