The VK3UR Internet Remote Base (IRB) is an amateur radio station that is remotely accessible via the Internet. The equipment is located in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia approximately 100km west of the City of Melbourne.
This is a work in progress, and will take some time to complete (if ever)...
As per figure 1, the Kenwood TS-2000X is connected to an MS Windows based computer via its serial port for control data and the computer's sound card for transmit and receive audio. The computer runs the RemoteServer application developed by Stan, W4MQ, to control the radio and access control to the system.
The RemoteServer application supports Skype (vk3ur_remotebase) and is integrated with MS NetMeeting 3.01 to support the transfer of audio to and from the radio to the remote user. One of the problems with MS NetMeeting is that the audio is delayed by approximately 1.5 seconds, which can be somewhat frustrating to the user. To this end Stan, W4MQ, has developed a replacement audio system called IRBSound. IRBSound is integrated into Web Transceiver and reduces the audio delay from 1.5 seconds to approximately 200mS.
The antennas at VK3UR have recently undergone a major overhaul. They can be seen in the picture below and currently comprise (from top to bottom):
All antennas are fed into a combination of 2 x Ameritron RCS-8V and RCS-8VN 5 port coaxial relays, which can be switched by the remote user through an OnTrak ADR2200 8 port RS-232C to 8 relays card. Default antennas are designated for each radio band, with options to select a variety of other relevant antennas.
All of the tower mounted antennas are connected to a Create RC5-1 rotator which can be controlled by the remote user. This is accomplished through an EA4TX RCI-SE computer / rotator interface board. The ARS RCI-SE board installed at VK3UR is an 8 bit version, which provides 255 steps in 1.4 degree increments, which is more than enough, given the antennas have about a 20 degree beamwidth, however higher resolution boards are available.
Pablo, EA4TX, has written a very nice software application, called ARSWIN, which has some hooks in it to allow software control to be accomplished by Stan's, W4MQ's, RemoteServer application and a number of other radio programs.
The screen displayed only shows Azimuth control, however the ARSWIN application also supports Elevation control if a suitable Elevation rotator is available.
The IRB supports only one internet connection at a time and therefore it has session timeouts to enable everyone a fair chance at using the system.
Access to the IRB is achieved by installing and configuring Stan's Web Transceiver application on an internet connected computer, along with MS NetMeeting, and preferably Skype. Details regarding the client side set-up can be found in the software section.