Controlling Multiple Radios

Commander Online Help Contents

 

Primary CAT Port Switching

Commander can be configured to rapidly switch its Primary CAT Port among up to four simultaneously-connected radios, either by clicking selection buttons that appear in the Main window's VFO panel, or automatically based on frequency. The Configuration window's Multi Radio tab lets you specify control and serial port settings for each radio, and assign each radio a unique name. If a FlexRadio Signature, Kachina, or TenTec Pegasus radio is chosen, a Select button appears that when clicked lets you specify a Radio Selection, Control File or Control Folder respectively. Each enabled radio's name appears on a selection button on the Main window's VFO panel; a radio can only be enabled on the Configuration window's Multi Radio tab if its Model has been specified.

Clicking a radio's Update button in the Multi Radio tab's CAT Serial port panel will update that radio's Multi Radio serial port settings from the settings specified on the Ports tab's Primary CAT Serial Port panel. Thus once you have the settings on the Primary CAT Serial Port panel properly configured to enable Commander to control a transceiver, you can "transfer" those settings to the Multi Radio tab's CAT Serial Port panel by clicking the appropriate Update button.

Clicking a radio's selection button on the Main window's VFO panel sets the Radio Model, CI-V Address (if an Icom), Continuous Interrogation, Interrogation Interval, and Primary CAT Serial Port settings to the values specified for that radio on the Multi Radio tab.

User-defined Control Sets

If you've specified an Initial Command,  an an Initial Command Sequence, on or more Command Sequences, or one or more Command-generating Sliders, and are controlling more than one primary transceiver, you can define a User-defined Control Set that enables these items to be automatically populated when a primary transceiver is selected at startup, manually, or automatically:

The 32 Sequence pathnames and 16 Slider pathnames are organized into two banks, each specifying 16 Sequence pathnames and 8 slider pathnames.

To create, display, or modify a radio's Control Set, click that radio's Edit button in the User-defined Controls Sets panel on the Config window's Multi Radio tab to display the User-defined Control Set Configuration window.

Selecting a radio for which a Control Set is specified

You can configure Commander to automatically switch among simultaneously-connected radios by specifying the radio to use for each amateur band. Check the Selection by band panel's Auto box, and Commander will automatically switch to the correct radio as a function of operating frequency.

You can also configure Commander to identify the currently-selected radio via a binary encoding on pins 16 and 14 of a specified parallel port. These signals can be used to control external hardware that connects an antenna, microphone, key, headset, soundcard, and/or FSK signal to the currently-selected radio.


Secondary CAT Port

Commander's Secondary CAT Port can be connected to

You can configure the Secondary CAT port so that the connected radio or SDR Console

When connected to an external device like a tuner or amplifier, the Secondary CAT port should be configured to follow frequency and mode changes in the radio connected to the Primary CAT Port

Select the CAT protocol to be used on the Secondary CAT Port. If the Secondary CAT Port is connected to an Icom or Icom-emulating transceiver, specify its CI-V Address

Instructions for configuring Commander for use with a PW1 can be found in https://www.dxlabsuite.com/dxlabwiki/PW1Control.