FT817 CAT interface

VK3YNV

Administrator
Staff member
I was talking to Denys VK3ZYZ about implementing CAT commands as part of his Synthesizer upgrade kits. One popular radio to emulate is the Yaesu FT817.

The command syntax is pretty simple. All commands are 5 bytes, 4 data bytes followed by a command byte. no check sum.

As an example to set the frequency you send 4 BCD bytes followed by 0x01
So to set the frequency to 3.630 mHz you would send 0x00 0x03 0x63 0x00 0x01
To set it to 146.650 you would send 0x01 0x46 0x65 0x00 0x01

( Note: the actual scaling of the frequency setting depends on the band selected, HF or VHF )

To turn the transmitter PTT on
Send 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x08
To turn the transmitter PTT off
Send 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x88

A more complete list of the FT817 cat commands can be found here... http://www.ka7oei.com/ft817_meow.html

To get audio into a raspberry pi for remote usage, you would need a USB to audio adaptor, $5 on ebay.
 

VK3YNV

Administrator
Staff member
For the network interface, it would be worth checking out rigpi, https://rigpi.net/ It's the software supplied by MFJ with their RigPi product and is open source, you can download an image and set up your own remote control.

Then connect over the network using a web browser. The interface looks like this. There are android and IOS versions of an app that does something similar working with RigPi.


RigPiWeb3.png
 
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