so ive been messing around with remote station stuff for about 6 months now and i finally got a pretty stable setup going with a raspberry pi and some VPN tunneling but its a pain to maintain honestly. a buddy at the club mentioned RemoteHams and specifically the RCForb software and i looked into it a bit but im not totally clear on how the SDR integration actually works in practice.

like i get the basic concept — you run the server software at your station, clients connect over the internet, rig control goes through CAT or whatever, and audio is streamed back and forth. thats pretty standard stuff. but what i cant figure out is whether the SDR remote piece is a separate thing or if its baked into the same client. and does it work with like an RTL-SDR or are we talking more serious hardware like an Airspy or RSP1A type thing.

also curious if anyone has used this for linking purposes — ive got a local repeater that occasionally does some internet linking through Echolink but im wondering if a proper SDR remote setup would be a better approach for monitoring purposes. not trying to replace the repeater linking just kind of thinking out loud about using a wideband SDR remotely to keep an eye on a few frequencies at once.

anyway if anyones actually running RemoteHams day to day id love to hear how reliable it actually is over a typical home ISP connection, the latency thing is what worries me most for CW ops

been running RCForb server for maybe two years now, not going anywhere. the SDR part is handled through a separate module but its configured through the same server interface so it doesnt feel totally disconnected. i use an RSP1A and it works pretty well — you get a panadapter view on the client side which is honestly the killer feature for me, way nicer than flying blind.

RTL-SDR will technically work but the dynamic range is going to hurt you especially if youre near any strong locals. for just monitoring purposes it might be fine but if youre trying to use it alongside an HF rig for a proper remote shack i'd spend the extra $100 and get something better.

latency on CW is real, im not gonna sugarcoat it. i have a 50ms round trip to my station and its workable but you notice it. anything over 100ms and i personally find it too distracting for CW. SSB is more forgiving. your home ISP upload speed matters a lot more than download for the audio path, if youre on something asymmetric and your upload is garbage that will bite you.

the echolink comparison is kind of apples and oranges tbh. echolink is really purpose built for voice linking, its DTMF controlled, has the directory infrastructure, all that. what youre describing with the SDR remote is more like having a set of ears at a remote location that you can tune around with. they can compliment each other but they dont really replace each other.

i did set something similar up at a club site once — had an SDR feeding a web-based waterfall so members could see whats happening on the local bands without being there. used OpenWebRX for that actually, not RemoteHams, which might be worth looking at depending on what you actually need. much lighter weight if you just want monitoring and dont need rig control.