green heron rt-21 time outs

[jmeloranta]

For the most part green heron rt-21 works fine. However, I occasionally get time out and then I have to re-enable the rotor in qlog. I have changed the min speed setting on the controller to 9 and that helps a bit. At least the controller is no longer getting upset but qlog still gets time out. Is there any setting that could increase the timeout?

[aa5sh]

I experience the same thing at times. hamlib - rotctl is throwing those errors. They typically define soft vs hard errors. QLog suppresses the soft errors but will give the message and disconnect on the hard errors. I'm not sure what is going on with rotctl giving those errors, it's something with hamlib but I looked there and don't really see anything. So I'm not sure of the proper resolution.

[jmeloranta]

I think with small values for min speed around 5 I was seeing time out + the green heron controller getting up set as well (no motion flashing). Then increasing the value improved the situation. The controller no longer gets upset but qlog still reports occasionally time out. My guess is that the rotor controller is just slow to respond at times and this leads to this issue. I would imagine that it is possible to change the time out value somehow in hamlib?

[aa5sh]

Ok I actually just found a way to pass a longer timeout to the rotor from within QLog. I will test it some and it seems better I put in a pull request to extend it.

token_t timeout_token = rot_token_lookup(rot, "timeout");
if (timeout_token != -RIG_EINVAL) {
    int ret = rot_set_conf(rot, timeout_token, "2500");
    if (ret == RIG_OK) {
        qWarning() << "Rotator timeout set to 2500ms";
    } else {
        qWarning() << "rot_set_conf(timeout) failed:" << rigerror(ret);
    }
} else {
    qWarning() << "timeout token not found";
}

[jmeloranta]

If it is generic to all rotators then perhaps make it eventually user adjustable?

[aa5sh]

I'll let @foldynl decide if he would like to add the option and if he does I can add that to my PR. I know typically the goal in QLog is to limit the settings to bare minimum since it more often than not complicate things or causes other issues. On a side note I built a version with my timeout extension and left it running over the weekend. When I used the normal 46.2 version I would get timeouts pretty frequently. I switched to the other version the only one I got was when I killed my network for minute rewiring a few lines.

[foldynl]

As @aa5sh says, I think we'll leave it as a built-in constant. An average user wouldn’t know what a good option is. We’ll see — maybe later we’ll have to move it to Settings.

[jmeloranta]

Is this included in 0.47? If it is, I still got time out...

[foldynl]

Yes, the change is a part of 0.47 (

QLog/rotator/drivers/HamlibRotDrv.cpp

Line 153 in a4246af

if (timeout_token != -RIG_EINVAL) {

)

[aa5sh]

What OS are you using. You can do a debug to make sure the setting is being set for HamLib Rotor Control. Here is a sample from my Mac. Notice the last line says 'Rotator timeout set to 5000ms'. I would be interested if yours was set as well successfully.

michaelmorgan@Michaels-Mini ~ % export QT_LOGGING_RULES=qlog.rotator.driver.hamlibdrv.*.debug=true michaelmorgan@Michaels-Mini ~ % cd /Applications michaelmorgan@Michaels-Mini /Applications % ./Qlog.app/Contents/MacOS/qlog 06:43:18.598 [DEBUG ] [0x16e503000] [qlog.rotator.driver.hamlibdrv.function.entered] *** [virtual bool HamlibRotDrv::open():../../rotator/drivers/HamlibRotDrv.cpp:115] 06:43:18.598 [DEBUG ] [0x16e503000] [qlog.rotator.driver.hamlibdrv.runtime] Waiting for Rot Drv mutex [virtual bool HamlibRotDrv::open():../../rotator/drivers/HamlibRotDrv.cpp:117] 06:43:18.598 [DEBUG ] [0x16e503000] [qlog.rotator.driver.hamlibdrv.runtime] Using Rot Drv [virtual bool HamlibRotDrv::open():../../rotator/drivers/HamlibRotDrv.cpp:117] 06:43:18.598 [DEBUG ] [0x16e503000] [qlog.rotator.driver.hamlibdrv.runtime] Rotator timeout set to 5000ms [virtual bool HamlibRotDrv::open():../../rotator/drivers/HamlibRotDrv.cpp:156]

Here is the info for setting debug output for the different OSs https://github.com/foldynl/QLog/wiki/Debug-Log-Level notice in my command above I filtered just for rotor info.

[jmeloranta]

On 12/8/25 07:00, Michael Morgan wrote: What OS are you using. You can do a debug to make sure the setting is being set for HamLib Rotor Control. Here is a sample from my Mac. Notice the last line says 'Rotator timeout set to 5000ms'. I would be interested if yours was set as well successfully.

This is on Arch Linux. I do see the following in the output: Rotator timeout set to 5000ms [virtual bool HamlibRotDrv::open():rotator/drivers/HamlibRotDrv.cpp:156] The strange thing is that it does not happen every time. Even when I turn the antenna by a large amount. But it looks like the probability of getting time out is greater for large turns.

[foldynl]

@jmeloranta : Have you tried controlling the rotator and retrieving data using rotctl to make sure the issue is not in Hamlib itself?