Author Topic: Kenwood TM-V71A won't remote with iPhone Hotspot  (Read 2430 times)

VA6OK

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Kenwood TM-V71A won't remote with iPhone Hotspot
« on: 2018-01-15, 18:31:46 »
Hello.  I have a few RemoteRig setups and they work great.  However, I have a new setup that I planned to use with a Kenwood TM-V71A.  I have the radio base set up at my home and planned to be able to take the control head mobile, especially to our club repeater sites to give us real life feedback when we make adjustments to the repeaters.

Here is the scenario:  The base unit is connected to my home internet.  The control unit is connected via wifi to my iPhone hotspot.  The units will connect to each other.  The SIP lights come on on each end and the web status page shows that all is well and data is transferring properly.  Yet, the radio control head won't power on and no audio flows.  Also, once you connect, the control head is then unresponsive and you cannot disconnect without removing the power source from the RRC.  As an experiment, I swapped out the radio with a Kenwood TS-480sat.  Once I did this, everything worked normally.  I swapped back to the V71A and it does not work.  If I take the V71A control head to the local library and use their internet connection, the radio connects and works fine.  I have swapped out RRCs, tried various groups of ports, and tried almost everything imaginable and yet no change. 

So to summarize:  The problem only occurs when I am trying to remote a Kenwood TM-V71A over my iPhone hotspot.  If the radio changes to something else, the problem goes away.  If the iPhone changes to a regular internet connection, the problem goes away.  It is when the TM-V71A and the iPhone are being used together there is a problem.  The fact that the iPhone will work just fine remoting the same RRC but with a Kenwood 480 attached suggests to me that the iPhone is capable of doing the job.  The baud rate for both the V71A and the 480 are both 57600.  The RRC configurations for both these radios are essentially identical.  In theory there should be NO DIFFERENCE, yet somehow, there is.

Here are my suspicions:  Is there something different in the data stream between the RRCs for the V71A vs the TS-480?  Is there a higher data requirement somehow for the V71A?  Is there an initial handshake between them that somehow is more difficult to happen on the V71A? 

If anyone is remoting a TM-V71A using an iPhone hotspot at the control end, let me know if it works for you.

Thanks and 73
Dale