Flex Radio Compatibility
Posted: 04 Aug 2016, 18:51
Terry / Developer Team
I’m a Flex Radio user, one of many that experiences problems every time Microsoft updates Windows 10. Now that version 2 of LOG4OM is under development, I know that there has been some requests for establishing IP connectivity between LOG4OM and Flex radios.
Flex’s Customer Experience Manager, Tim W4TME posted the comments below on what ”breaks” when Windows 10 is updated. If you have any interest I’d be happy to introduce you to Tim. Flex has been very responsive to software developers.
W4TME - “Based on our support data, what breaks are the kernel mode drivers that emulate hardware (UARTS and sound cards), not the CAT and DAX applications themselves.
And RigCAT has no kernel mode drivers, so it is not a fair comparison. It just opens a com port (UART), be it physical or virtual.
The ideal thing would be for third-party app developers to start transitioning from serial ports and start using TCP/IP as the inter-app communication protocol. For audio, dump the klutzy Windows sound card interface and stream the audio via a UDP port for low-latency audio processing. This would be a transitional change as you would have to support the legacy way of interfacing apps to the radio along with offering the new network based communication methods.
We have asked several of these app developers to consider this proposal and offered technical assistance in making the transition. To date, unfortunately, we have not seen any significant progress, but we still hold out hope.”
I’m a Flex Radio user, one of many that experiences problems every time Microsoft updates Windows 10. Now that version 2 of LOG4OM is under development, I know that there has been some requests for establishing IP connectivity between LOG4OM and Flex radios.
Flex’s Customer Experience Manager, Tim W4TME posted the comments below on what ”breaks” when Windows 10 is updated. If you have any interest I’d be happy to introduce you to Tim. Flex has been very responsive to software developers.
W4TME - “Based on our support data, what breaks are the kernel mode drivers that emulate hardware (UARTS and sound cards), not the CAT and DAX applications themselves.
And RigCAT has no kernel mode drivers, so it is not a fair comparison. It just opens a com port (UART), be it physical or virtual.
The ideal thing would be for third-party app developers to start transitioning from serial ports and start using TCP/IP as the inter-app communication protocol. For audio, dump the klutzy Windows sound card interface and stream the audio via a UDP port for low-latency audio processing. This would be a transitional change as you would have to support the legacy way of interfacing apps to the radio along with offering the new network based communication methods.
We have asked several of these app developers to consider this proposal and offered technical assistance in making the transition. To date, unfortunately, we have not seen any significant progress, but we still hold out hope.”