The Repeater Finder plugin can be configured to better work with your connected radio, and to limit the repeaters identified to those you can actually work with your specified radio. This is available on the Repeater Finder tab in the expert-mode configuration dialog.
The upper part of the configuration panel specifies how Repeater Finder can control your radio. By default, it assumes that any radio retuning or repeater parameter setup will have to be done manually by the operator on the radio control panel. However, if some models of Kenwood, Icom, or Yaesu radios are being used (or you have the Hamlib rigctl program installed and you are using a radio that Hamlib knows), they can be controlled automatically by the Tune popup menu choice or the Nearby Repeaters view's Tune button.
The Kenwood tuner interface assumes the serial interface used by the Kenwood programming software for the TM-D710 or TH-D72 radios; it may work with other Kenwood models but has only been tested with these, and it can only tune to analog FM repeaters.
On the TH-D72 HT, if the radio is operating in APRS mode (not PACKET mode), the Kenwood type port in YAAC used to communicate with the radio can also be used to command the radio to retune. This is not available in PACKET mode, as the KISS communications protocol does not support the Kenwood radio command mode.
On the TM-D710, the radio tuning commands must be sent to the transceiver body, not the control head, so either APRS or PACKET mode may be used on the radio (since the TNC connection would be to the control head and therefore independent of the tuning control connection). This would require two serial ports and two PG-5G programming cables. The port to the control head is configured normally as a Kenwood or Serial_TNC port, depending on the mode of the radio. The port to the transceiver body is configured on the Repeater Finder panel, specifying the serial port name and the baud rate used to communicate with the radio. Note that the tuner may fail to start up if the serial port device for the TM-D700/710 transceiver body cannot be found or accessed.
The Icom tuner interface assumes an Icom radio that supports the standard CI-V command interface. YAAC tries to use only the simplest, most common CI-V commands, so it should work with most CI-V-capable radios, but it has only been tested with the Icom IC-7100. Note that Icom models capable of D-star will also be able to tune to D-star repeaters and gateways (in addition to analog FM repeaters). YAAC can use either an external CI-V adapter, or the USB virtual comm ports on USB-capable Icom radios that emulate the CI-V interface. On the Repeater Finder configuration panel, specify the comm port name corresponding to the CI-V interface, and specify the baud rate and the CI-V address of the radio. Note that the tuner may fail to start up if the CI-V serial port device cannot be found or accessed.
The Yaesu tuner interface assumes a Yaesu radio that uses the newer Yaesu CAT protocol (commands of two letters, optional digits, and terminated with a semicolon) to control the radio. At the present time, only the FT-891, FT-991, amd FT-991A radios are fully supported. Radios that support C4FM can be switched to C4FM mode. Note that the tuner may fail to start up if the CAT serial port device cannot be found or accessed.
The Hamlib rigctl tuner interface assumes you also have the Hamlib programs and libraries installed on the computer where YAAC is installed, and you know how to use rigctl to talk to your radio. Although the YAAC repeater finder plugin will help you find which radio models your currently installed version of Hamlib supports, you are still responsible for knowing what other parameters need to be specified to rigctl to talk to the radio, such as the following incomplete list of parameters:
| parameter | meaning |
|---|---|
-r devicefile | the serial port used to communicate with the radio, such
as /dev/ttyUSB2 on a Linux system or COM5 on Microsoft Windows. |
-s baudrate | the baud rate used to communicate with the radio; may not be applicable if your radio has a built-in serial port on a USB connection. |
-c 0xhexnumber | the CI-V device address of your radio if the port is a CI-V connection, as commonly used on most modern Icom radios. |
-p devicefile | the separate serial port used to key the PTT (Push-To-Talk) circuit on the radio; commonly used when a serial port RTS or DTR signal is used to trigger a transistor or relay to activate the radio's PTT signal. |
-P ptt-type | the type of PTT signal to be triggered; depending
on the value, you may or may not need the -p parameter as well. Some types are:
RIG (using CI-V commands), DTR, RTS, PARALLEL (both DTR and RTS to prevent bogus triggering by
operating system features), GPIO (on a Raspberry Pi GPIO header). Note that a radio model generally
assumes a default PTT type, so you only have to specify this if you have a non-default setup. |
Consult the documentation for your installed version of Hamlib rigctl to determine any
other options you may need to specify on each invocation of the rigctl command. Note that
the repeater finder plugin will always specify the -m model_number
parameter to rigctl, so you only need to add the additional ones.
Note that Hamlib does not know how to configure D-star repeater paths. If you wish to use D-star repeaters, you should use the Icom CI-V interface if it will work for your setup.
To avoid cluttering the Repeater View screen with repeaters that your radio cannot tune, a filter is defined to specify what bands and modes of repeaters you wish to see. The available bands include 10 meters, 6 meters, 2 meters, 220MHz (1.25 meters), 440MHz (70 centimeters), 900MHz, and 1290MHz (23 centimeters). By default, only 2 meters and 70 centimeters are selected. Similarly, the modes include analog FM, D-star, C4FM (Yaesu System Fusion), DMR, APCO Project 25, and ATV; by default, only analog FM is selected. Note that the last two modes are not yet supported by the Repeater Finder plugin, as there is yet no standard for identifying repeaters of those types on APRS.
Note that you must select at least one band and at least one mode, or no repeaters will appear on the Nearby Repeaters view. Of course, there is no guarantee any will appear regardless, as it depends on the local APRS community to transmit repeater and gateway objects.