also separate question but related — anyone tried linking a RemoteHams node into something like Echolink or IRLP so you can bridge the remote station to a local repeater? i know thats kind of a weird hybrid thing to do but ive got a buddy who doesnt have a license yet and wants to listen in on some of the stuff i work on 40m, figured maybe there was a way to do it without giving him full control of anything. not even sure thats legal or practical im just thinking out loud here.

the RemoteHams client software supposedly handles all this but every time i try to configure the SDR server piece it either cant find the device or it just hangs on connect. tried reinstalling twice. running windows 10, the dongle shows up fine in SDR# and in SDR Console so its not a driver thing. has anyone actually got the full chain working where you have the rig control, audio and the SDR panadapter all going over a single internet connection? curious how much bandwidth that actually chews through too because im on a 25 up at the shack end.

anyway i started looking at RemoteHams because a buddy mentioned it handles a lot of the reconnection and session management stuff automatically and also has that SDR remote component so you can run a panadapter alongside the main rig. curious if anyone here has actually used it for more than just occasional playing around. like does the SDR side actually sync up properly with the transceiver tuning or is it just kind of a separate window you have to manage yourself.

also the internet linking piece — im assuming this means like you can tie in echolink or IRLP style nodes through the same interface? or is that something totally different. the documentation on their site is not exactly written for clarity.

main thing i care about is reliability. i dont need bleeding edge features i just need the thing to stay up when im trying to work a DX pileup from 800 miles away from my antenna.

A buddy at the club was showing me RemoteHams and the SDR remote side of things and honestly it looked pretty polished compared to what im running. But I'm not sure if its worth switching over or if id just be trading one set of headaches for another. The internet linking part is what im most curious about — does anyone actually use it for serious HF work or is it mostly casual listening and ragchewing. Like can you run a contest remotely through it or is the latency too painful for that kind of thing.

Also curious if anyone has tried mixing SDR remote for receive monitoring with a traditional transceiver on the transmit side. Seems like that could work but idk if the RemoteHams client handles that kind of hybrid setup gracefully.

ended up setting up a trial with RemoteHams just to see what the latency situation was really like. honestly for SSB it was... fine? like not great but usable. the audio path adds maybe 200-250ms round trip on a decent connection which you notice on SSB but its not the end of the world. CW would drive me insane though, i tried it for about 10 minutes and gave up. maybe im just too used to local keying feel.

the SDR remote angle is interesting to me because i was thinking about sticking an SDRplay or something out at the home QTH and running that alongside the main rig, so i could at least do receive-only monitoring when the latency makes TX annoying. has anyone actually run a parallel setup like that, like a proper transceiver through RemoteHams for TX and then a separate SDR remote feed just for RX situational awareness? feels like overkill but also feels like it might actually be useful for like contesting remotely where you want to know whats happening on a second band.

anyway curious what people are actually doing for day to day remote ops, not the theoretical stuff, like what actually works when you sit down and try to make contacts.

anyway i started looking at RemoteHams more seriously and the SDR remote side of it actually looks pretty interesting to me. the idea of being able to spin up a wide spectrum view from wherever i am and then dig into a signal is appealing. has anyone actually used their SDR remote feature for anything beyond just casual listening? im thinking about it from a DX hunting perspective, like if i could have a remote SDR at the home QTH while i travel would that actually be useful or is the latency still going to kill me

also curious if anyone has tried mixing internet linking into this kind of setup, like using something like AllStar or even just echolink to tie in a VHF node on the remote end so you can work local nets while youre somewhere else. feels like that should work in theory but im not sure if the audio routing gets messy when you have multiple things trying to grab the soundcard

anyway someone at the club mentioned RemoteHams and the SDR remote stuff and i went down that rabbit hole last night. looks like they have a pretty polished client and the whole thing is more integrated than what ive cobbled together. but im reading mixed reviews about the SDR side — like the remote SDR client seems to be more aimed at just listening rather than full control of a transceiver? maybe im misreading the docs.

also the internet linking angle — some guys in the linked system thread were talking about bridging remote SDR access with like an Allstar or IRLP node for local monitoring, which sounds neat but also sounds like a nightmare to actually implement. has anyone done something like that or am i just overcomplicating this in my head. curious what people have actually gotten working long term vs whats just cool in theory.

the part i cant quite nail is integrating an SDR panadapter view for the remote clients. ive got an RTL-SDR dongle attached to a spare tap off the antenna feedline and i was trying to get that data streaming alongside the audio. some guys on the RemoteHams network seem to have this running smooth but whenever i ask they give kind of vague answers about it, like yeah it just works which isnt super helpful.

