[drats_users] Rig Control & D-RATS
Dave Cooley
Fri Feb 6 06:53:19 PST 2009
Hi Gord,
I think Dan presented a very good explanation of the settings, therefore I
won't replicate the explanation.
As far as the settings I can only offer what I have found:
>From our perspective there are 2 sets of settings;
1. How D-RATS communicates with the radio (s)
I will attempt to explain in layman's terms here. Think of this as prepping
the data stream.
Imagine for a minute that you are attempting to wake a teenager up to go to
school . It seems that you have give them a shout every 5 minutes to keep
them awake. You would set your "WARM UP TIMEOUT" to less than 5 mins as any
communications with them less than 5 mins would keep them awake and moving.
I have found that a setting of 4 secs seems to work well. Less is better but
you can experiment with this. Start at a higher number and work down.
Another factor in waking them up is how long you have to shout at them. For
example, if ""it's time to get up" doesn't work you may decide to use " Hey,
it's time to get up. Are you going to sleep all day?" You had to extend the
message to get a response. This is the "WARMUP LENGTH"
I have found that I try to start around 24 and work down until I start
seeing failures and then take it back up to the next setting. Mine is
currently set at 8.
The last setting in this category would be the Force transmission delay.
This is dependent upon the network and your mode of operation. If you are
doing simplex and there is no other traffic a setting of 0 is possible. This
means that as soon as D-RATS wants to send it will key the transmitter and
fire away. As you can imagine working through a repeater and or reflector
may require an increase in the delay and I have found that 2 secs seems to
work fairly well on most repeaters. This is not real critical when using
chat or broadcast features but really comes into play when attempting any
function that requires the ack-nak handshake, especially when using
repeaters. Increasing this may take a bit longer to do the transfer but
allows the network path to settle down a bit before trying to send back.
This is akin to the tailgating that we know causes problems with DSTAR in
general. Unlike the analog repeater operation DSTAR is unidirectional in
nature and doesn't work well when you try to jump on the tail of another
transmission.
With all of these settings above, less may make the transfer faster, but
also increases the risk for error. Tweak each setting (one at a time) for
optimum performance and adjust as necessary depending upon a change in your
network i.e. simplex, repeater, or reflector as each adds a bit of latency.
2. How D-RATS sends the data
These settings relate to the amount of data sent each time and how it is
sent.
Pipeline transfers attempt to reduce the time for retransmissions. In a
perfect world (error free) you could just send your 5kb file all at once and
it would get to the other end intact and error free. No Re-Transmissions
needed thus no need for pipelining. This might be the case if you are
working your neighbor down the street on simplex and have no data or rf
interference. Not a big chance of that! So when D-RATS sees an error in a
block of data it tell the sending end to resend that block. If you block
size is very large the re-transmit time will be large as well. Setting the
block to a smaller size the re-transmit time will be less and this overall
transfer time reduced.
Block size and number of blocks work hand in hand. I won't go through the
math as Dan has already explained that. You will have to decide how much
data you want to send at one time (each individual transmission) In my case
I use a total of 1024 bytes of data. Rather than attempt to send it all in
one chunk, I break it up into 4 blocks of 256 each. This provides settings
of:
Block Size 256
Pipeline block 4
If a block is bad it will only re-send 256b of data instead of the entire
1024, thus less time required to resend the bad block.
If you find that your are getting a lot of re-transmits go back to the first
set of settings and readjust the warm and delay settings. The transfer
settings won't correct the amount of re-transmits only the time to do so.
Having said all of that I will offer the following:
Here is what works for me
Warm up length 8
Warm-up timeout 4
Transmit delay 2
Block size 256
Pipeline blocks 4
In a nutshell, first prep the pipe then cram as much as you can down it in
the least amount of time.
A couple of secondary considerations are;
1. FILE SIZE Remember it's low speed 1200bps (really around 950) Attempting
to transfer a 1 mb file will only serve to try your patience and that of the
other users on your system.
2. You may want to experiment with the busy lockout feature of your radio as
well. This will prevent you from attempting to transmit while the radio is
receiving a signal.
This is how I understand it. Dan please feel free to correct my mistakes...
73
Dave Cooley
N4DIB
-----Original Message-----
From: drats_users-bounces at lists.danplanet.com
[mailto:drats_users-bounces at lists.danplanet.com] On Behalf Of Gordon Dick
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 7:56 PM
To: Discussion of D-RATS
Subject: Re: [drats_users] Rig Control & D-RATS
Hi Dave:
Can you explain the tweaking, warm up, and pipeline settings in brief
for me. I'm starting to get a few more people involved in D-Rats
here in metro Vancouver and I would like to be a little more
knowledgeable when they ask me those questions.
Thanks
Gord - VE7FKY
On Feb 5, 2009, at 4:18 PM, Dave Cooley wrote:
>
> Nail on the head!
>
> ICOM needs to incorporate rig control into their mobiles!
>
> Just as a side note; We have been doing D-RATS (all aspects and
> functionalities) through the gateway and after some tweaking of the
> warm up,
> delay and pipeline settings have gotten it to be very efficient and
> reliable. With 5 gateway systems (7 total) here in the Tampa Bay
> Area, hand
> held use is pretty much contiguous. I have been able to do D-RATS
> with the
> 91 just about anywhere I have been. (Most places on Low power) Very
> Handy!
>
> Thanks for the info on the mplxrs. I had not tried one and was
> wondering if
> anyone had been attempting to use one with DRATS.
>
> 73
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: drats_users-bounces at lists.danplanet.com
> [mailto:drats_users-bounces at lists.danplanet.com] On Behalf Of Dan
> Smith
> Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 6:23 PM
> To: Discussion of D-RATS
> Subject: Re: [drats_users] Rig Control & D-RATS
>
>
>> Is there a way to use the RS-91/92 software and D-RATS
>> simultaneously?
>> This seems to be a port issue with Winders as I have heard of some
>> apps that provide a workaround for gps usage.
>
> Not in the sense you would expect, no. Even if you use a serial port
> multiplexer, it's not really safe. Since you control the radio
> through the
> same port you use for data, you have to send a special sequence to
> put it
> into clone mode. You wouldn't want D-RATS sending data to the
> radio when it
> was in the middle of a memory write operation, for example.
>
>> Currently the 91/92 software seems to be the only rig control
>> software
>> for DSTAR and it would be very handy to be able to integrate some of
>> these function into D-RATS .
>
> You're not the first person to bring it up. I realize that it
> would be nice
> to be able to have D-RATS program the proper callsign in the radio
> before
> transmitting so that you could automatically reply to a gateway
> user, etc.
>
> The logic and libraries are there in CHIRP, and are importable by D-
> RATS.
> The only problems are:
>
> 1. Figuring out the proper control bits to get the radio to do what
> you
> want, and
> 2. Figuring out how to integrate that into D-RATS in a meaningful way.
>
> It's not technically hard, but the second item opens up a can of
> worms.
>
> I don't really like using my handheld for lots of continuous duty
> because I
> figure it's probably more delicate than a mobile radio and more
> susceptible
> to decreased component longevity due to excessive heat buildup
> (which we
> know the 91 suffers from). I'd be much more excited about the
> possibilities
> something like this would open up if ICOM included rig control in
> one of
> their mobile radios.
>
> Since we have yet to use the gateway for any real-life data
> operation in my
> local area, I guess I'm not fully convinced of the usefulness of
> this when
> limited to a 5W radio. I'm sure plenty of people will step in to
> argue with
> me, so let the comments fly... :)
>
> --
> Dan Smith
> dsmith#danplanet.com, s/#/@/
> www.danplanet.com
> KK7DS
>
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