Fldigi-DXLabs Gateway – N2AMG's Place

Fldigi-DXLabs Gateway is a bridging application for use with the Digital Modes application
Fldigi by Dave Freese W1HKJ and the DXLabs suite by Dave Bernstein AA6YQ.

Fldigi-DXLabs Gateway works with the following DXLabs applications.

DXKeeper – Qso’s logged in Fldigi will transfer to DXKeeper when the save qso button is Pressed. Ability to lookup previous contacts with the call sign in the Fldigi call sign field.
Commander – Frequency and Mode information is transferred to Fldigi automatically to act as Fldigi’s rig control.
DXView – Call signs entered into Fldigi’s call sign field will trigger a look up in DXView using the call signs information
SpotCollector – When Fldigi-DXLabs gateway is setup in SpotCollector to be the Digital Mode Application, Clicking on spots in SpotCollector will send the spot information to the gateway for setting the correct mode and frequency in Fldigi.

Current versions of Fldigi can be found on www.w1hkj.com.

If you are a first time User then download the full install package and then the update file below it. If you already have the DXLabs Fldigi Gateway installed then you only need to download the update file and unzip it to the directory that DXLabs Fldig gateway is installed in.

Current Full Version: 1.6.63
Full Install Download:FldigiDXLabsGatewayFullInstallv1663.zip

Current Update Version: 1.7.0
Update Download:FldigiDxlabsGatewayUpdate.zip

Comments

Fldigi-DXLabs Gateway — 92 Comments

Jeff on February 21, 2017 at 5:59 pm said:

Thanks Rick, but I just tried that twice, and it’s not working. I tried unzipping the update to the same folder it was in and also into a new folder. However, when I open the launcher, I’m still getting the same message that the file is missing. I shut off Norton Security Suite before doing all of this. I guess I don’t know enough about file paths and directories to figure out what is wrong. Very frustrating. I am going to have to give up for today – I’m out of time and out of ideas for how to solve the problem.

Jeff
Jeff on February 21, 2017 at 6:17 pm said:

Rick: I figured out what was wrong – I had to completely disable Norton and also I was confused by the fact that part of the folder name used before was put onto a 2nd line on my screen, obscuring the fact that there was a space between two characters in the string. Once I figured that out, it wasn’t hard.

Now I just have to put that update file into Norton so it isn’t rejected next time – but I am not sure what exactly I need to put into Norton to make the program think future downloads are safe. Do I just put the whole file string name into Norton? Something shorter? Something that covers all future updates from you? I have no idea. Thanks for the help…Jeff
Jeff on February 21, 2017 at 6:45 pm said:

Rick: for your information, even after I made a rule in Norton Security Suite instructing the software to allow gateway files from your site….the first time I started the gateway the Norton software deleted the file! I could not believe it. It gave me a dire warning about the file being unsafe, untrustworthy. Fortunately, I was able to order Norton to restore the file, but I think it is insane for the Norton software to be written so as to ignore the rule I made and delete the file anyway!

You should contact Norton about this – I notice that next to the name I gave the rule instructing Norton to accept gateway files, Norton placed a big red “X” indicating the alleged danger of the files. I am unable to change that designation, which is a shame. I trust anything from your site, and it should be easier to get the Norton software to do the same. Good luck, and thanks for your help (again!). Jeff
Roy Ashkenaz on April 22, 2017 at 9:01 am said:

I have the latest FLDigi and FLRig running. I also autostart the DXView and SpotCollector programs. I just started using SpotCollector which displays DX on the DXView – pretty neat.

My understanding is that I can use FldigiDXLabsGateway so that when I click on a DXView DX spot, FLDigi will then switch to the frequency of the spot. Is my understanding correct?

I tried to make it work, but have had no luck. I use FLRIG as my rig control.
N2AMG on April 22, 2017 at 12:29 pm said:

Hi Roy..
Yes this is possible. Open Spot Collector and then open the settings. On the General tab of the settings on the right hand side there is a section called Digital Mode Application in the text box of that section enter the following just as shown
Fldigi-DXLabs Gateway

Note that the gateway will need to be started before Spotcollector is loaded or you will need to manually have to connect to the gateway by opening up the settings of SpotCollector and clicking the Connect button in this section. If the gateway is loaded first then it should automatically connect . You might also need to adjust the settings in the section below the Digital Mode Application.

Let me know how you make out
73 Rick N2AMG

p.s. I am not sure if clicking a spot in DXView will cause the spot to move but clicking on a spot in SpotCollector will move to that frequency and set the mode correctly.
Roy Ashkenaz on April 24, 2017 at 5:44 am said:

Thank you Rick. I will try it later today. Does it matter what CAT I use to control my rig? I am using FLRIG.