also tangentially related — has anyone tied this kind of setup into any internet linking stuff like linking it to an echolink node or ILINK so local club members could at least listen in on what the remote is doing even if they cant transmit? i know thats kind of a weird hybrid use case but the club has been asking about it and im not sure if its even practical or just a bad idea architecturally. any thoughts appreciated, been at this a while and feel like im close but missing something obvious

has anyone had luck tuning the buffer settings in the RemoteHams client to get latency down? i saw something about changing the audio buffer size but every time i mess with it i either get dropouts or it makes no difference at all. also wondering if this is even the right tool for what im trying to do or if i should look at something like SDR-control with an SDRplay hanging off the home machine instead, at least for receive monitoring. the full TX control would be nice but honestly right now id settle for just being able to listen to 40m during lunch without it sounding like im talking to someone underwater

any thoughts appreciated, been a ham for about 12 years but remote ops is new territory for me

the setup right now is an rtl-sdr going into SDR++ on the remote machine, and then ive got RemoteHams client on my laptop here. the receive side is actually pretty decent, way better than i expected for 20m SSB. but every time i try to key up through the linked radio (an old FT-857 with a rigblaster interface) theres this noticeable delay before the PTT actually fires and by the time audio is going out im already half a syllable into whatever im saying.

ive seen people mention using EchoLink or IRLP for internet linking but that feels like overkill for what i want, which is basically just operating my own station remotely without involving a repeater system at all. anyone gone down this road and found a way to tighten up the whole chain? or is this just kind of a live-with-it situation when youre running this over a standard cable connection

the control side works okay, like i can key the rig (got an IC-7300 as the main tx) and the audio passthrough is usable most of the time. but the SDR piece is where things get weird. latency on the waterfall display is all over the place and sometimes the SDR stream and the actual audio from the 7300 get so out of sync that im clicking on signals that arent where i think they are on the panadapter. feels like a timing/buffering issue but ive already messed with the buffer settings in the software and cant seem to nail it down.

also been thinking about whether it makes more sense to just ditch the RTL-SDR approach entirely and use something like a dedicated panadapter output directly from the 7300 via USB since it has that built in — but then im not sure if RemoteHams handles that cleanly or if id need to go full SDR radio replacement like an Anan or something. anyone running a hybrid setup like this and actually happy with it? feel like im reinventing the wheel here.

the latency thing is obviously a concern, my connection at the shack end is about 50 down 10 up on a decent day but its a rural ISP so it varies. RCForb seems like it handles audio compression reasonably well but im not sure if adding an SDR stream on top is gonna kill everything

anyone actually running this kind of hybrid setup? specifically curious if youre using a separate SDR like an RTL-SDR or an Airspy tapped into the IF output vs just relying on the rig's own spectrum scope over the remote software. the IC-7300 scope over RemoteHams is pretty laggy for me and barely usable honestly

also been looking at the SDR remote side of things through RemoteHams because i already run an SDRplay at home and honestly the idea of having that sitting out at a rural site with no local RF noise is pretty appealing. anyone actually used the RemoteHams SDR remote client for anything serious like actual contesting or just casual DX listening? i cant find many real-world opinions that arent from like 2016.

the internet linking piece is what im less sure about. my buddy only has a basic cable connection out there, nothing fancy, and im wondering if thats going to be a bottleneck for control latency on SSB. CW would probably be fine but SSB audio with any kind of jitter gets annoying fast. anyone run a remote over a mediocre residential connection with decent results or is this a lost cause without fiber or a dedicated link

the SDR remote side of things is interesting to me — ive been reading about guys using SDRplay or an Airspy at the remote end feeding into SDR-Console or even just SDRuno over the internet and the receive quality is genuinely impressive compared to the compressed audio RCForb pushes through. but then you still need something for transmit which means youre running two separate systems basically.

anyone here actually done a hybrid setup like that? where you use an SDR for monitoring/receive and then have the actual rig controlled separately for TX? seems clunky but the RX audio quality difference is noticeable. or am i just overthinking this and should stick with what works even if the audio isnt pristine. also wondering if the RemoteHams server infrastructure is reliable enough for serious contesting or if people generally roll their own VPN + hamlib type setup for that

Current setup: RTL-SDR v3 for RX, separate TX path via relay switching. Internet connection is 100/20 Mbps fiber. Anyone have experience optimizing the audio buffer sizes in the RemoteHams configuration?

