Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been progressing the development of an Expert amplifier simulator as mentioned in previous posts. It’s starting to take shape nicely and is capable of simulating Standby and Operate modes for all but the Expert 1k-fa. Its support is the next thing I’ll be advancing.

Right now I really need to simulate multiple simultaneous connections to stress test the data comms components of SPE Expert Controller Plus so I’m focused on implementing simulation of Standby and Operate modes. Other features such as Set mode are less important to me at this time.

The simulator is a C++ application written for Linux and implements a TCP socket server thus allowing it to simultaneously simulate a pretty much unlimited number of amplifiers. Each connection/amplifier simulated has its own UDP command channel over which many parameters of the simulation many be adjusted. For example, switched into Transmit mode, Operate mode, Forward and Reverse power set etc.

The good news is that SPE Expert Controller Plus has run flawlessly with the 7 simultaneous connections I’ve so far tried and given the low CPU usage I’m happy it would handle many more. I’m aware that serial/USB comms is not as CPU efficient as TCP/IP comms but I don’t foresee any issues. The simulator has identified a few items that don’t seem to be working just yet in SPE Expert Controller Plus so it’s definetly proving valuable.

Below are some screen captures from a little earlier this evening that give a flavour of the new App and some of its windows. The text ‘cmd: 5117’ etc is the UDP command channel on which the simulator is listening for commands.

The screen capture below is of the usage/help information output by the simulator. I’m including it here just to further describe its capabilities.