CTR2-MIDI and CTR2-Dial provide physical tuning knobs for radio control apps such as SmartSDR for iOS/MacOS, Remote Ham Radio, Thetis, and several others. With all the bells and whistles that technology bring us, for many of us that grew up with analog radios, a radio just isn’t a radio without a tuning knob. No matter how good it is, a knob is a necessity!
But what do you do if your favorite control app doesn’t support MIDI control? There are other alternatives. For instance, CTR2-Micro can be connected directly to your radio via CAT control. There are a host of other control knobs on the market that can fill the void. The only problem is that this only works if you and your radio are in the same shack. If you operate your station remotely using AnyDesk or TeamViewer you’re probably still looking for a way to tune your radio more naturally.
Translation to the Rescue
Many times, radio control apps allow you to use the mouse scroll wheel or keystrokes to change frequency. In this case you can use a MIDI translation app such as CoyoteMIDI to take MIDI commands from CTR2-MIDI or CTR2-Dial and convert them into scroll actions or keystrokes that are sent to your control app. For instance, in Win4Yaesu the Up and Down cursor control keys change frequency. Mapping CTR2-MIDI’s MIDI control #100 to send Up and Down keys to Win4Yaesu when the encoder is rotated gives you a physical tuning knob. And it works across a remote AnyDesk and TeamViewer connection.
This diagram shows how you can use AnyDesk to control a Flex radio at a remote site with CTR2-MIDI as a tuning knob and without SmartLink. Of course it also works with SmartLink too.
I’ve written the white paper below describing how to configure CoyoteMIDI to provide frequency control for SmartSDR for Windows and Win4Yaesu. You can use the same concepts to control any app… MIDI control in N1MM logger? Yes!