[hpsdr] SteppIR and Hermes

[Vincenzo Capuano]

The SteppIR antennas require to be connected to the CAT to know the 
frequency in use and tune the antenna.

With Hermes and PowerSDR that is fine as PSDR supports a CAT interface.

But, I understand (or I haven't been able to find it) that cuSDR does 
not currently have support for a CAT interface.

To address this, I was thinking to write a simple CAT interface with a 
PIC that reads the frequency from J15 in parallel with the 
amplifier/Alex and puts the frequency on a serial port for the SteppIR 
controller to read it.

A similar approach was used in the HELIOS 
(http://openhpsdr.org/wiki/index.php?title=HELIOS) project that was 
reading the frequency from the Atlas bus.

I have a few questions:

1. Does Hermes provide the current frequency in use information on J15? 
Or on another port?
2. Is there a better way to get this information?
3. Is this something somebody is already working on/planning to do it?

73,
Vincenzo - IZ0RUS