It was built the other way round on a misreading of two screenshots: the pattern
held {value} and the per-relay boxes held numbers to drop into it. The ask was
simpler and better — {value} is the name typed in Relay labels, so a switch
addressed by antenna name is one pattern instead of eight URLs:
http://10.10.10.100/relay?on={value} relay 1 named Ant1 → ?on=Ant1
Renaming the antenna re-addresses it, and the name on the button and the name on
the wire cannot drift apart because they are the same string. It works in the
per-relay URLs and in the patterns alike, so the per-relay boxes go back to
holding URLs and nothing about them changes meaning any more.
The label is percent-encoded with %20 rather than "+" for a space: "+" is a
space only in a query string and a literal plus in a path, and this can land in
either half of a URL.
{value} on a relay with no label would send "?on=", an empty parameter that most
boards answer with a cheerful 200 and no movement. The driver refuses it and
names the label as what is missing; the editor warns while it is being typed,
beside the empty box rather than after an antenna fails to switch. The labels
also join the driver's cache key — they are part of the wire format now.
buildDeviceDriver had no case for "httpgen", so the generic board fell through
to the WebSwitch driver: it polled an address it had never been given, reported
itself offline, greyed out every relay button, and sent none of the configured
URLs. Nothing in the interface said so — the board was configured, saved and
listed, and simply did nothing. deviceKey did not cover the URLs either, so once
that is fixed, correcting a typo in one would still have handed back the cached
driver holding the old address until a restart.
Two shapes of home-made switch could not be described at all:
- a bit-mask board whose four URLs differ by one character
(/Set0/1, /Set0/2, /Set0/4, /Set0/8) — {value} in the pattern now takes the
number from the per-relay box, keeping the address in one place;
- a board numbering its channels from zero — {relay-1}, since giving up the
pattern for eight hand-typed URLs was the only alternative.
The pattern decides what the per-relay boxes hold, and the grid says which as
soon as {value} is typed: guessing per box ("does this look like a URL?") would
change meaning on a typo, which is not a thing to do to something wired to an
antenna. A URL typed without a scheme gets http:// like the named boards get
from relayBase; https:// is passed through untouched.
Host and the connection test are gone for this type. It has no address of its
own — its relays may each live on a different box — and no status to read, so a
test could only ever answer "OK, 4 relays". Save was greyed out without a host,
which made a complete configuration of four full URLs impossible to store.
Cluster filters no longer persist across launches. A band lock set weeks earlier
is invisible to whoever set it: the counter reads 76 spots live, the grid is
empty, and the search goes to the cluster instead. Nobody loses work by
re-ticking a chip. Grouping and the panel state still persist — they change how
spots look, never whether they appear.
An operator was about to build band→relay mapping into the custom URL rows.
It already exists, and better: relay auto-control has a per-relay "band" rule
driving webswitch, KMTronic, Dingtian, Denkovi and USB boards. It holds state
so a relay is only commanded when its wanted position changed, reads the
boards live before the first apply so it does not re-command one already in
place, and carries per-relay labels. A URL fired on a band change has none of
that, and would have been a second definition of "which antenna on which band"
— the drift that cost us a week on counties.
So the gap was only the hardware: a hand-made switch is none of the five named
types. It is now the sixth, "HTTP relay": an ON URL and an OFF URL, either as
one pattern with {relay} substituted, or one pair per relay. The per-relay
form is the reason it exists — these boxes often have URLs with nothing in
common between channels (…/FF0101 and …/FF0201), which no pattern can express.
Status is remembered rather than read: most have no endpoint worth trusting.
The cost is stated in the code and the panel — after a restart every relay is
re-commanded once, which is harmless on a board with no memory and far better
than assuming an antenna is already selected.
And the Connections panel now says so, exactly where the wrong choice is made:
picking a band change with a URL transport shows a note pointing at Station
Control. The URL transport stays — a lookup pushed to a webhook or a QSO to a
dashboard is an event, not a state, and Station Control has no place for it.
Network relay boards (WebSwitch/KMTronic/Dingtian) were always reached at
http://<host>, so a board on the LAN behind a reverse proxy — the common remote
setup where the operator's 80/443 already go to Nginx Proxy Manager — couldn't be
reached from outside. relayBase() now keeps a scheme the operator supplies
(https://relay.example.com, optional sub-path) and only defaults to http:// for a
bare host/host:port. UI hint + test added.
The station-control code rebuilt a fresh driver on every status poll and every
relay set. Stateful boards (Denkovi FTDI D2XX, USB-serial) hold an OS handle only
one opener can own, so the first poll opened the board and leaked the handle, and
every poll after failed with 'device in use' — the relays greyed out a second
after Save and auto-control never switched. Drivers are now cached per device and
reused, closed on config change. Adds a Test-connection button + detect feedback
in the device editor (reported by VK4MA).
- Denkovi (FT245 D2XX) now selectable as 4 or 8 relays (a 4-relay board just uses
the low nibble); NewDenkovi takes a count, driven by the device's Channels.
- New 'usbrelay' backend: cheap CH340/LCUS USB-serial boards over a COM port
using the common A0 protocol ([0xA0][relay][state][checksum]); write-only, so
Status is a shadow. Channel count configurable (1/2/4/8/16).
- StationDevice gains Channels; deviceRelayCount() drives label/relay counts for
the variable-size types. Device editor: channel selector + COM-port picker
(usbrelay) / FTDI-serial (denkovi).
Both untested on hardware; the A0 command set / Denkovi bit order may need a tweak
after a live test.
Third relay device alongside WebSwitch and KMTronic. Despite enumerating as a
COM port, this board is driven via FTDI D2XX synchronous bit-bang (one byte = 8
relays, bit 0 = relay 1), not serial ASCII — so we load ftd2xx.dll at runtime
(no CGO) and call FT_OpenEx/FT_SetBitMode/FT_Write, addressing the board by its
FTDI serial (e.g. DAE0006K), exactly like the vendor tool. Windows-only (stub
elsewhere); ListDenkoviDevices enumerates connected serials for the picker.
Wired into relaydev (Count/Status/Set), app.go (deviceDriver/relayCountFor/type
whitelist + ListDenkoviDevices binding), and the Station device editor (new type
+ FTDI-serial field with Detect). Untested on hardware; bit order / on-polarity
may need a flip after a live test.
rouggy