2.5  Indicator controls   -  periodically updated


piWebCAT has a total of 27 sliders and 90 buttons.

A startup, the state or buttons and the positions and text values of slider are updated from the radio.

This also occurs on band change and on use of the Reconnect button.

Thereafter, there is no regular update of the controls. Regular update is not necessary if piWebCAT
is controlling the radio (because the controls are changed on piWebCAT and the radio responds).


There are, however, options to have selected controls updated on a regular basis.

For each control, the active field has options:  Y, N, S and  L as follows:


Buttons

  • N        Inactive - grayed out.
  • Y        Normal active state   - no regular state updates.
  • S        'Sync'  - periodically updated to the associated radio parameter.
           Sync buttons can be mouse-clicked as active buttons.
  • L        'LED'  - as Sync but with a different appearance:
    OFF state is black + red text. ON state is a bright colour of your choice + black text.
    (ie:  Your configured colour specifies the ON colour rather than the usual OFF colour)
    LED buttons buttons are not active controls, ie: they do not respond to mouse clicks.

 

Sliders

  • N        Inactive, grayed out.
  • Y        Normal active state  - no regular state updates.
  • S        'Sync' - the slider position and text data are periodically updated to match the radio parameter.
  • L        As 'Sync' but with a different appearance
          (Narrow black slider thumb on teal background)
  • T    One of the four text box data items
           (update as Sync items)
  • W   A special Hamlib-only IF width display.




The controls remain active in controlling the radio if configured to do so.


Sync timing configuration

The update period is set by the sync field in the radio's timing table record.  


Example:  The sync field is set to 300ms and you have five buttons and three sliders set to S or L.
The update process steps around the eight controls every 300ms and so each item updates every 2400ms.

This facility was not thought of during initial development with the FTdx101D and the IC7000.

Nearly all CAT controls on these radios are read / write and so read-only indicators were not needed.
The facility was first introduced when investigating the CAT needs of the Yaesu FT920.

My FT920 configuration has slider controls (all set to L) for:

                          NR level,   IF Lo cut,   IF hi cut,   IF shift,    Speech proc. level   and  Squelch.

Rx clarifier control has a read / write configuration and is also  updated by having active = S.


The FT920 has some issues:

  • Its RS232 baud rate is rather slow at 4800 baud.
  • Some of the parameters share a common CAT command that reads a large block of data.
  • The clarifier offset is two bytes in the middle of a 28 byte returned data block for VFOs A and B.


For the FT920 and other YAESU5 radios, there is therefore a  'rigfix' option whereby a single

data block read can serve multiple controls.