Relay boards
RemoteMyShack talks to a Waveshare Modbus POE ETH Relay board directly over your network. Use its relays to switch antennas, or anything else at the station: an amplifier's or a preamp's power, lights, a rotor box. Each relay gets a name and a use, and the console's Antennas tab shows a button for each.
Add the board
Plug the board into your network (PoE, or 7–36 V on its power terminals). Out of the box it has a fixed address, 192.168.1.200, which usually isn't on your network. You don't need Waveshare's VirCom program to change that.
- Open the setup page (the agent's on the shack computer, or Radios in your account) and open the Relay boards tab. Choose + Add a relay board.
- The agent searches the network and lists every board that answers, even one on another network's address. A board on its factory address says so.
- Click Use DHCP on it. The board restarts and takes an address from your router, which takes about ten seconds. The list then shows it at its new address. Only the address setting changes; the board keeps all its other settings.
- Click Use this one, give the board a name, and set up its relays (below). Save.
The agent remembers the board by its ID, not just its address. If your router gives it another address later, the agent finds it again by itself. To keep the address from changing at all, reserve it in your router's DHCP settings.
The board must be in its usual mode, TCP Server on port 4196. That's how it comes. If you've set it to Modbus TCP with VirCom, tick The board is set to Modbus TCP.
Set up the relays
Each relay has a name and one of these uses:
- Antenna: the board's antenna relays work like an antenna switch. Turning one on turns the others off first, so only one antenna is connected at a time. They don't switch while the radio is transmitting, because switching under power can damage the relay, the radio or an amplifier. Under an antenna relay, click the bands it's for (see Following the band).
- On / off: stays on or off as you set it, for power to a preamp, amplifier, lights or anything else.
- Pulse: turns on for a moment (half a second unless you set another time, up to 10 seconds) and off again, like pressing a button. Use it for gear with a push-button power switch.
- Not used: not shown in the console.
Shown with picks the radio whose console shows the board. With Every radio, every radio's console shows it, and antenna relays wait while any radio transmits.
The setup page shows whether each board is answering and which relays are on.
Following the band
Give each antenna relay the bands it's for: for example 6m on the relay for the 6 m beam, and 20m, 15m and 10m on the one for the tribander. When the radio moves onto one of those bands, from the console, the radio's own dial or anywhere else, the agent selects that antenna by itself, turning the others off first.
- Each band can be on one antenna relay. Clicking a band that another relay has moves it to this one.
- It follows the radio the board is Shown with, or, for a board shown with Every radio, the station's first radio.
- It acts when the band changes. If you pick another antenna by hand, it stays until the radio moves to another band.
- A band with no antenna relay leaves the antenna as it is.
- If the radio is transmitting when it reaches a new band, the antenna changes as soon as it stops.
Use it from the console
The console's Antennas tab (in the Phone layout, under the radio's gear) shows each board:
- Antenna: one button per antenna relay, with the bands it follows; the lit one is on. Click another to switch to it, or the lit one to turn it off. The buttons are disabled while you transmit.
- Station: a toggle for each on/off relay, and a button for each pulse relay that presses it once.
Relays switched another way (from the board's own web page, or another program) show their new state within a second.
Plans
A relay board counts as an antenna switch for your plan: Shack covers one antenna switch or relay board, and Super Station covers all of them. See Plans. At the shack itself, on your home network, every board works on any plan.
Notes
- RemoteMyShack works with the 8-relay board, and boards with up to 32 relays.
- Relay boards aren't in the signal path diagram yet.
- See also Antenna switches for the 4O3A Antenna Genius.