One suggest(?) – at the top of your website it shows “Posted on March 28, 2008” – when I first came here, I could not determine if this is still an “active” website, etc. Might you want to update your website to show it is still active?
Roy Ashkenaz on April 24, 2017 at 3:04 pm said:

Rick,
1. I entered “Fldigi-DXLabs Gateway” in the SpotCollector Configuration.
2. I closed all programs, and started “FldigiDXLabsGateway”
3. Now, when I click on a spot in SpotCollector 7.6.5,
FLDigi frequency is updated to the spot frequency,
however, FLRig is not updated and my rig frequency is not changed
4. If I click on a DXView 4.3.2 spot on the map, FLDigi is not updated
5. I am not running DXKeeper or Commander (as shown in the FldigiDXLabsGateway RX tab). I am running flrig for CAT control.
6. FldigiDXLabsGateway error log shows no errors
7. When I don’t run FldigiDXLabsGateway, fldigi is working correctly with flrig.
8. I am running Windows 10 with no problems that I know about.

Any troubleshooting tips? Is there a better way to troubleshoot this with you (email, phone call, etc?)

Thanks – Roy K2RMA@arrl.net
Roy Ashkenaz on April 28, 2017 at 12:36 pm said:

Per Rick’s (email) help, I switched from FLrig to DX Commander and all is running fine.
Bill BeSore on June 10, 2017 at 8:34 pm said:

Had to download and install winwarbler to get an ocx file(sminet32x.ocx)that was needed by the FLDigi Gsteway program. Once that ocx file was there, the gateway installed and worked without any problems. This was on a new machine with windows 10. Thanks for a great suite of applications.
N2AMG on June 10, 2017 at 8:47 pm said:

Hi Bill.
The Gateway is the next application that I plan on converting to vb.net That way It will depend on straight programming instead of the use of controls.
73 Rick N2AMG
Roy Ashkenaz on July 30, 2017 at 6:29 pm said:

1. Can I disable DXKeeper as I do not use it?
2. I started using N3FJP ACLog – do I need to change any settings on Fldigi-DXLabs Gateway, such as Logging from DDE to TCP?
N2AMG on July 30, 2017 at 9:57 pm said:

Hi Roy..
Unfortunately my interface does not work with the n3jfp program.

But your still in luck. Fldigi supports the N3JFP program directly and will work with it with the routines built into Fldigi to follow the logger for logging an radio work.. There is a setup screen in the Fldigi setup that lets you enable the interface..

73 Rick N2AMG
Sergey on August 9, 2017 at 7:25 am said:

Hi Rick !

New Win10 installation- Tabctl32.ocx missing, could you include this with installer ?

73 !
Sergey R5AU
Sergey on August 10, 2017 at 5:06 am said:

Rick , could you review in the next version of Gateway ability of multiinstance operation, like FLdigi. You know, today at time of SDR`s like Flex6700 possible to monitor/operate on several bands simultaniously without VFO swithcing, but need to aggregate different steams into one log.
Larry Wilson W7IXZ on November 13, 2017 at 9:57 pm said:

Hi Rick, been using this program for a while now but had to rebuild the computer and reload everything. All programs work but your Gateway program. I now have Windows10PRO 64 bit. No protection other than Defender installed. When I open the Gateway to set FLDigi path it will not open the path window and just goes to the normal window. I recently installed FLDigi in the Program Files(86) folder. Any help here? I have installed this so many times in the past but this is the first time I have had trouble. Maybe the 64 bit OS?
N2AMG on November 14, 2017 at 10:23 am said:

Hi Larry..
I feel your pain..
I myself am no longer able to run the gateway while using Windows 10. I have started re-writting the app in vb.net but it seems like every time I sit down to work on it I get pulled away to do something else. One thing you can try is right click on the .exe file and choose compatibility and see if you can change it to run as Windows 7 and see if that will let you do it. Also on my system I can no longer get the xmlrpc dll file I use to register any longer. This has also stopped me from using any of my gateways or bridges to Fldigi. They also need to be re-written.

73 Rick N2AMG
Cecil Moore on February 20, 2018 at 9:27 pm said:

I am also running Win10. When I try to run gateway with Fldigi, it says it is already running but there is no indication that it is already running. The Win10 Task Manager doesn’t know it is running and there’s nothing associated with gateway on the display. 73, Cecil, w5dxp
N2AMG on February 20, 2018 at 10:49 pm said:

Cecil..
Over on the right side of the taskbar by the clock click the little up arrow. If the gateway is running it will show a little blue man in the up-arrow list. That is the location where the gateway gets minimized to.

