[K3] User Programmable Display Area

[Phil Hystad-3]

I had this wild idea for doing something with my K3 but one problem is that I do not know enough about the K3 to know whether this made sense or not.

I wanted to create a button triggered macro that would be used to switch between two different states of settings (I assume I can do this).  Since these settings mean something unique to my use of the K3, ideally I would like a display panel display of a flag or code to identify the setting that I was in -- say I called this setting A or B.

Therefore, I was curious if there were an area on the display screen set aside for user custom needs and a command that can enter data into that setting.  Now, I know that the display is very crowded but was hoping that such a facility did exist.

If it does not, it seems that it might be a nice feature.  Maybe a 5 character region on the display that can be addressed and used by individuals who program macros to manipulate their K3.  Ideally, the characters could be addressed as a whole (a string) or individually as cell positions (maybe to define flags).

Maybe I should check -- I think I am assuming that the macro programming language allows for conditional tests which would be a nice feature to have too if it does not exist.  For the future K4, maybe an entire programming language built into the feature set of macro coding.

73, phil, K7PEH

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[lstavenhagen]

I don't think I've seen any conditional execution facilities in the command set itself, tho there's the concept of return value (i.e. many of them return responses to the original command). So it looks like any conditional/branching operations have to be done outboard in high(er) level code.

I'm actually still just trying to figure out what the encoding method for the K3 command set would be from a high level language - i.e. is there a "bridge" API along the lines of, say, JDBC, which allows sending the commands as strings interspersed with parameters? Or is there another lower level method of talking to the firmware (i.e. is the K3 command set itself an abstraction of this protocol?).

I.e. something like the source code from a K3 app would be helpful here?

Otherwise, yeah, I'd support an API from elecraft that you could use from a high level language to talk to the firmware, perhaps a library plugin with a C API would be relatively portable?

73,
LS
W5QD