so ive been messing around with remote station control for a few months now and finally got to a point where i want to try doing this more seriously. my shack is about 45 miles from where i live now and driving out there every weekend is getting old. ive got a decent internet connection at the shack end, something like 25 down and 10 up from a fixed wireless provider, not fiber or anything but stable enough i think.

been looking at RemoteHams as the software side of this because a buddy of mine runs it and says its pretty solid. my question is mainly about the SDR remote piece — like how does that actually integrate with a regular transceiver? im running an IC-7300 so i can pull the IQ data out over USB but im not totally clear on how RemoteHams handles that versus just doing straight audio relay. does it send the full SDR waterfall to the client side or is that too much bandwidth?

also the internet linking part confuses me a bit. is that just for EchoLink type stuff or can you link the remote control sessions together somehow, like have multiple clients or chain it? i read the wiki but honestly it wasnt super clear on that piece. any real world experience with this setup appreciated

the SDR remote mode in RemoteHams does send the IQ stream to the client yeah, but it compresses it pretty aggressively so its not as bad as you'd think on bandwidth. with an IC-7300 you can run it at like 48k or 96k sample rate and the software handles the decimation on the client side. the waterfall does work and its actually one of the nicer things about it versus just piping audio — you can see whats going on in the band and tune around without having to rely on the radio just being parked somewhere.

25 up at the shack end should be more than enough, ive run it on worse. latency is usually fine for SSB and digital, CW gets a little rough if your round trip is over like 150ms or so, just depends on routing. fixed wireless can be weird with jitter sometimes, thats probably worth checking before you commit to CW operating remotely.

the linking thing, i think youre conflating two different features. the internet linking in RemoteHams is more for tying into repeater systems and stuff like that, not really for chaining remote sessions. you'd want to look at how the server handles multiple client connections separately if thats what you need.

had a similar setup running for about a year with a 7300, totally worth doing even if the first couple weeks of config is kind of a pain. one thing that tripped me up was the audio routing on the shack PC — you really have to nail down which virtual audio cables are going where or you'll end up with feedback loops or the PTT not keying right. VAC or VB-Cable both work but get that sorted before you even think about the SDR side of things.

also worth mentioning, fixed wireless can have latency spikes that come and go depending on tower load and weather. i'd run something like PingPlotter from the shack box out to a server for a few days and see what the jitter looks like before deciding if CW is even viable for you. SSB was totally fine for me even when latency was a bit inconsistent.