73 Rick n2AMG
Cecil Moore on February 21, 2018 at 7:55 am said:

Thanks Rick, should I install version 1.6 first and then replace the .exe file with version 1.7? Is there a list of changes from 1.6.63 to 1.7.0? Thanks again, 73, Cecil, w5dxp
N2AMG on February 21, 2018 at 4:01 pm said:

Yes install version 1.6 as that will register the needed dll files. Then just copy the contents of the 1.7 zip file into the directory where you installed it.
The changes were Fldigi changed some of the tags that outside programs use to communicate with it. If you don’t upgrade not all the information from Fldigi will be transferred over…

73 Rick n2AMG
Cecil Moore on February 23, 2018 at 10:39 pm said:

I’m having a lot of trouble getting the information in the Gateway settings window saved in the .ini file (no save button). Is there an application note on how to simply edit the contents of the .ini file? thanks & 73, Cecil, w5dxp
N2AMG on February 26, 2018 at 11:56 am said:

Where do you have the gateway installed? If it installed in one of the program files directories I could see a problem. But as soon as you make a change to a setting it is saved in the .ini file. You can open the .ini file with a normal text editor and edit the fields in it as they are just text values..

73 Rick n2AMG
Cecil Moore on February 26, 2018 at 5:36 pm said:

Gateway is installed in top level C:. When Gateway launches and displays the RX/settings window, when I click on “Settings”, the RX/Settings window goes away. I just tried waiting for everything to get launched and settled down and that seems to work OK. Thanks, it is a learning curve for me. I just got back into digital after a 20 year absence. Wow, things have changed.
73, Cecil, w5dxp
N2AMG on February 26, 2018 at 7:21 pm said:

Oh thats an easy thing..
Over in the taskbar by the clock if you are running earlier versions of Windows you will see a little blue man over there.. Double click on him and the settings are brought back on top. If you are running Windows 10 click the little up arrow over by the clock and you will find the little blue man in that list. Just double click on him and the settings window will be shown..

73 Rick n2AMG
Hank on April 6, 2018 at 5:42 pm said:

Rick – new FLDIGI – DXLabs gateway user here. I’m an old hand with FLDIGI and DXLabs software – just not together!!

I am experiencing what I consider to be odd behavior – it may not be though. I have the gateway set up so that Commander has the rig control responsibilities. When I change frequency in FLDIGI, there is a long pause before anything occurs on the radio sometimes – other times it is instantaneous. Is that normal? Also, when contesting, I will enter a callsign into FLDIGI using the mouse click and immediately hit a macro key (fast turnaround in a contest you know!) and FLDIGI indicates it is transmitting, but the radio is not. It will begin transmitting after the macro has “played” halfway through – I only actually transmit part of the macro because even though FLDIGI says it is transmitting, the radio is not.

I want to use the SpotCollector function so I do not want to have FLDIGI do rig control. Any ideas?
N2AMG on April 7, 2018 at 7:13 pm said:

Hi Hank.

There is a delay built in when changing the radio in Fldigi. Because of the techniqe used in Fldigi I have no way of knowing if Fldigi changed frequency because A you actually changed the frequency or B you changed the frequency via commander. SO there is a delay set to see if the frequency is the same as commander or if it didn’t come from commander is the frequency still being updated in Fldigi.. I’m not sure what is causing the trasmit delay. But the gateway uses timers to keep tabs on changes made in Fldigi. the timer for keeping track of the tx/rx setting is set to 400ms there are 5 timers in all. SO there could be a little delay depending on when the timer went off and when the gateway detects Fldigi has sent the TX’ing signal. Hopefully someday I can re-write things so it uses TCP messages but its not yet.. I have started re-writting the gateway in vb.net as windows 10 on my computer will no longer let me use the dll file that communicates with Fldigi. But having troubles with the DDElibrary as its no longer being supported and trying to figure out some issues isn’t panning out well..

73 Rick N2AMG
IZ3XNJ Stefano on April 25, 2018 at 1:22 pm said:

Hi, just to let you know that I’m using without any trouble the gateway on my new Windows 10 Home 64 notebook, with no particular configuration.

73 de IZ3XNJ Stefano
N2AMG on April 25, 2018 at 4:56 pm said:

Hi Stefano..
I’m glad you are able to run the program. many users of Windows 10 including myself are no longer able to use the dll file that is needed to run the program. I am re-writing this program but its been pushed back a couple of times by other software that needed to be upgraded ahead of its time…

73 Rick N2AMG
Jason on June 28, 2018 at 2:21 pm said:

I concur with N2AMG .

