DR 891 won't talk to radio

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1

I’ve been using the DigiRig 8xx cable set up with my Yaesu FT 891 for a while with no issues. Then I learned of the DR 891 product, and went ahead and bought it because it saves me a single, valuable serial port on my laptop. This new devices creates two devices, /dev/ttyUSB00 and /dev/ttyUSB01 as expected, with one of them being the radio’s cat control via it’s USB device. Here is my problem: I am unable to chat the radio via rigctl like I was with my 8xx device. Without that, I’m dead in the water. I think I have a failed component, but without a second unit to swap parts out against, I am in the dark. I’ve tried chatting it on both ports, but am unsuccessful. I’ve tried attaching rigctld to each port as well, but that’s not interactive. Can anyone help me with this?

Steps to reproduce:

  1. connect red cable end to digirig 891 and black cable end to dirigig 891 and plug into USB and 6pin mini-din respectively. It’s impossible to switch cables on the radio side and the digirig itself is color coded. Plug the USB end into laptop with proper USB cable.
  2. validate OS has seen the USB serial ports on the digirig
    lsusb | egrep -E ‘0d8c|10c4’
    Bus 001 Device 019: ID 0d8c:0012 C-Media Electornics, IN. USB Audio Device
    Bus 001 Device 020: ID 10c4:ea70 Silicon Labs CP2015 Dual UART Bridge

so here it sees the FT-891 on Device 19 and sees the Digirig second USB as device 20.

The Digirig 8xx differs because it’ll have a second device on 10c4:ea60 as well for the second port. This tells me the passthrough on the digirig 891 is there and it sees the digirig internal usb serial interface.

  1. using rigctl daemon, establish a connection to the FT 891 CAT control
    rigctld -m 1036 -r /dev/ttyUSB00 -s 38400 -P RIG
    Note this will just hang and you have to leave it active in that window

  2. open a new window and try to talk to the serial port via the rig virtual device on setting 2: rigctl -m 2
    This should dump you into the cat control. I should be able to type ‘f’ and hit enter and get the radio’s VFO current frequency. This fails and rigctl closes the port. Note that in ubuntu, there is no selinux and no iptables firewall by default.

Any help with this would be appreciated!

2

Do you happen to have a Windows machine to try the kit there. This will allow to rule out or focus on the hardware.

3

i thought the dr-891 only had a pass through usb rather than a serial port.

ptt keying is listed as cat, gpio, and vox. no RTS so shouldn’t there be only one serial port, the radio’s, listed?

good luck
kb0wlf

1 Like
4

Correct, there are no USB-to-serial inside of DR-891 itself. OP is seeing radio’s COM port connected to DR-891’s USB hub (pass-through).

At least on Windows FT-891’s port is detected as two separate COM ports (standard and enhanced). It must be similar case under Linux as well.

image

5

It is, I do see two separate USB devices from the single digirig cable, but I’m not able to connect to the radio through rigctl. Works great on the digirig 8xx unit, but not on the digirig 891 unit. Maybe I have a bad unit, I dont know. I dont have a known good working one to test against.

Mike

6

Let’s give it a try on a windows machine so we can narrow the troubleshooting.

7

that’s what i was forgetting.
the 891 exposes more than one comport to the user.

i’ve owned 1 yaesu hf and that was an 817.
i need to stay in my lane

:slight_smile:
kb0wlf

8

YEs I can try a windows 11 machine, what will I be looking for on windows? Let me know.

9

Try with WSJT-X on Windows to make sure you have full CAT control, PTT and audio. If that confirmed we can leave hardware alone and focus on software.

10

You are correct here. The DR 891 has one serial port and one passthrough port.

11

Digirig DR-891 doesn’t have any serial ports of its own. Both (standard and enhanced) COM ports are coming from the radio.

2 Likes
12

Hi Dennis,

What are the device IDs for each USB port on the Yaesu FT 891, respectively, and which device ID is for what function? Did they really use two different USB chipsets in the radio? I will be doing the troubleshooting you requested and will get back to you shortly, I was out of town when you asked me to do that troubleshooting.

13

Enhanced USB\VID_10C4&PID_EA70&REV_0100&MI_00 - use for rig control
Standard USB\VID_10C4&PID_EA70&REV_0100&MI_01 - use for PTT by RTS or DTR, CW keying if separate port is required

1 Like