FlexRADIO DAX and CAT applications are now available for macOS
DAX and CAT control for FlexRadio 6000 series radios is now availabe for MacOS.
xDAX and xCAT were written by Mario Illgen (dl3lsm) as helper applications for the FlexRadioTM 6000 series running on macOS (10.10. and higher). Their purpose is to provide a way for Digital Mode Software (Fldigi, WSJT-X) to access the digital audio data (DAX) of the FlexRadioTM which is transferred via the Network.
xDAX and xCAT mimic their Windows counterparts closely but there are some differences as well. The main difference is that xDAX does not provide a direct interface to other applications as a sound device but puts and gets data to and from sound devices. So a virtual audio cable application is needed (like Loopback from Rogue Amoeba or SoundSiphon from Static Z Software) .
Please be aware that xDAX is not a GUI application for the FlexRadioTM. So you do need a GUI client like SmartSDR for iOS or dogparkSDR. (xDAX is supported in dogparkSDR version 1.8;, beta version is available for download now.)
Both the xDAX and xCAT applications are being made available “as is“. Mario has created xDAX and xCAT for his own needs and enjoyment. As such, he is not obliged to give support or provide enhancements for other use cases. He’ll try his best to help, but keep in mind that professional and personal commitments limit his available time to provide support.
Mario owns a Flex-6300 and all of his testing is done using this model. He says that there *might* be issues with other models which he is not aware of, though MacHamradio have tested xDAX and xCAT on a Flex 6700 without any issues.
The image files include a short PDF document which should help you in setting up and using these applications. Please read these documents to learn about the differences to the equivalent apps for Windows and if they will help you in your operating style and environment.
If you want to have a look at the PDFs without downloading and opening the image files you can access them here:
Both xDAX and xCAT require macOS 10.10 (Yosemite) or higher.
Mario has created a blog at http://dl3lsm.blogspot.de where he’ll post information about future updates to the applications.
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Updates to this story:
July 26, 2017: Note: xDAX and xCAT do not currently work with the newly released Flex SmartSDR v2.0.
August 2, 2017: Note: xDAX and xCAT version 0.8.1 has been released, and does support SmartSDR v2.0.