☰

Navigation :

Settings guide

The following sections of the Settings dialog in the Web Radio Control user interface are available for all user roles.

The station administrator guide documents the sections of the Settings dialog that are available for administrator and power user roles only.

Settings

Settings: Station info

The Station info section displays details about the station, including:

  • the station name and call sign

  • the number of connected users and number of individual connections to the stations at the moment

  • administrator contact details for problem reports and questions about the station

  • Web Radio Control license information

  • system information about the computer system that runs Web Radio Control

Settings: Services

The Services section lists software components running on the Web Radio Control server system. These services provide real-time audio streaming connections (for transferring RX and TX audio) and control of radio and rotator devices.

This section is provided only for troubleshooting and problem resolution purposes. In case Web Radio Control is working fine for you, there is no need to check the status of the services or restart them.

The global services, WebRTC gateway for audio and WebRTC ICE connectivity server for audio, provide audio connections for all radio devices. It is rare that these would ever malfunction, but they can be safely restarted in case audio streaming is not working. Restarting either of these services will stop all active audio streams for all radios temporarily. Once the services are running, the audio streams can be restarted too.

There will be three services for each radio devices configured in the Web Radio Control configuration:

  • Radio control (corresponds to Hamlib rigctld daemon): responsible for computer (CAT) control of the radio

  • Audio input from radio: responsible for streaming RX audio from the radio (sound card) to be played at your computer (via network)

  • Audio output to radio: responsible for streaming TX audio to the radio (sound card) from your computer (via network)

  • Audio output to radio - level monitor: responsible for monitoring TX audio level sent to the radio

    • This service provides readings to the RMS audio output level to radio meter in the radio device view

There will be one service for each rotator device configured in the Web Radio Control configuration:

  • Rotator control (corresponds to Hamlib rotctld daemon): responsible for computer (CAT) control of the rotator

Below is a simplified troubleshooting guide for potential problems that can be solved by restarting services.

In case you have problems with:

  • radio not responding to control changes (e.g. VFO frequency), you can try to restart the corresponding "Radio control" service

  • radio RX audio not playing, you can try to restart the corresponding "Audio input from radio" service

  • radio not transmitting audio (no power going out to the antenna), you can try to restart the corresponding "Audio output to radio" and "Audio output to radio - level monitor" services. Pay attention to restart both of the audio output services.

Settings: Audio devices

The Audio devices section lists all audio output and input devices connected to the computer running Web Radio Control (e.g. Raspberry Pi) and allows you to control volume level for received and transmitted audio. Web Radio Control uses audio outputs to deliver audio to radio transceivers to be transmitted, and it uses audio inputs to receive and play back received audio from radio transceivers. Additionally, this section contains some global settings related to how audio is processed.

The Refresh button refreshes the list of audio devices and updates the volume readings.

The Rescan audio devices button initiates scanning of potential new audio devices. This function is only necessary if you cannot see a recently connected audio device in the lists below — sometimes the underlying Linux operating system does not recognize USB audio devices immediately. Rescan of audio devices will silence all audio momentarily.

The Full-duplex audio will turn on full-duplex audio mode in the web browser, which means that both the received and transmitted audio streams are always active. This is useful if you need to monitor received audio, e.g. using a secondary sub-receiver in the radio transceiver, while transmitting. The default "simplex" audio mode will always mute received audio from the radio while transmitting and transmitted audio stream while receiving.

The TX audio settings choices depend on features available in your web browser. They control audio processing for audio recorded by the web browser (to be transmitted by a radio). The available audio processing features are Auto gain control, Echo cancellation and Noise suppression. In most cases, it is recommended to enable all three options for the best possible audio quality.

The Audio inputs (from radio) and Audio outputs (to radio) lists contain the audio devices connected to the computer running Web Radio Control. There is a note about which radio transceiver each input/output is connected to below the name of each audio device. These settings originate from the YAML configuration file.

You can control the volume of received and transmitted audio using the volume sliders next to each audio input and output. These volume settings control the volume of the sound card hardware connected to a radio transceiver. This sound card may be in an external "digital mode adapter" or in an internal sound card inside a radio transceiver if the transceiver has a USB port. If the volume is too high, clipping and distortion will occur and volume should be lowered. If the volume is too low, you may not hear the received audio well or in case of transmitted audio, the transmitted power level will be very low.

Settings: Hamlib proxy

The Hamlib proxy section provides tools to set up a network connection through which Hamlib-compatible amateur radio software can control any radio transceiver or rotator that is configured for remote operation in Web Radio Control.

In practice this means that, by using a small helper application called wrc-proxy, you can run digital mode software like WSJT-X, JTDX or fldigi locally on your computer, but connect this software to Web Radio Control for operating on digital modes on your remote station.

Please see the working digital modes section of the documentation for detailed information on how to set up wrc-proxy, virtual audio cable software and how to configure digital mode software to use Web Radio Control.

Settings: About

The About section displays information about the Web Radio Control software version you have installed. Additionally, there are tools for technical troubleshooting below the Server diagnostics title. These diagnostics tools are only available for user accounts with the administrator or power user role.