RemIcom

RemIcom-B is a very simple ICOM remote program. Features:

RemIcom-B screenshot

It works with any ICOM CI-V interface compatible rig. The purpose of this program is to enhance the display of a rig and show some additional info. Nice for fairs, tradeshows or just to see on your PC screen where you are tuned.

In addition to the frequency, mode etc., RemIcom-B displays the ITU band assignment of the currently tuned frequency. The user can select ITU region 1,2 or 3. When within a ham band, the usage of that band portion is shown. (See note)

Furthermore, an analog frequency display is shown, with the ham- and broadcast bands (according to selected ITU region) clearly marked. A marker in the analog display shows the current frequency. The new DDE-Server function allows you to use the frequency and mode data in another application, like MS Excel or MS Word (or any other DDE capable app).

Note:

To be very clear:

You cannot control your rig with this program! It's just shows what happens at the rig, i.e. it only receives data from the ICOM rig. If you are looking for remote control, check at my description of the CI-V interface which has links to several CI-V control programs, or check the Icom (America) website at www.icomamerica.com

Download

To download the zipped EXE file for Windows click here. DOWNLOAD 180KB

Installation & Setup

The software is very easy to install. Download the zipped EXE file, expand it in any directory, run it. When the program is started for the first time, a setup dialog is displayed. Enter COM-Port and Speed, select ITU region, choose colors. That's it. Ok, perhaps you should setup a link in your Windows start menu or on your Windows desktop.

De-Installation

Just delete the EXE file. Ok, and if you want, delete the registry entries i made under the key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\DF4OR-soft\icom-civ\

Be careful when editing the registry, you can mess up your whole system. When deleting this branch you might affect other ICOM related software written by DF4OR.

Usage

As you see, the program has no controls. No buttons, sliders, drop down menus, nothing (did i mention that i hate "intuitive" software, which is clogged with zillions of functions, menus and so on, which nobody uses?). The only possible user action is "right-click" on any part of the window, which brings up a tiny menu. The only selection is to rerun setup, perhaps to change ITU region or colors.

To exit the program type Alt-F4 or click on the "X" in the header.

The program recognizes the rig in use by it's CI-V adress. As long as your rig uses the standard adress as provided by ICOM, everything is ok. If you have multiple ICOM rigs on the same interface, the program simply shows the last rig from which information (frequency, mode) was received.

DDE features

RemIcom-B is a DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) server. That means that this program supplies some information to any other DDE capable application (like MS Excel, MS Word and others). An example for this could be that you use Excel as a HF listeners log (as I used to do, now I use OpenOffice) and have the currently tuned to frequency and mode right there - in Excel.

How does it work?

To use the DDE function in an application, you need to know three pieces of information from the server application (RemIcom-B in this case):

With that you can use these 3 items in a DDE Client app.

Example:

To display the current frequency in Excel, enter the following line in any cell:

=RemIcomB|remicom!freqitem

The letter separating the servers name (RemIcomB) and the topicname (remicom) is the "pipe" sign, |, or Alt-124; the letter separating the topicname and itemname is the exclamation mark, !.

License

RemIcom-B is free. The user is granted the right to use this software in as many instances as needed. The program can be freely distributed, as long as the program is not modified in any way and the author Ekki Plicht, DF4OR, http://www.plicht.de/ekki is shown. If you like this software please drop me an eMail at ap (at) plicht.de .

Feedback, Enhancements, Suggestions

Please feel free to tell me about bugs or suggest improvements. Please keep in mind that i want to stick with this "no frills" approach, i.e. no buttons, controls etc. Ideas for the future might be to select the width of the analog band via a right-click, display all different rigs on several lines etc. For feedback mail me at ep (at) plicht.de

Help

None provided except this webpage :-)
Ok, here are some explanations to what the various abbreviations of the ITU band assignments mean:
Abbreviation Service
Fix Fixed service
Mob Mobile
Mob(-AerMob) Mobile, except aeronautical mobile
Mob(-AerMob(R) Mobile, except aeronautical mobile (Route)
Mob(-AerMob(OR) Mobile, except aeronautical mobile (Off Route)
MarMob Maritime Mobile
MarNav Maritime Navigation
AerMob Aeronautical Mobile
AerMob(R) Aeronautical mobile (Route)
AerMob(OR) Aeronautical mobile (Off route)
AerNav Aeronautical Navigation
LandMob Land mobile
Emerg.Mob Emergency Mobile
RadLoc Radio Location
Nav Navigational
Bcast Broadcast
Ham Amateur service
HamSat Amateur service via satellite
WX-aid Weather aides
WX-res Weather research
Time&Norm Timesignal & standard frequency
RadAstro Radio Astronomy


For information what service does what, please see elsewhere on the web. The abbreviations used in the ham portions are hopefully selfexplanatory.