So ive been messing around with remote station control for a few months now and im at the point where i need to decide whether to stick with RemoteHams or just build something out myself with a raspi and some SDR gear. My current setup is a IC-7300 at a remote site about 40 miles out, decent internet both ends, and ive got it kinda working through RemoteHams but the latency is driving me nuts on SSB. CW is fine honestly but voice is a pain.

The thing is ive also been looking at the RemoteHams SDR remote side of things and i dont fully understand how that integrates - like is it running a separate SDR alongside your main rig or is it pulling the IQ data straight off the radio. Someone on another thread mentioned it was more like a panadapter feed but i couldnt find any real documentation that explained it clearly.

Also curious if anyone has tried linking this stuff through Echolink or IRLP on the same node - seems like you could get some interesting setups going but i havent heard of many people actually doing it. maybe theres a reason for that. Anyway any experience with this stuff would be appreciated, im not in a huge rush but would like to figure out the direction before i sink more time into it.

The SDR remote piece on RemoteHams is basically streaming IQ data to the client yeah, its not a separate physical SDR - at least in the configurations ive seen. The client side renders the panadapter using that stream so you get the waterfall and can click around to tune, but the actual TX path is still going through whatever rig you have connected. Its pretty clever but the bandwidth requirements go up noticeably when you enable it vs just plain audio remote.

On your latency issue - 40 miles shouldnt be the problem, its more about the path and what codec RemoteHams is using on your connection. There's settings in there to adjust the buffer and codec quality that most people never touch. I had similar issues on SSB and dropping the audio quality a notch and tweaking the jitter buffer made a huge difference. Felt way less like talking through a tin can after that.

As for mixing this with Echolink or IRLP on the same node - ive thought about it too but i think the problem is audio routing gets messy fast and you end up with feedback or latency stacking if you arent really careful about how the audio chains are configured. Probably doable but id want a dedicated machine handling each piece.

cant really speak to the SDR side of RemoteHams but i ran a remote setup for a couple years using just RCForb and a cheap VPS as a relay and it worked shockingly well. latency was the same problem though, SSB just kinda sucks remotely unless everything lines up perfectly. i eventually gave up on phone and just use it for digital modes and CW which honestly is what i wanted it for anyway.

the echolink thing is interesting but ive always thought of those as pretty separate worlds - like the people using internet linking for repeater stuff and the people doing HF remote ops dont overlap much. maybe they should though