WCCRO Spectrograph Viewer Help

ICOM R8500 Display

The WCCRO Spectrograph may be used as a control interface for the ICOM R8500 single frequency receiver. This receiver is used to monitor the signals present at a single frequency. It’s output is available as an audio stream via Windows Media Encoder. In addition the output of the R8500 is strip charted with Radio-SkyPipe software and is also available at remote locations. When a Spectrograph Viewer user is logged in as a controller, he or she may control the following functions of the R8500:

• Receive frequency.
• Receive mode (USB, LSB, CW etc.).
• Receiver volume.

All Spectrograph Viewer users can monitor the results of these controlling actions via frequency indicators on the main Spectrograph Viewer window and also via a simulated ICOM R8500 panel display.

The main window frequency indicators include a text box with the current receive frequency, a red arrow placed at the appropriate points on the Chart #1 and Chart #2 frequency scales, and optionally by a color track laid down directly on the Chart #1 image.

  Figure 5 The ICOM R8500 text display on the main window.

 Fig 6 Red Arrow tracks R8500 frequency. When selected, a track is also shown.

The track of the ICOM R8500 frequency is drawn in color that the color file corresponds to the highest possible signal level. This option can be initiated with View / Track Rcvr Freq on the main window menu.

Figure 7 ICOM R8500 display. This display serves as a control interface to the receiver and also as an indicator display for clients that are not logged in as controllers. When not logged in the control functions are disabled.

To view the ICOM R8500 display select View / R8500 from the main window menu. Frequency, mode, and noise blanker status appear in the simulated LCD window. The noise blanker is "on" whenever "NB" is displayed. Volume is displayed as a value from 0 to 255 in the volume display at the bottom left of the receiver.