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Serial to Ethernet - TCP/IP connections

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inventor61 .

Serial to Ethernet - TCP/IP connections

Ken

A variety of inexpensive (3rd party) devices are on the market to do exactly
as you propose.

One source is NetBurner:

http://www.netburner.com/products.html

Digi also sells top grade products.

(I am only a customer of these firms.)

My personal experience trying to lobby multiple well-known and popular
'premium' ham application developers, whose products I have purchased, to
support even basic existing Elecraft rig functionality, via well-documented
serial port command syntax, was ... discouraging.

I see the world from their point of view as well. Hams have a wide variety
of skill levels these days. You or I might be able to adopt IP addressable
rig functionality with ease but others might find it most challenging. The
"help line" costs of a technology shift like this might be higher than the
product's revenues could support.

I might suggest (as I have here in the past) that instead Elecraft offer an
I/O module upgrade that uses Bluetooth. This interface could support
well-established wireless audio and serial port profiles. There'd be no new
wires - hooray! - hence, no RFI or grounding issues, and modern computer
operating systems already support these interfaces, making them readily
accessible to programmers.

What a terrific treat it would be for me to use a wireless digital-audio
headset like this one:

http://www.blueparrott.com/products/blueparrottb250XT.html

while that same wireless interface supported a Bluetooth mouse for my P3 and
a Bluetooth serial port for my computer. As a plus, the K3 cabinet would
not need to have another connector on it, so, I could even keep my existing
RS-232 port!

73 Steve KZ1X/4
K1, K2, K3, etc.
Celebrating my 11th year of daily Elecraft reflector lurking
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N3PSJ-2

Re: Serial to Ethernet - TCP/IP connections

Steve,

I have tried several of these interfaces. All that I have tried still only
allow one connection to the K3. Why is this? Because the K3 has no concept
of knowing what program it is talking to. It just receives a command via
the serial interface and replies to it via the serial interface. If the K3
supported networking, then it would know that it is talking to HRD on port
3000 and the P3 on port 3001 and PowerSDR on port 3002. When request
is received from any of these programs it would reply to only that program
in some situations and to all the programs in others. This is simply not
possible so long as the K3 supports only a serial interface.

I am not suggesting that they give up the serial interface all together.
There will be those that cannot understand networking and want to stick to
the older serial technology. That works for them and that is fine with me.
We just need the option for those of us that want true performance and a
clean interface to that understands who it is talking to.

Ken Nicely KE3C

On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 11:22 AM, Steve Jackson <[hidden email]>wrote:

> Ken
>
> A variety of inexpensive (3rd party) devices are on the market to do
> exactly as you propose.
>
> One source is NetBurner:
>
> http://www.netburner.com/products.html
>
> Digi also sells top grade products.
>
> (I am only a customer of these firms.)
>
> My personal experience trying to lobby multiple well-known and popular
> 'premium' ham application developers, whose products I have purchased, to
> support even basic existing Elecraft rig functionality, via well-documented
> serial port command syntax, was ... discouraging.
>
> I see the world from their point of view as well. Hams have a wide variety
> of skill levels these days. You or I might be able to adopt IP addressable
> rig functionality with ease but others might find it most challenging. The
> "help line" costs of a technology shift like this might be higher than the
> product's revenues could support.
>
> I might suggest (as I have here in the past) that instead Elecraft offer an
> I/O module upgrade that uses Bluetooth. This interface could support
> well-established wireless audio and serial port profiles. There'd be no new
> wires - hooray! - hence, no RFI or grounding issues, and modern computer
> operating systems already support these interfaces, making them readily
> accessible to programmers.
>
> What a terrific treat it would be for me to use a wireless digital-audio
> headset like this one:
>
> http://www.blueparrott.com/products/blueparrottb250XT.html
>
> while that same wireless interface supported a Bluetooth mouse for my P3
> and a Bluetooth serial port for my computer. As a plus, the K3 cabinet
> would not need to have another connector on it, so, I could even keep my
> existing RS-232 port!
>
> 73 Steve KZ1X/4
> K1, K2, K3, etc.
> Celebrating my 11th year of daily Elecraft reflector lurking
>
>

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Ken Nicely (N3PSJ)

Jessie Oberreuter-2

Re: Serial to Ethernet - TCP/IP connections

This sort of thing requires a non-trivial amount of software --
especially for an embedded device -- and comes with a great many
complications. TCP, UDP, SCTP? Encrypted? Login credentials? Routing
information? Proxy support? IPv4 vs v6? Per-port feature set
restrictions? Connection timeouts? The list goes on.
Even with all this, IP over ethernet is infinitely better than USB
b/c you don't need to be a kernel engineer on the computer end to keep it
working. Trust me, I really loved burning a weekend hacking the driver
for a USB MIDI cable that failed to correctly implement the public, decade
old protocol specification.

The best way to start something like this would be to do it as a
separate device (an application running on a PC first) that would provide
networking services on top of the K3's serial protocol. If you made it a
small command-line application that runs under Linux, hams could even
run it on an old laptop that sits on a shelf with the lid closed and the
hard drive permanently spun down :).

On Sun, 29 Aug 2010, Ken Nicely wrote:

> Steve,
>
> I have tried several of these interfaces. All that I have tried still only
> allow one connection to the K3. Why is this? Because the K3 has no concept
> of knowing what program it is talking to. It just receives a command via
> the serial interface and replies to it via the serial interface. If the K3
> supported networking, then it would know that it is talking to HRD on port
> 3000 and the P3 on port 3001 and PowerSDR on port 3002. When request
> is received from any of these programs it would reply to only that program
> in some situations and to all the programs in others. This is simply not
> possible so long as the K3 supports only a serial interface.

