Martin, I and others use the UDP broadcast packets from N1MM, HRD, and
other loggers to drive antenna tuners and/or antenna tuner relays.
The logger reads the frequency from the rigs and broadcasts over local
network (in my case, including Wi-Fi) using a standard UDP packet.
The mode, transmit and receive frequencies of all rigs are available in the
UDP packets and very easily parsed. Details here:
http://n1mm.hamdocs.com/tiki-index.php?page=UDP+Broadcasts
I have implemented UDP-controlled antenna switch relays using a Raspberry
Pi 3 (about $40) but my preferred solution is much smaller and lightweight,
the ESP8266 module (less than $10 and much smaller footprint). The
Raspberry Pi 3 supports both wired ethernet and Wifi; the ESP8266 is wifi
only.
I have been using Wifi and prefer it because it decreases the cabling mess
on my desk and at the tuners.
Since switching over to UDP-controlled antenna switching last fall, I have
made over 20,000 QSO's with the automatic switching and it has worked
perfectly. I do contests like NA Sprint that have rapidfire band-changes
so the system gets worked out a lot.
Tim N3QE
On Thu, Apr 6, 2017 at 9:51 AM, Martin <dm4im@t-online.de> wrote:
> Topbanders,
>
> i'm looking for advice on automatic antenna matching.
> The goal is to automatically match a vertical for 160m and a loop for
> 80/40/60/(30)m using motor-driven variable caps.
>
> We are using microham gear for station management, so we already have
> information about tx-freq at hand. My understanding is microham uLink-Data
> boxes translate data from many transceiver models to protocols a whole
> bunch of matching units can deal with, be it ultrabeam or steppir or such.
>
> We plan to use a credit-card sized computer (raspberry) to drive a
> motorized cap. The computer will set the cap to a pre-defined position,
> based on stored information in a table (and probably switch inductance in
> and out) .
>
> The protocol must be able to deal with large splits , e.g. USA calls above
> 3.8Mhz and listens on about 3.6Mhz.
> I cheked the radio outputs information about rx & tx - frequency and if it
> is in split-mode or not.
>
> My question is: Has anyone on the list done this ,what protocol did he
> use/like best and for what reason?
> Is there anything i'm overlooking right now?
>
>
> --
>
> Ohne CW ist es nur CB..
>
> 73, Martin DM4iM
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