HamRS Gets Rig Control

Recently HamRS added Rig control to their desktop app. I believe it was added in v2.18 on Nov 19th 2024. The current version is 2.19.1 as of the writing of this article.

HamRS leverages a long-standing rig control program called FLrig by W1HKJ which works with most rigs new and old. FLrig creates a remote xmlrpc port that HamRS connects to. HamRS is both able to read the radio settings and set them. Meaning you can now click the Rig button on the card of each spot. Which subsequently tunes the rig to the appropriate frequency. I also believe there are many other software packages that will work in place of FLrig. They just need to have xmlrpc server port for HamRS to connect to.

This simple enhancement dramatically speeds up hunting POTA activators.

To configure HamRS for Rig control you must first install FLrig and get it setup with your radio. In my case I configured it for use with my Kenwood TS-570. I’m not going to cover the setup of FLrig here. That will be another article. But don’t be afraid to try it. The setup for many radios is very simple. Provided you have the correct cables. Most cases just a USB cable for modern rigs. Older rigs may just require a serial cable and serial port on your PC. I used a Parallax USB to Serial adapter. You need to check your radios manual to see what cables are required.

After you have FLrig working fully you can then configure HamRS to connect to FLrig via the xmlrpc port 12345.

Next, we need to test the connection between HamRS and FLrig. Click the test connection button. If it is showing a green check circle you are good to go.

Note: It may already be green. Because it is working and connected.

Also check the Rig connections indicator once you are in an open logbook.

Finally open your spotting tab in your POTA logbook. Configure what band and mode you want to see spots for. It will then display spot cards. On the spot card you will see a button labeled rig. Pressing that will tune your radio to the frequency.

Note: The rig button does not appear when in table mode. Which I think they should add it is next to the copy button. (I will be putting in a feature request to HamRS for that)

Once you find an activator you want to make a contact with. You then press the copy button on the card. This will copy the QSL information to the top section and you can amend the data as need. usually only the signal reports need to be edited.

Also, once you have selected a POTA spot card. Then hit the rig button. The card will turn blue and show a sound wave icon. This is to indicate to you, which station you are working.

The addition of these simple features dramatically speeds up hunting POTA activators. It eliminates and need to manually use the tuning knob on your rig.

Another cool thing you can do with this screen is put is on a mini screen. As sort of a dashboard screen. allowing you to see it while using HamRS. The below images are what I call dashboard screens. (what Microsoft once called sideshow screens in the days of Vista) This is what I’m considering buying. To allow me to see the rig control without using up space on my main monitors. But that’s going to be another article.

These two below only seem to allow specific metric like temperature of CPU, free space of the HD. They don’t seem to be able to be used as an additional screen. However it may be possible to get them to display live QSO counts or contesting metric. but i have to due further research into how to customize the data displayed.

Important Information

PS: HamRS also has pretty good docs on how to setup rig control. With FLrig on the HamRS doc’s site. Link below

Configuration | HAMRS Documentation