Commander Online Help Contents
Commander's Messages window can capture and display messages between your PC and the radio connected to Commander's Primary CAT Port, and can capture and display messages between your PC and the radio or application connected to Commander's Secondary CAT Port . If more than 65K message characters are received, the first 8K characters received are deleted and message capture continues.
You can also use the Messages window to send an arbitrary CAT command to the Primary CAT Port, and enable or disable Continuous Frequency and Mode Interrogation.
To display Commander's Messages window, click the Main window's Msgs button.
To enable the capture of Primary CAT Port messages, check the Capture and display Primary CAT Port Messages box; note that capturing messages may reduce program performance, resulting in poor tracking between the radio's frequency display and the program's frequency display.
To enable the capture of Secondary CAT Port messages, check the Capture and display Secondary CAT Port Messages box; note that capturing messages may reduce program performance, resulting in poor tracking between the radio's frequency display and the program's frequency display.
Captured messages are preceded by a P or S (for Primary or Secondary), a sequence number, a date, and a directional indicator: > for transmitted messages, < for received messages
when monitoring an Icom or TenTec CI-V bus, all messages will be designated as "received".
Messages can be displayed in Decimal, Hexadecimal, or Ascii as specified by settings in the Message Display panel.
When capturing messages from both the Primary and Secondary CAT Ports when these ports are configured for different CAT protocols, set the Message Display panel to Native; this will display messages in the most natural representation for their protocol, e.g. Kenwood messages are displayed in Ascii, Icom messages are displayed in Hexadecimal, etc.
Selecting text in a captured message and striking CTRL-C places the selected text in the Windows Clipboard
If the Configuration window's Continuous Frequency and Mode Interrogation box is checked, you should see the PC issuing "request frequency report" and "request mode report" messages, and your radio's responses; if not, check your radio's address, baud rate, and PC connections.
The Interrogate Radio panel's Freq? and Mode? buttons send messages to your radio requesting that it report its current frequency and mode respectively.
The Interrogation panel's Continuous checkbox shows the state of Continuous Frequency and Mode Interrogation and provides a convenient means of enabling or disabling it.
In the Execute CAT Command panel,
the Exec button sends the command specified in the CAT command box to the transceiver connected to the Primary CAT Port; this function is disabled when Verify CI-V command acceptance is enabled while controlling an Icom or TenTec Omni VI as the primary radio
the Clear button clears the CAT command box
the CAT command box specifies the command to be sent to the transceiver connected to the Primary CAT Port
a hexadecimal command composed of an even number of hexadecimal characters for use with Icom, TenTec, and Yaesu radios, e.g.FEFE26E00700FD
precede an ascii command with a single apostrophe to send that command to the transceiver via the primary CAT serial port for use with DZKit, Elecraft, Flex, Kenwood, and recent Yaesu transceivers; in an ascii command, the substitution string <n> (where n is an integer between 0 and 127) is replaced by a single character whose ascii value is n; for example, <13> will be replaced by the "carriage return" character.
precede an ascii command with a single tilde to send that command to the transceiver via the TCP/IP connection for use with an Elecraft K4, or Flex Signature transceiver) ; in an ascii command, the substitution string <n> (where n is an integer between 0 and 127) is replaced by a single character whose ascii value is n; for example, <13> will be replaced by the "carriage return" character.
striking the Enter key will send the command to the transceiver connected to the Primary CAT Port (equivalent to clicking the Exec button)
striking CTRL-W will clear the CAT command box (equivalent to clicking the Clear button)
In the Captured Messages panel,
the Note button records documentary text to be inserted into the message store; the note will not appear in the message store until the next message arrives
the Save button places all captured messages in a file
the Clear button empties the store of captured messages.