ICOM CI-V Control for your Perseus

Getting the Perseus SDR to work with PC software that can act as a tuning database or logbook seems to be pretty much spilt between it just works or nothing happens at all.

Having played about with some radio control software both free and some very expensive programs these are my findings. It will work with some programs without any hard work at all (CI-V Commander, DRM Disco etc) however as I will show below some programs cannot read the SDR frequency on starts up and thus error or timeout. These programs include HRD (HamRadioDeluxe and Shoc RSM).

First off from the Perseus SDRs readme Nico tells us that if a com port is found at 'COM10' then the Perseus will enable the VCom feature (shown here below).



Once you see this when starting Perseus you're half way there. Now most people do not have hardware 'COM10' so you are going to need to emulate this in software using a null-modem emulator program called com0com setup two com ports 10 and 11.

You do this by installing the com0com software (right) then once complete open its command prompt from the start menu and type these:

command> change CNCA0 PortName=COM10
command> change CNCB0 PortName=COM11

While you have the command window open it is worth issuing these are well:

command> change COM11 EmuOverrun=yes
command> change COM10 EmuBR=yes

You now have two new system com ports 10 and 11 ready to use.

You can verify this by navigating to the start menu and opening the com0com setup program - you should see something like below:



To test these com ports settings start the Perseus software and you should now see the VCom option lit up. If you do then the next step is to try a program! Download DRM Disco from the link on the right or in the post below. It is simple to install by just opening the ZIP file and copying the files to a folder and running the executable.

To configure DRM Disco to talk to your Perseus change the radio type to ICOM CI-V and then choose your com port which will be COM11 - now click the Connect tick box and the Perseus should tune to a station from the list and DRM Disco should show the correct frequency. Click a few active stations in DRM Disco and see what happens, all being well you’re on your way to remote controlling your Perseus SDR!

I will go over some trouble shooting later on.

However the main issue on start up for some programs seems to be related to this command set which I have taken from the ICOM CI-V command set reference guide:

I suspect one of the things that some programs do not do is enable CI-V Transceive Mode so that when you change mode or frequency the software is updated with the new data. The details of this command are below:

With CI-V Transceive set to on, two things happen:

• the radio transmits data over the bus when frequency or mode changes;
• the radio reacts to data sent over the bus which is adressed not only to it's own adress but also to a special adress meaning "all radios"

With CI-V Transceive set to off, the behaviour changes:

• the radio doesn't send data when you turn the dial or change mode;
• the radio reacts only to data sent to it's specific adress, data sent to "ALL" is ignored.

Some programs cannot read the start-up frequency properly from the Perseus. You will see this with HamRadioDeluxe is you open the ICOM options for a new radio and pick any ICOM (I used the R75) - set all the right options for your com port etc and press connect. After a short time you will see it error. And you will not be able to go any further.

However if you’re running Shocs RSM then you're more in luck! You can choose ICOM as a generic radio from the supported list and leave the radio address space blank (Thanks to Nico, Perseus listens on '00' which is all/any radios) then in RSM click listen and choose your radio from the dropdown - you will notice that the radio init works fine and the Perseus tunes to whatever frequency you choose, but you cannot read anything from Perseus - no signal level or changes inside Perseus will be fed back to RSM. So the option in RSM to "follow" the radios tuning will not work.

Now I suspect this is what stops HRD from starting. It is that they expect the CI-V command in a certain format - and they are not getting it. This might be something that Nico needs to address OR some older software sticks to certain rules regarding CI-V and the Perseus follows the ICOM command set as it should (which we know it does as other software works without issues).

But I have a serial CI-V monitor program I am going to connect up and have a look at the difference between a working and non-working setup and see if that debug information is useful to someone somewhere!

73's