Delay makes things a little tricky when operating remotely or in a contest…
Frank Cassidy on December 20, 2018 at 4:53 pm said:

When I first installed the Gateway it worked fine but hen I closed down restarted the computer and it comes up with an error something about parsing the command line which looks OK to me ” C:\program files (82x)\fldigi\fldigi.exe ”
Tried it half a dozen times same thing happens. Using Win 10 pro shame really as I have just migrated from MultiPSK and decided I stick with FlDigi for a while as it also runs with N1MM+
Cheers

Frank G4HBI
N2AMG on December 21, 2018 at 8:46 pm said:

Hi Frank..
2 things to try..
Move Fldigi outside of the program files directory structure and place it in another folder that is not within that structure. Install it to something like C:\Ham\Fldigi or something like that.

open the gateway and turn Debug on and then close the program. Now open it and it should write the error message to the debug file. Look in the directory where it is installed and look for a file called DebugLog.txt. Send that file to rellison@twcny.rr.com as an attachment.

73 Rick N2AMG
janeksp6 on January 12, 2019 at 1:53 pm said:

W różnych ver.Fldigi wyskakuje Microsoft Visual C++ RUNTIME ERROR Jak naprawić
MY System win xp sp3 Próbowalem porady z YOUTUBE i nie naprawia Runtime error
N2AMG on January 13, 2019 at 10:43 am said:

I am not sure how to fix it. It is most likely because you are running Windows XP. Most of the ham programs have moved away fro supporting that OS because of all the vulnerabilities associated with using XP.

73 Rick N2AMG
George Milligan AK4NG on April 21, 2019 at 4:43 pm said:

I rebuilt my ham computer and of course, reloaded all software. I am using DXLab Suite, Fldigi 4.1 and Fldigi-DXLab Gateway 1.7. On my old computer, all modes of PSK would log from Fldigi to DXKeeper. On the new setup, all modes of PSK end up being logged as just “PSK” Other modes seem to log correctly Did I miss a setup someplace?
N2AMG on May 17, 2019 at 8:15 am said:

Hi George. Sorry for not responding. I never received an email from the website saying someone left a message. Nothing has changed in the software. I would suggest that you download the most current version of Fldigi and see if that corrects things. If not let me know and we can dig deeper..

73 Rick N2AMG
Carl Herrera on June 4, 2020 at 3:17 pm said:

Hi Rick.

I was wondering if there was any chance that you could write an FLRig to DXLab interface/bridge? The FLDigi interface works fine but I tend to use WSJT-X. FLRig, like HRD is interactive with the radio. That is, it receives as well as sends the CAT commands for all of the controls it shows. While I have HRD it takes up much more valuable real estate on my monitor.

BTW, I also use DXLab Commander but the sliders and buttons that I have programmed can only work one way and do not receive commands from the radio. Dave has explained on the DXLab group that it would be to large an undertaking since there are so many other items he can work on.

Thank you for your consideration.
73.
Carl – WC4H
Dave Corio on June 20, 2020 at 1:27 pm said:

Rick, trying to load on a new (to me) Win 10 Home -64bit PC. Worked fine on my old WIN 10, but now I keep getting the “tabctl.ocx….not registered”. Fixes found on the ‘net did not work (very old fixes!) Any ideas? From your older comments here, sounds like I’m just out of luck.

Tnx es 73
Dave – K1DJE
N2AMG on June 20, 2020 at 3:01 pm said:

Hi Dave..
On some windows 10 systems it will work fine and on others it will not. The controls that were used when I wrote it are not compatible with some of the windows 10 os’s that are out there.
The good news is I am further along with my re-write of the software. I have a list a mile long of Honey-do’s but I told my wife this week I am taking the list off and trying to get caught up on source code. I have the basic interface working and communicating with the dxlabs apps and fldigi. Now I need to go thru and work out the quirks that have developed and write the ddeserver I need for working with Spotcollector. Might be a week but it might be a month. it’s all when I get time from the money paying work…

73 Rick
Dave on June 20, 2020 at 4:31 pm said:

ooooohhhhhh! Take care of the honey-dews! All I can do is gripe and complain. She can HURT you!!!!

Tnx Rick es 73
dave – K1DJE
Dave Corio on June 25, 2020 at 11:32 am said:

Don’t know what made me try to install this again, but apparently the fifth time is the charm! Working perfectly now on Win 10 1909. Every once in a while, things go right!

73
Dave – K1DJE
N2AMG on June 29, 2020 at 3:32 pm said:

Thats a good thing.. I still cannot install it on windows 10 systems.. But I am alot closer to finishing the re-write of the gateway. I still have alot of add yet but I have had some time to work on it..

73 Rick N2AMG
Mike on September 25, 2021 at 12:23 pm said:

HELP !!!!
I trying to set up the fldigi-Dxlab gateway but every time I set the fldigi location and the –config-dir at the first setup screen and click save, it immediately launch’s the fldigi and log server and vanishes before I can get to the setup tab. How to I go through the setup other wise?? the fldigi and dxcommander appear to partially work but fldigi is not retaining the correct modes required by my FT-991A. When I use fldigi to qsy to freq/data-usb, it set the radio to freq/usb. I also am unable to setup the dxlab units since the gateway need to be set up first

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