YAESU FT-817 / CT-62 Remote Control

This installation guide shows you how to install a remote cable YAESU CT-62 or cheap clones available from the internet to CQRLOG (Linux) to a YAESU FT-817 QRP transceiver using CQRLOG ham radio software. This really great software is available for free from https://www.cqrlog.com/ . I tested everything in this article under Linux Ubuntu 20.04.

Since the FT-817 has the same remote control functions as the successor FT-818 everything in this text is valid for the FT-818.

The CT-62 converter cable usually comes with a driver CD-ROM which isn't necessary with major Linux distributions.

This CT-62 cable version for the FT-817 uses a widely available FTDI USB-to-Serial converter IC. The connector on one side fits into the rear ACC connector of the FT-817. The other connector is USB type.



Picture: YAESU CT-62 Remote Control Cable Clone


Installation

Before you start please take a minute to read the disclaimer at the end of this article. It is written in German language for legal reasons.

First of all we need to install the FTDI library for Linux.
Open a terminal in Linux and type this followed by ENTER:

sudo apt-get install libftdi1

Close all applications after installation and restart your computer.

Check if your computer recognize the CT-62 adaptor. Open a terminal and type:

dmesg | grep tty

The response should contain a line like this:

pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB0

If your Linux user account does not have permission to interface with the USB device (CT-62) then this might fix it:

sudo usermod -a -G dialout <user>

where <user> is your username on your computer.


Warning:
Be very careful with this. Your user name will be dialed out which means that sudo command won't work for you any longer due to limited user rights.

If so, then you need to fix this in a last step.

- switch off your computer
- restart your computer by pressing "upper case" key + power on
- your computer is in restore mode now
- go to the line with "restore" and press ENTER
- the initial menu ops up
- go to "root"
- press ENTER
- at this point type
    sudo usermod -aG sudo <user>
- press the TAB until it highlights OK
- press ENTER
- the computer reboots
- check the sudo privileges

At this point everything should be fine with the remote cable installation.


Configuring CQRLOG

Check the CAT baudrate of your FT-817 and check the baudrate of the RX/TX control of CQRLOG by pressing CRTL-p and go to the TRX remote control sub menu.



Disclaimer:
Die hier beschriebenen Prozeduren habe ich an meinem Computer ausprobiert. Ich gebe keine Garantie für die Richtigkeit und Funktionsfähigkeit der in diesem Beitrag erklärten Prozeduren auf anderen Computern. Bitte beachten Sie, dass Sie ohne das nötige Grundwissen keine Veränderungen an Ihrem Computer vornehmen sollten, weil dies zu einem instabilen Verhalten Ihres Computers führen kann oder das System unbrauchbar werden kann. Gehen Sie also mit großer Umsicht vor und informieren Sie sich vor der Ausführung der in diesem Beitrag genannten Prozeduren diesbezüglich auch aus anderen Quellen.

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