civkeyer

civkeyer

civkeyer is a Windows application that interfaces with Icom radios to send predefined CI-V commands. The original purpose was to send CI-V commands to initiate the playback of recorded Tx's but there is no constraint for having it send whatever CI-V commands you want.

Description

I'm using a BlueMax49ers FTDI Icom CI-V Cat Control Programming Cable to connect to an Icom IC-7300. I'm sure other cables will work but this one is really high quality and the instructions and support are from KJ6ZWL.

Installation

To install this application:

1. Create the folder C:\Program Files\civkeyer
2. Download the civkeyer.exe.zip file from the latest release and unzip it into that folder
3. Create the civkeyer.yaml file (a YAML file is a plain text file with the .yaml extension) in that folder, with these attributes:

   connection:
     port: COM9
     baud: 9600
   functions:
     -
       label: F1 Callsign
       message: FEFE94E0280001FD
       expectreply: true
     -
       label: F2 Exchange
       message: FEFE94E0280002FD
       expectreply: true
     -
       label: F3 CQ
       message: FEFE94E0280003FD
       expectreply: true
     -
       label: F4 QRZ
       message: FEFE94E0280004FD
       expectreply: true
   

   • connection defines how the application connects to the radio.
     • port is the name of the Windows COM port to use to send the CI-V commands, this is setup when you install the device driver for the Cat Control Programming Cable. You should be able to find this in Device Manager.
     • baud is the rate at which information is transferred to the COM port, this is a setting on the port that is setup when you install the device driver for the Cat Control Programming Cable. You should be able to find this in Device Manager, check the "Port Settings" tab for the device.
   • functions defines the commands that can be sent to the radio. You can include up to 12 functions.
     • label is the button label you want associated with the function. Hotkeys will be associated with each function command, starting with F1 for the first function, F2 for the second, etc. So, you will probably want to include that in the label and then whatever note to remind you what it will do.
     • message is the byte code sequence to send to the radio, encoded as hex.
     • expectreply indicates if the radio will send a response to the command. Most CI-V commands yield a response, but not all.
4. You can now double-click on the civkeyer.exe file to start the application. Creating a shortcut somewhere will make it easier to find in the future. You can press the button or Hotkey to execute the function. The application has to have focus in order for the Hotkeys to work.

You can have multiple configuration files and switch between them by using the config command line switch:

civkeyer -config fieldday.yaml

There will be a log file created in the same directory as the executable and any errors are logged there.

References

DF4OR: ICOM CI-V Information