Many people are asking me to give them a password to access the remote systems. I'm sorry but I can't help you there. You need to contact the OWNER of the remote system you want to use and ask them for the password. This includes the W4MQ remote system since I do not run it. I can only give passwords for my own remote when it comes on the Internet in another week or so. Even then my own system will be more for software testing use rather than remote operations full time.

Again, I CAN NOT GIVE PASSWORDS OUT FOR ANY OTHER SYSTEM OTHER THAN MY OWN when it comes online. Simply contact the owner of the remote you want to use and request a password from them if it is an open system. Some are, others aren't open for general use.  read more »

One of the previousy mentioned servers was a Windows XP box that runs a lightning detection system I have. The storms this afternoon are supposed to be on the severe side so I decided to attempt to revive that box. Turns out that all it needed was to be powered off then back on again for it to come up normally. The other server had the same problem so that too is now running fine.

You can take a look at the lightning stuff on my weather page at http://www.ralabs.com/weather/ if you want to see what's going on around here for lightning. There's a java applet that displays the strikes in near real time too. It updates itself once a minute and will display up to an hour of lightning strikes at a time.  read more »

Thunderstorms rolled through yesterday and managed to create a glitch in a couple of my servers even with battery backup power supplies. I'm still in the process of getting them going again although I may decide to wait until the next batch of storms moves through later today. If I wait the servers may not get glitched again.

Bob N2JEU

I got a bit of a surprise today when the UPS truck stopped to deliver the parts for the new station PC. I've got it all together and am using it right now to enter this update. The only remaining problem is that I can't get the sound card drivers to install for the on-board sound card. It won't be a problem since I'm going to use the USB based SignaLink as the rig sound interface anyway.

It lacks a cd drive but since I plan on using a USB memory stick to load any of the software that needs to go on it it's not a major problem. I do have a USB type DVD-Rom drive to use to load the OS any anything else too big to go on an 8 GB stick.  read more »

I've noted a few postings in the Google forum about the new version of Skype (version 4) and the problem it has with the existing IRB host software. For the present time I ask that users of the IRB host software stay with previous versions (version 3.x) of Skype on their host systems. As soon as I can get up to speed on the source code this will be one of the first things I'll look into.

Bob N2JEU

Since I've used the ham station PC as a replacement for one of my Linux servers I've placed an order for a bare-bones Shuttle chassis, 2 GB of memory and a 160 GB hard drive to re-build the ham station system. I already had a dual-core Pentium left over from replacing the CPU in my main Linux server with a quad core Xeon. The computer parts should be here by the start of next week.

I've also decided to use one of the Tigertronics USB Signalink units as the audio interface of choice. It's designed to simply plug into the USB port of the PC and the AUX jack on the back of the Kenwood TS-570SG I'll be using. No cables to make and it's designed to resist RF feedback from the start. Level matching should be easy to do too since there's RX and TX level controls on the front of the unit. The down side of using one of these is that the order time is about three weeks or so at the moment.  read more »

I think I've got all the code now for the client and server side programs. I've been able to have the VB6 compiler assemble the server side code without errors so it looks like I'm in business.

Stan was using a different program than I was to package up the software for distribution. I need to track down a copy of what he was using and see if I can also get that working as well. Otherwise I'll have to figure out all the things that need to be packaged up with the distribution software that I use. Once that's all figures out and tested I'll be able to start in on any bug fixes that are needed.  read more »

As many of you know, Stan W4MQ has expressed a desire to have someone else take over the Remote Base project he started. After more than two months no one else has stepped up to the challenge. It looked like the software may have simply died a quiet death with little fanfare.

Being one of the three people (Keith W7DXX, Bob N2JEU and Stan W4MW) responsible for the first public remote base system on the Internet, I decided to come out of "retirement" and take on the challenge of keeping the software operational. Stan is in the process of transferring the source code for both the client and server software packages to me.  read more »