N3PSJ-2

Re: Serial to Ethernet - TCP/IP connections

>
> Jessie,
>

You are probably correct about it not being that trivial from the hardware
end. I am a website and desktop software guy, not a firmware guy, although
I have dabbled a bit in that. I know things are much harder to implement at
that level.

The real benefit would come from the ability of the K3 to respond
independently to each software application that was addressing it. For
instance Ham Radio Deluxe could be connected on port 3000, Power SDR on port
3001 and the P3 on port 3002. Each device connecting to the K3 would send
its commands and get responses back from the K3. Most of the time the K3
would just respond to the caller who sent the command, but certain responses
(like the frequency) could be broadcast across all port. The K3 would then
be aware of each device connecting to it.

One of the main problems with the serial communication is that only one
software application or device can connect at a time, so we end up with
programs like LPBridge (which is really a brilliant piece of software for
what it does) that make virtual connections to the com port and try to do
this task of marshalling the calls for the K3. Now that we have the P3, we
have the K3 talking to the P3 which is forwarding the communications through
to LPBridge which is creating multiple virtual com ports for HRD, N1MM,CW
Skimmer, PowerSDR, etc. Its getting really crazy complicated. A network
connection in the K3 and the P3 would make this all very clean......every
device talks to the device it needs to talk to.

Ken Nicely KE3C
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Ken Nicely (N3PSJ)

Joe Subich, W4TV-4

Re: Serial to Ethernet - TCP/IP connections

In reply to this post by Jessie Oberreuter-2

> This sort of thing requires a non-trivial amount of software --
> especially for an embedded device -- and comes with a great many
> complications. TCP, UDP, SCTP? Encrypted? Login credentials?
> Routing information? Proxy support? IPv4 vs v6? Per-port feature
> set restrictions? Connection timeouts? The list goes on.

A bigger issue that none of the "network interface" proponents seems
to consider is security. Once a transceiver is exposed on the net,
it requires serious security to prevent access by unlicensed persons.

> The best way to start something like this would be to do it
> as a separate device (an application running on a PC first) that
> would provide networking services on top of the K3's serial protocol.

That's certainly the best approach ... build the network server as a
separate piece of hardware that communicates with the K3 using the
current/future serial interface. The transceiver's CPU does not have
to deal with the overhead of the networks stack, routing, keeping
all of the "clients" separate, etc. The user does not see the cost
and overhead of a network interface unless he needs it. In addition,
the network interface can be adapted to ANY transceiver by adapting
the serial protocol.

If someone truly believed that a network interface was justified,
they should not have any trouble putting up their own time and
capital to to develop such a product.

73,

... Joe, W4TV

On 8/29/2010 6:54 PM, Jessie Oberreuter wrote:

>
> This sort of thing requires a non-trivial amount of software --
> especially for an embedded device -- and comes with a great many
> complications. TCP, UDP, SCTP? Encrypted? Login credentials? Routing
> information? Proxy support? IPv4 vs v6? Per-port feature set
> restrictions? Connection timeouts? The list goes on.
> Even with all this, IP over ethernet is infinitely better than USB
> b/c you don't need to be a kernel engineer on the computer end to keep it
> working. Trust me, I really loved burning a weekend hacking the driver
> for a USB MIDI cable that failed to correctly implement the public, decade
> old protocol specification.
>
> The best way to start something like this would be to do it as a
> separate device (an application running on a PC first) that would provide
> networking services on top of the K3's serial protocol. If you made it a
> small command-line application that runs under Linux, hams could even
> run it on an old laptop that sits on a shelf with the lid closed and the
> hard drive permanently spun down :).
>
>
> On Sun, 29 Aug 2010, Ken Nicely wrote:
>
>> Steve,
>>
>> I have tried several of these interfaces. All that I have tried still only
>> allow one connection to the K3. Why is this? Because the K3 has no concept
>> of knowing what program it is talking to. It just receives a command via
>> the serial interface and replies to it via the serial interface. If the K3
>> supported networking, then it would know that it is talking to HRD on port
>> 3000 and the P3 on port 3001 and PowerSDR on port 3002. When request
>> is received from any of these programs it would reply to only that program
>> in some situations and to all the programs in others. This is simply not
>> possible so long as the K3 supports only a serial interface.
> ______________________________________________________________
> Elecraft mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:[hidden email]
>
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
>

David Woolley (E.L)

Re: Serial to Ethernet - TCP/IP connections

In reply to this post by N3PSJ-2

That's clearly not true, as both ethernet and USB are serial. What you
tend to need is a link layer implementation (which can be software) to
packetise and multiplex messages. (Ethernet also allows multiplexing
with multiple physical line drivers, which requires a master station
which knows who is on the link, collision detection or some sort of
discovery protocol.)

There are standards for multiplexing over asynchronous serial
connections. Some, like SLIP, are very simple. One could also have
application specific ones, although there would be problems getting
everyone to agree on the same one. (SLIP is really a packetisation
protocol, it needs a multiplexing one, which can be IP, but can be
simply prefixing with a channel number.)

Apologies for pronouns preceding nouns, but that is list policy!

Ken Nicely wrote:

>
> One of the main problems with the serial communication is that only one
> software application or device can connect at a time, so we end up with

--
David Woolley
"we do not overly restrict the subject matter on the list, and we
encourage postings on a wide range of amateur radio related topics"
List Guidelines <http://www.elecraft.com/elecraft_list_guidelines.htm>
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