I was just on the Flex Radio net and there were some questions about the Flex Radio Wiki. I thought that it might be worthwhile to provide everyone with more background, an explanation, and an update.
*Background* The Flex Radio Wiki (http://FlexRadioWiki.com) came about as the result of a discussion between Neal Campbell, K3NC, Tim Ellison, K4TME, and me, Brian Lloyd, WB6RQN. The discussion was about how to best present information about how the Flex radios work and how to use them with popular external software. Tim has done a great job with the Knowledge Base but the Knowledge Base has a characteristic that makes it great as a reference and not so great as a training tool -- you have to know what you are looking for in order to enter the proper keyword to find it. The idea behind the Wiki is to provide a framework -- a Table of Contents as it were -- that helps new users navigate the information to find what they need even if they don't know ahead of time exactly what they are looking for. The Flex Radio Wiki is hosted by Neal on his website. It is not a work of Flex Radio and is not directly supported by Flex Radio. It currently represents the work of Neal and me. But the Flex Radio Wiki is not like the KB in another, very important, way: anyone can add to or update any part of the Wiki at any time. I have had some people send me things to include in the Wiki but I keep pointing out to them that they can add the information themselves and thus not have to wait until I get around to adding the material in. I have had people indicate concern about letting just anyone add anything at any time. While it seems like this could be a problem, it turns out that it rarely, if ever, is. Experience with Wikis has shown that they tend to end up with very good information because the people who care about the content keep going back to correct and improve the content. Even if someone maliciously damages or enters incorrect information, someone else quickly comes along and fixes it. If such graffiti is not allowed to stay, the graffiti artists quickly leave for greener pastures. *How To **Use the Flex Radio Wiki* Using the Wiki is simplicity itself. Just enter the URL http://FlexRadioWiki.com in your browser which will take you to the Table of Contents page. Anything in blue or magenta is a link to more information. Just click on a link to go to that page. Pages can be local, i.e. part of the Wiki itself, or they can be links to material someplace else on the web. *How To Make Changes to Existing Pages* Making changes to an existing page is simpler than adding a new page. For that reason I have tried to create dummy "placeholder" pages for material that I know needs to be there and that I will add later. That way if someone else wants to add material immediately, they can, and without having to learn how to create a new page first. Editing an existing page in the Wiki is very simple. At the bottom of every page there is a link that reads "EditPage". Just click on this link and you will find yourself in a simple editor that will allow you to add or edit text and links. It has all the basic formatting functions for links, headings, bullet lists, number lists, etc. The abbreviated instructions are listed at the bottom of the editor window in case you forget. There is also a link to a page with a full set of editing commands if you want to know how to do more. *How to Add A New Page* Creating new content is a little more complex as you have to create a new page and then link to it from the Table of Contents. Even so, it is still pretty simple. The first step is to create the new page. You do this by simply visiting the page directly by name and editing. Page names are usually string of words with each word capitalized or separated by hyphens or underscores, e.g. MyNewPage, my-new-page, My_new_page. You would then visit this page with one of the following URLs: http://flexradiowiki.com/index.php?MyNewPage http://flexradiowiki.com/index.php?my-new-page http://flexradiowiki.com/index.php?My_new_page Notice the "index.php?" after the name. Everything after the question mark is the page name. Once you navigate to the new page, just edit it once to create it permanently. (That is how I created the placeholder pages that don't have any content yet.) Once you have created the new page you just need to reference it someplace else, preferably in the Table of Contents page. Links are enclosed in square brackets '[' and ']'. For instance, to create a link to your new page just enclose its name in brackets, e.g. [MyNewPage]. If you want to give your link other, more descriptive, text, separate it with a vertical bar, e.g.: [Here is my new page|MyNewPage] What will show up for the link in the ToC is, "Here is my new page," instead of, "MyNewPage." For links to other pages not on the Wiki itself, just include the entire URL, e.g. [http://someothersite.com] *Some Ideas On The Structure* One of the things I would like to do is to reduce redundant information. Every how-to for a digital mode requires a discussion of how to set up VAC and one of the virtual serial port programs, e.g. vspMgr. Since that information is common to all the programs I have pulled them out into separate sections. That way when you want to describe setting up VAC and vspMgr, com0com, or Vcom, you can just refer back to those sections rather than rewriting them in your own instructions. That way if VAC or the virtual serial port programs change you don't have to go back and edit all the instructions for digital mode programs. *Standardization* One thing that is going to help a lot is standardization of things like VAC virtual cables and which virtual serial ports get used for what. Here are the ones that I use: 1. Virtual Cable 1 is used to send baseband receiver data from PowerSDR to a client program, e.g. fldigi or HRD. 2. Virtual Cable 2 is used to send baseband transmit data from the client program to PowerSDR. 3. Serial port pairs are defined using a difference of 10 in the com port name, e.g. COM7/COM17, COM8/COM18, etc. 4. Com port numbers below 10 are reserved for client programs. PowerSDR can handle com port numbers above 10 but some client programs, e.g. WSPR, cannot. So when setting up CAT to communicate between WSPR and PowerSDR, the port connected to WSPR is COM8 and the port connect to CAT in PowerSDR is COM18. *Closing* Hopefully this will motivate you to start adding your own experience and knowledge to the Wiki. There are many people out there using Flex radios who have extensive experience in certain types of operation, e.g. Contesting, SO2R, RTTY, DX hunting, digital modes, EME, EmComm, etc. *PLEASE* add your knowledge so that others may benefit. -- Brian Lloyd, WB6RQN/J79BPL 3191 Western Dr. Cameron Park, CA 95682 br...@lloyd.com +1.767.617.1365 (Dominica) +1.931.492.6776 (USA) (+1.931.4.WB6RQN) _______________________________________________ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kc.flexradio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flexradio.com/
