USB issues

K

KenGordon

First, I have installed FreeBSD ver 15.0-RELEASE and the Lumina desktop. Mouse and keyboard are USB and are recognized and are working correctly. I am trying, almost desperately, to get a completely operable system fully outside of Windows. FYI, it takes a minimum of 12 minutes for my system to fully boot into Windows 10, while it takes less than 2 minutes to have my FreeBSD system with X-org, and all peripherals working just fine.

However, I have run into a serious roadblock with regard to USB devices OTHER THAN those mentioned above. I want to use my FreeBSD system in my amateur radio station to run various bits of ham software, among them Fldigi and WinlinkExpress, using an external USB-connected "sound-card" device, either a RigBlaster Advantage box or a DRA box.

I can get Fldigi to work by choosing dsp5 as the audio device, but to me, this is not really correct. I believe it should be via a USB device. Furthermore, there is another bit of software which results in computer-control of the radio, a Yaesu FT-890 in this case, named Flrig. Flrig then communicates with the radio through a USB cable and the computer on which Flrig is installed....at least in Windows it does.

So far, I have been totally unable to get it to work in FreeBSD.

When I issue the command usbconfig, the system returns a list of ugen0.# devices, but there are no indications of any com ports. I believe the Flrig software is looking for something like utty0 or cua0 rather than ugen0.#

I load umodem into the kernel from the /boot/loader at boot, and have tried usbtemplate:0 which seemed to do nothing, so I removed it.

Despite directing Flrig to use the ugen0.# associated with the USB interconnect cable to Flrig, found with the usbconfig command (which, BTW, changes at every re-boot) I cannot get Flrig to "talk" to the radio.

So, might anyone have any idea how I might resolve this issue?

I believe my problem is that I am not correctly addressing the USB devices, but at this point, I really don't know how to do that, despite readinig everything I can so far find on it. The Handbook was, essentially, of minimal help.

Ken Gordon
 
KenGordon said:
use my FreeBSD system in my amateur radio station to run various bits of ham software, among them Fldigi and WinlinkExpress
Click to expand...
As a separate shoutout (sorry, I don't know how to help you with the the actual problem) - how cool is ham radio internet? That's, like, 10 times better than TOR. Is there a world wide ham radio web? Can you hook us all up?
 
I'm not sure I understand your setup here.
Does it look like this:
  1. "C", a single FreeBSD system
  2. "R", a Rig Blaster connected to "C" via USB cable
  3. "F", an FT-890 connected to "C" via USB cable
Code: 
 -----------
|           |
| [FreeBSD] |
|           |              ------------
|           | usb cable   |            |
|    Fldigi |------------>| RigBlaster |
|           |             |            |
|           | usb cable    ------------
|     Flrig |--------
|           |        |     ------------
 ___________         |    |            |
                      --->| FT-890     |
                          |            |
                           ------------

  1. Re: Fldigi using dsp5, why do you think this is incorrect?
    dsp devices are exposed as functions of sound devices. If the sound is working correctly, it probably is the correct device.
    You can check this with removing and re-inserting the USB cable for the sound device and seeing which devices files are used with dmesg -a
  2. I'm not familiar with radio equipment, but it sounds like you expect the Yaesu FT-890 to expose itself as a serial device.
    Use devinfo -v and dmesg -a to see if FreeBSD recognises it. If you find it in dmesg, you can see if it is exposing any functions.
 
loveydovey said:
As a separate shoutout (sorry, I don't know how to help you with the the actual problem) - how cool is ham radio internet? That's, like, 10 times better than TOR. Is there a world wide ham radio web? Can you hook us all up?
Click to expand...

Ha ha! No. You can do that yourself. :D

I have been a ham since I was 13 years old in 1956. I am 83 now. We use the internet for information exchange and discovery, but have no need to use it to communicate with. We prefer just good old Radio Frequency energy, or RF. My favorite mode of communicating by ham radio is what you would understand by "Morse Code", but we understand as International Code: it is somewhat different from Morse and is more directly useful for radio communications. Real Morse Code was used for many years by the land-line railroad system. Although it has fallen into disuse now, there are still some few operators in the railroad that use it.

I do use many different modes, among them, voice, and many digital modes, especially for EMCOMMs or emergency communications, but my favorite mode is still simple CW or hand-sent "Morse" code. I can send and receive around 30 wpm (words per minute), and am not regarded as particularly fast. Some of us can bang along at around 100 wpm, which is unusual. I cannot do that. I was a "High Speed Radio Operator" when in the U.S. Army in the 1960s time frame.

Take care and thanks!

Ken Gordon W7EKB
 
unitrunker said:
Yaesu cables are my least favorite thing on Yaesu gear.

KenGordon do you have a mini din6 to db9 or mini din6 to usb a?
Click to expand...
Yes. An FTDI UART with a minidin 6 on the rig end. I had been using a similar cable which used that problematic Prolific chip. I managed to work around that POS, but decided to move over to the FTDI instead.

The above works with Flrig under Windows, but I cannot get it to work under FreeBSD. Last night, I did get a response from attempting to initialize the unit: the response NOW is "No Response from Transceiver", so it appears that, at least, I am talking TO the rig correctly, but it is not responding to queries. Perhaps the commands are not correct. I have not yet figured that out.

Ken Gordon
 
bakul said:
What USB modem are you using?
Click to expand...
I am using, in this case, an FTDI UART to mini-din 6 pin. The radio is set up for a minimal type of CAT. It works under Windoze, but not yet under FreeBSD. I am getting extremely disgusted with Windows and am trying, desperately, to move everything in our home over to FreeBSD.

So far, I am making good progress on that project.

Ken Gordon
 
loveydovey said:
As a separate shoutout (sorry, I don't know how to help you with the the actual problem) - how cool is ham radio internet? That's, like, 10 times better than TOR. Is there a world wide ham radio web? Can you hook us all up?
Click to expand...
I was on 27mc packet radio in Eurooe long ago. There's not much left of it, afaik. The bandwidth goes in bytes per second...
At some point truckers started buying break devices to bug the protocol of bidirectional radio links on their channels.
 
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