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USB tuning knob

Hi Folks,

Does anyone know if you can configure a USB tuning knob for use with the KiwiSDR? I miss tuning around the band with a knob. It's not a big issue; my Kiwisdr is working great!

Gary

Comments

  • I am really interested too!
    Giulio
  • Sorry for replying to this old post,

    but i'd love to tune with an external knob, or, at least, the mouse wheel.

    Anyone knows if this could be done?


    thanks

  • Maybe if tuning by mouse wheel could be implemented when the cursor is placed over the frequency scale, as opposed to zooming in and out when placed over the waterfall or spectrum display. Or some other method used to switch between zoom or tune (caps lock ?)

    Then it would be easy to build your own tuning knob using an old mouse.

    Regards,

    Martin

  • In my dreams, Elad TM-2 could be used.


    I happen to have one, and it is an excellent device, but too limited with too few compatible software. There is a windows SDK available.


    73, Jukka

  • If you already have a radio with a tuning knob that can use CAT commands, then you can set it up to link the radio to a KiWi using CATSync, so that the KiWi tracks the radio tuning and the KiWi GUI can also be used to tune the radio.



    Regards,

    Martin

  • A great idea.... and this is a potential but expensive device that could do it.

    Personally i’ve been experimenting with usb keypads to drive kiwisdr on an ipad via the usb to lightning adaptor. With the help of a coding guru friend of mine we wrote a hacky bookmarklet that works within safari to remap the keys to the supported keyboard shortcuts. It’s not perfect by any means, you have to select the “request desktop site” in the ipad safari settings which in turn breaks some other stuff. Work in progress as they say, but if anyone fancies a play I’d be happy to share (use at your own risk etc).


  • edited January 2022

    The Music/MIDI people do a lot of related stuff, it might be worth a look into that world.

  • I ran an APP on my phone (Touch OSC) and MIDI connector (keyboard emulation) through the PC for some tests, could do quite a bit but some things just were beyond me so I gave up. My intention was to build a basic weighted spinner to put on top of an old handset or tablet and some conductive push buttons so it physically looked like hardware but underneath was almost infinitely editable.

    I even picked up a basic DJ midi deck to play but life and global issues got in the way.

    I seem to remember SDR-Console had MIDI controls so would take a deck, wait isn't there a way to sync that to Kiwi using the software Martin highlighted....

  • Several years ago when operating a remote WSPR session, I had great success using a Windows scrpiting tool called Autoit



    This could be used to interface external commands to drive software that only had a Windows GUI interface. You could also automate sequences and time schedule commands as required.

    The great thing about it was that you could package the Autoit scripts up as stand alone executable files, so there was no need for the end user to install any additional software or application before it could be run.

    It's some time since I used it, but even as a non-software guy I found it relatively easy to get it up and running and doing what I wanted.

    I'm sure there have been a lot of enhancements to Autoit (and other similar software) since I last used it, but it may be worth looking at for this application.

    However my preference would still be to have the option to be able to tune by mouse wheel to be somehow incorporated into the KiWi GUI, as this would make interfacing a home built tuning knob, using an optical encoder recovered from a scrap mouse very cheap and easy to implement.

    Regards,

    Martin

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