I picked up a YSU10CATMOBILE DigiRig from HRO today and I’m a bit confused by one of the cables that were in the package (this particular DigiRig is ID’d on HRO’s website as being for the FTM-#00 series of radios). The specific cable that’s confusing me is the one that connects to the DIN socket on the radio. Connecting it to the radio is no problem. The problem is that the other end, which connects to the DigiRig device only has one plug on it. But the DigiRig device has two ports that can be plugged into, a green serial port and a black audio port. So I’m confused about which port to plug the cable into.
The one previous DigiRig installation I’ve done was with an FT-857 radio, but I didn’t buy that kit, a friend of mine did. His cable that plugged into the rig’s DIN port split into 2 separate plugs on the other end, one black and one green. No confusion there. But here, with my FTM-300, I’m confused. Can someone give some guidance? Here’s a pic of the plug that’s supposed to plug into the DigiRig device.
I just realized, after talking with my friend who bought the unit for the FT-857 that the cable that was packaged with the DigiRig is the wrong one. This is the HRO website for this particular unit and it shows the correct cable.
So now the question is, who packaged up the bundle I bought? DigiRig or HRO? I’ll call HRO tomorrow and start tracking that down. These are the two cables that came with the unit and this was the wrapper that the Radio to DigiRig cable came packaged in.
Richard,
As you already determined, the MiniDin10 cable you received fits your radio. On the Digirig’s side it goes into audio socket.
The cable kit your friends is using with his FT-857 has MiniDin6 and MiniDin8 connectors on the side of the transceiver and it will not fit your FTM-300. The only other cable that fits your radio is 9600 baud variant with serial support. You may or may not benefit from the 9600 baud connection or serial functionality. Before you decide on using a different cable, give the one you got a go and see if that takes care of your use cases.
I understand now. I wonder why the HRO web page for the particular DigiRig model I bought then shows a pic of the cable with two connects for the module, one black and one green.
I took your suggestion though and tried using the cable that came with the unit. That’s kind of opened up a can of worms for me though because my eventual intention in buying the DigiRig model I bought was to set up my FTM-300 & FTM-400 so I can use FLDigi and JS8Call with my VHF/UHF rigs.
So I have been using FLRig with my FTdx-10. I’m begining to get the idea though that FLRig may not be the way to go since all the transceivers in the drop down list only contain HF rigs. Be that as it may… I’ll have to further investigate how to connect FLDigi with the FTM-300/400 series of radios. Perhaps Hamlib. But that’s for tomorrow.
OK, I’m assuming that what you’re saying is to drop the FLRig link and program FLDigi to directly access the radio. I did that and it seems I’m halfway there. Now the static on the radio is making its way to the waterfall on the PC.
When I transmit though, while FLDigi shows me transmitting, the radio does not transmit although the DigiRig is hearing FLDigi. Here’s a screen shot of one of the Hardware PTT configurations I tested followed by the Sound card Right Channel setup screen (the latest of my configurations).
As you can see by the next screenshot, when I try transmitting the PC’s DigiRig sound connection does “hear” FLDigi transmitting, yet the radio itself doesn’t go into transmit mode.
Separately, I also looked up on the DigiRig website the specific radio I have and found/realized a number of things. First was that BOTH types of cables are sold for the FTM-300, the single Audio cable and the split Audio/Serial cable. The package I bought had the single cable in it. So I’m guessing that there has to be some way to get this to work. But in reading the descriptions of these two cables I realized that the single cable is only good for 1200 Baud whereas the split cable goes to 9600 Baud. So I initially changed the speed of the COM port (COM20) to 1200 and also modified the rig to use 1200 for Data speed. I did note that on the rig there are two parms which deal with speed. Data Speed is set to 1200.
But there’s another setting on the radio called “COM Port Setting” and that only goes down to 4800 baud, so I had to set it to that speed. Realizing that perhaps the COM port setting establishes the speed that the COM port works at and the data speed is the speed at which the data is sent over the COM port, I changed the COM port setting on my PC to 4800 so the PC and radio COM ports would be in synch. I tried that but also to no avail.
I’m beginning to wonder if in order to make this work with the FTM-300/400 series of radios, I need the split cable which will allow the faster speed.
@RichNH in the fldigi Hardware PTT config screen, check “Use separate serial port PTT.” I use this regularly. For now, don’t set anything on PTT right audio channel, and just get hardware PTT working.
I do not mean to contradict anything @K0TX is advising.
BINGO Constrainted! Setting the separate serial port PTT setting and removing the right channel setting got the rig to go into transmit mode.
I think that’s at least 90% of the battle. Would love to test it right now with my other rig but my wife has been patiently waiting for me to wrap up the posting and edits of that large note I entered. I’ll test it after we get back from where she wants to go (Sunday IS family day and I am not that big a risk taker…) Thank you all!
I’ll add that the 300 has no “serial control.” A common misunderstanding is the use of 1200/9600. The difference is in how receive audio is routed. If you choose 1200, this is “classic” audio that pretty much everything under the sun supports. 9600 however, is receive audio that typically comes from the discriminator and no processing occurs in the radio. Back in the day, “9600 packet” was the only game in town, so they called it “9600.” That has changed of course, and the mislabel remains. All “9600” really means is wide audio, no processing. Not all radios support this, but your 300 certainly does.
Regarding cables… one cable is wired to the “9600” pin on the 300 (din pin 4), whereas the other cable is wired for “1200” (din pin 5.) The “simple” cable you mention above is “1200”, whereas the double ended cable is wired for “9600.” FWIW, the green jack on the double ended cable isn’t used with a 300 (usually.)
I’m not sure why the double ended cable is designated for FM only radios because those radios don’t support CAT control. The green 6 PIN DIN cable is for 9600 baud which is useful for using VARA Wide at a maximum of 25210 bps.
For what its worth, I purchased my digirig with the Green 6 PIN DIN plug & no CAT cable before the 10 PIN version was available, and I used a 10 PIN to 6 PIN adapter available from Yaesu. Using this setup allows me to use the digirig on any radio that has a 6 PIN DIN plug
The documentation for FTM radios show serial lines in MiniDin10 connector which can be used for CAT control and/or radio’s programming, cloning, GPS data feed etc. Please refer to the transceiver’s documentation for the info on available capabilities. In any case, these are optional functions and not strictly required for digital modes operation.
