WoAD and VARA FM

[Martin Spreng]

Is anybody running successfully a VARA FM session with WoAD? I am trying to do it, but I get constantly an error message ' Failed to connect to TCP/IP VARA server (192.168.0.41:8300,8301)... after 5000 ms'.

VARA FM is running on a PC under WIN10 (22H2), WoAD is the latest version 1.4.71. The IP Address and port is double checked and correct. With the same PC and UZ7HO soundmodem, and same IP address, Packet Radio sessions run perfectly.
Martin HB9AUR

[Thomas KF7RSF]

Works as expected for me, Martin. I know that doesn't help, but confirms it can work if stars are aligned!

Can you PING the PC from your Android device at that address?

Thomas  /WDT

KF7rsf

[Martin Spreng]

Thanks for the feedback, Thomas. Always good to know that it is possible to make it work.

Did not test ping, as the successfull Packet Radio session proofs that the PC is accessible via the network.

Martin HB9AUR

[Thomas KF7RSF]

Martin and Jose,

Just to state the obvious so it is not overlooked - are you trying to connect to a "standalone" running copy of VARA-FM, or to a copy currently engaged as a Gateway mode?

VARA-FM will not share the tcp/ip port 8300/8301 with two applications.

Thomas

KF7RSF

[Jose Guzman]

I have my vara fm as gateway at home, so I need to run a basic vara fm in computer and do the rest over phone then?

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[Thomas KF7RSF]

Correct - the copy of VARA-FM running as part of the Gateway suite is using ip port 8300/8301 to communicate with RMS Packet, and will not accept another connection from WoAD.

I will have to test and see if a second copy of VARA-FM can be installed and configured to use a different ip port pair, and be connected to the same radio. It will depend on how you are doing PTT .

Thomas  /KF7RSF

[Jose Guzman]

That would be great and clear a lot of questions indeed.

Thanks

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[Martin Spreng]

Good news! The VARA FM and VARA sessions are working now. It was the WIN10 firewall that blocked the communication between WoAD and the modem. I should have thought of that much earlier...
With ARDOP, I am still struggling. When I disable the firewall completely, the session immediately ends with an error message in the log: isConnected failed: ECONNREFUSED ().  Will continue trying.

Thanks for all the hints and suggestions
Martin HB9AUR

[Jose Guzman]

Should I turn off the firewall? Still given me the error message

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[Martin Spreng]

Yes, just for a test, turn it off. Turn it on again. If turning off helped, then enter the VARA FM application in the exception list of the firewall.

Martin

[Martin Spreng]

As mentioned earlier, while the VARA HF and VARA FM sessions work fine, I still was not successfull with an ARDOP session. The sessions terminates immediately with this error report: isConnected failed: ECONNREFUSED ()

I have captured the two TCP/IP messages exchanged between WoAD and ARDOP with WireShark. Maybe the author can find out what is wrong. The messages are in the attached screenshots. The port used is 8200.

Martin HB9AUR

[Andrew Walker]

Hi Martin,

With ARDOP there are always two ports used. The command port, which
can be specified in the settings and the data port, the port number of
which is always one more than that specified for the command port.
The E_CONNREFUSED message is very low level, so one possibility is
that you still have a firewall issue - make sure you've opened both
8200 and 8201.

All the best,

Andrew

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[Martin Spreng]

Andrew

Thank you for your comments. However:
- There is no firewall-issue, as it is completely disabled for the test.
- Not only ARDOP, but also VARA use two ports. VARA is working fine, even with the firewall on with an exception for VARA.
- Under WIN10, you just declare an entire application to be excepted from the firewall. No way to select/deselect individual ports.
So still wondering what the problem might be...

Martin HB9AUR

[Andrew Walker]

Hi Martin,

I find that I have to set ARDOP to use an explicit IP address (i.e.
not 127.0.0.1) and then stop and restart ARDOP before a connection can
be made.

If that doesn't work for you it might be useful to send the
ARDOP_Win_TNC.ini file, as well as the exported session settings and
log from WoAD.

All the best,

Andrew

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[Martin Spreng]

Andrew, it works now! Strange behaviour of ARDOP, but using the explicit IP address instead of 127.0.0.1 brought the solution. The firewall is ON, with ARDOP as an exception (all ports open).

The ARDOP session runs fine, but at the end of it, ARDOP is closed. I think WoAD should only end the session.

Tnx agn for the help and 73

Martin HB9AUR

[Gunnar René Øie (gunnar)]

Yes, WoAD should send a "DISCONNECT" not a "CLOSE" to ARDOP - the former just does an orderly disconnection, while the latter shuts down ARDOP completely, so you have to go into the (possibly headless) PC and restart ARDOP after every session.

I submitted this as a bug report.

73 de Gunnar LA9XSA

[WoAD Support]

ARDOP_Win appears to close when the TCP/IP connection to it is closed. Thus, when WoAD ends an outgoing ARDOP session (and terminates the TCP/IP connection) ARDOP_Win will close.  Even establishing a telnet connection (using PuTTY or other telnet client) to ARDOP_Win and then closing the connection will cause ARDOP_WIn to close.

The same behavior can be seen from Winlink Express when you close the ARDOP Winlink Session window. However, the impact of this is less significant as Winlink Express can automatically restart ARDOP_Win when a new ARDOP Winlink Session is opened.

It would be nice if ARDOP_Win had a setting to remain open when the TCP/IP connection is dropped, but that seems unlikely to happen. There doesn't seem to be an elegant (or even inelegant) solution to this but let me know if you can think of one.

All the best,

Andrew

VA7YAA

[Gunnar René Øie (gunnar)]

Thanks - can confirm this happens when I shut down pat too, but I didn't notice because pat keeps the telnet connection open after each session has run. Having the option to leave the telnet session in a suspended state could be a partial solution? Otherwise I could make a script that runs on the host machine that re-launches ARDOP_Win every time it closes, or perhaps when launchd detects a connection attempt to the network port.

Can ardopc or Ardop2 be used? I see ardopc has a Raspberry Pi version.

73 de LA9XSA