[chirp_devel] Icom IC-R8600 Driver

[Eric A. Cottrell]

Hello,

I have an Icom IC-R8600 and worked over the weekend to get chirp to work 
with it. I have done some python and communications programming in the 
past. I was pretty successful given that I had to start from ground 
zero. I used the IC-7000 as a template and derived a couple of classes. 
I got the basic memory read and write in live mode to work. The receiver 
can do variable tuning steps and several modes not covered by CHIRP.

The receiver has groups which appear like banks. The channels go from 00 
to 99 so it is possible to treat the receiver like it has memory 
channels 0000 to 9999 plus the other special channels. I see "special 
channels" is a selection and wonder if the Band Edge is consider 
special. I also noticed a Band Edge location was used as a template for 
the memory write. It seems like on the IC-7000 that each bank has a set 
of Band Edge memories above channel 99. The IC-R8600 Band Edge locations 
are group 102, so the template had to use memory 10202 instead of 102. 
Maybe that is a clue that the receiver does not have the typical Icom Banks.

I want to go beyond basic settings and have run into a limitation. CHIRP 
seems to want a fixed structure for memory data. Icom decided to return 
different length data with the mode dependent data at the end, like FM 
tone data. I can see why they did it as one fixed length string with 
everything would be long. It is possible to set memories without the 
added mode data, but you can not set memories for non-FM modes if the FM 
tone data is at the end. The only method I have come up with is to add 
dummy tone data when reading non-FM memory locations and truncating the 
tone data when writing non-FM memory locations.

The receiver also has a clone mode and I wonder if it would be easier to 
try working with it instead. The receiver also has a settings file that 
can be read and written to the SD Card. The settings file looks similar 
to the clone mode output. There are two versions and receivers with 
later firmware can read both. The clone data format looks similar to 
what the existing Icom clone code can decode. When I tried auto-detect 
with the radio set to 9600, the program returned unknown format 
38180001. 3818 is likely the engineering code number for the receiver 
and shows up in multiple places, like RX-3818/./ The 0001 appears to be 
a version number.
//

73 Eric



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