Also wondering if upgrading to HackRF One for full duplex operation would help reduce the switching delays I'm seeing.

anyway i started with just RemoteHams basic client/server thing and it worked okay but the audio latency was driving me nuts especially on SSB, like you'd talk and then wait and it just felt weird. then someone on one of the other forums mentioned running an SDR alongside it, like having an rtl-sdr or an airspy just feeding a panadapter view over the same connection so you can actually see what's happening on the band without waiting for the main rig to sweep. that part actually works better than i expected.

the part i cant figure out is the internet linking side. i want to be able to use echolink or maybe allstar when im not doing HF, just to have the node active out there when the HF bands are dead. has anyone tried running all of this on the same hardware? im currently using a raspberry pi 4 and im wondering if that's enough horsepower or if i need to throw a small NUC or something at this. the pi does get a little warm sometimes and i wonder if its just throttling under load and thats causing some of the audio weirdness.

i thought at first it was a latency thing because the upload on my end is only about 12 Mbps which i know isnt great for this, but even with one client connected it does it. tried adjusting the audio buffer settings in the RCForb client and that didnt seem to help either. someone mentioned it might be a VSPE conflict with the virtual COM port but i havent gone down that rabbit hole yet.

also tangentially — has anyone done internet linking through this same setup? like running an Allstar node or IRLP alongside the RemoteHams instance? wondering if sharing the audio device is whats causing some of this weirdness actually.

the SDR remote side of things actually works better for just listening around honestly. ive got an RTL-SDR dongle hooked into the same antenna feedline through a splitter and running that through the RemoteHams SDR interface and for just monitoring the band or checking propagation before i commit to actually operating, its pretty slick. lower overhead i guess since youre not pushing audio both ways.

anyone running a full duplex remote on HF with acceptable latency? wondering if switching to something like hamradiodeluxe remote or even just a straight VPN + RDP approach would help. i know some guys do the internet linking thing through EchoLink or AllStar as kind of a workaround for certain modes but thats a different animal really.

the internet at the remote end is a cable connection, like 150 down and about 20 up, should be more than enough. i ran a ping test during one of the dropouts and the latency spiked to like 800ms for a few seconds then came back to normal 15ms. so something is happening upstream of me. local ISP maybe. ive tried the SDR side of things too, been messing with the SDR-Console remote access stuff as a backup and that seems a bit more resilient but i lose some of the rig control features i actually need.

anyone running a stable long term remote setup that's had this kind of intermittent issue? wondering if a VPN tunnel would help smooth things out or if thats just adding more potential failure points

ive played around with the RemoteHams SDR remote side of it a little bit and honestly the latency wasnt terrible for SSB but when i tried to do any CW it was pretty rough. like the timing was just slightly off enough to mess me up. not sure if thats on my end or theirs or just the nature of the beast with internet linking in general. anyone dealt with this and figured out a fix or is CW over RemoteHams just kind of a known limitation.

also kind of curious if anyone has tried mixing approaches — like using the SDR remote just for monitoring and then doing actual transmit control through something else. seemed like an idea but i have no idea if that would even work cleanly without a bunch of sync issues.

My setup: Raspberry Pi 4 running F1ATB's Remote SDR v5.0, Pluto connected via USB, 50Mbps fiber connection. Anyone else experience similar delays with this configuration?

anyway a buddy of mine keeps telling me to just use RemoteHams and stop reinventing the wheel. i looked at it and honestly the client software looks pretty decent, and the SDR remote piece is interesting because my station has both a conventional xcvr and an SDRplay RSP1A hooked up for panadapter use. wondering if RemoteHams can actually pipe both simultaneously or if youre just picking one or the other when you connect.

also the internet linking side of this — i know some guys use it to connect into repeater systems or do some kind of echolink-adjacent thing through the platform but im not totally clear on how that works. is that a separate registration or does it all fall under the same account. honestly the documentation is kind of scattered and i cant tell if im missing something obvious.

anyone whos actually run both their own setup and RemoteHams have an opinion on whether its worth switching over or just fixing what i already have

my internet at the shack end is about 50 down / 10 up on a cable connection, and the remote end where the radio actually lives is on a fiber connection with way better upload. so i dont think its a bandwidth thing. ive messed with the jitter buffer settings in the audio section and lowered the codec quality to try to reduce latency but it doesnt seem to make much difference past a certain point.

also kind of unrelated but has anyone tried bridging RemoteHams into like an echolink or IRLP node? i know theyre pretty different things conceptually but im wondering if theres any scenario where internet linking and remote control could be made to work together in some useful way, like for emcomm purposes where you might want to remotely operate a linked repeater system or something. maybe thats a dumb idea, i dunno.

anyway the main thing is the audio latency if anyone has dealt with this before