Aether-gate

Put any radio into AetherSDR.

Aether-gate is a universal bridge that presents any radio — an Icom or Kenwood transceiver, an RTL-SDR/Airspy dongle, anything you can read — to AetherSDR as if it were a FlexRadio. AE speaks exactly one protocol (FlexRadio's); the gate does the translation, so AE keeps a single, clean ingest boundary and the zoo of radio sources lives outside it.

You pick your radio on a web page, hit Start, and it appears in AetherSDR's radio chooser with a live panadapter and waterfall.

An Icom IC-9700 bridged into AetherSDR — offered exactly the bands it can tune.

Status: working, but very young. Proven end-to-end on real hardware — an Icom IC-9700 (LAN, 2m/70cm/23cm) and a Kenwood TS-450S (CAT + SDR dongle for spectrum) both run live in AetherSDR with waterfall and control, and a Raspberry Pi runs both at once as a boot-time appliance. That said, this is early software: expect a few growing pains — rough edges, radios not yet covered, and things that need broader testing than one bench can give. Bug reports, fixes, and new radio adapters are all very welcome. Licensed GPL-3.0-or-later.

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What it does

• Presents a radio to AetherSDR as a Flex 6000. AE discovers it on the LAN and connects exactly as it would to a real FlexRadio — panadapter, waterfall, slices, frequency/mode control.
• Two ways to get spectrum, chosen per radio:
  • radios with their own spectrum scope (e.g. Icom LAN rigs) stream it directly;
  • radios without one (most CAT transceivers) get their waterfall from a cheap SDR dongle tapped off-air, steered to follow the rig's dial.
• Declares its real bands. A gateway rig that must impersonate a FLEX-6700 would otherwise be offered a full HF band menu it can't tune. Aether-gate tells AE the radio's true band set (via the bands= discovery key), so an IC-9700 shows only 2m/440/23cm. (Needs an AetherSDR build with radio-declared-band support.)
• Runs headless as a service — on a Raspberry Pi it's a flash-and-go appliance; each radio is its own systemd service, always ready in AE's chooser.

⚠️ Receive & control only — no transmit yet. Aether-gate does frequency/mode control and spectrum/waterfall/audio receive. It does not key the radio. If you press TX/MOX/TUNE in AetherSDR, AE's UI will light up as if transmitting, but no RF is produced — the gate acknowledges the transmit command and reports "transmitting" back to AE, but never asserts PTT on the rig. This applies to every radio family below (Icom LAN, hamlib/CAT, dongles). PTT wiring + arm/tx-band safety is the next planned feature; until then treat the gate as a receiver + controller. See How it works for the detail.

Supported radios

All entries below are receive + control. The Status column is about how well the RX/control path works; none of these transmit yet (see the note above).

Family	How	Spectrum	Status
Icom LAN (IC-9700, RS-BA1-style)	native LAN / CI-V	radio's own scope	✅ proven (IC-9700)
Icom IC-7300 USB	USB CI-V + USB Audio CODEC	radio's own scope	✅ proven RX/control only
Kenwood / Yaesu / Elecraft / Icom-USB (CAT)	hamlib (rigctld)	SDR dongle, CAT-steered	✅ proven (Kenwood TS-450S); other hamlib rigs = same path
SoapySDR dongles (RTL-SDR, Airspy, SDRplay)	SoapySDR	the dongle itself	✅
sim	built-in test patterns	synthetic	✅ (no hardware — for trying it out)

See RADIO_SUPPORT.md for the two-axis (control + spectrum) model and how to add a radio.

Bridged radios appear in AetherSDR's chooser by name, alongside real FlexRadios.

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Quick start

Windows: the installer

Download Aether-gate-Setup-<version>.exe from the latest release, run it, and click Next → Next → Finish. Then open Aether-gate Setup from the Start menu: the Setup page opens in your browser. Pick your radio and hit Start.

It installs for you only and asks for no administrator password. (The wizard's first page also offers "all users", which does need one.)

If Windows or your antivirus objects. The installer is not code-signed yet, so it looks "unknown" — a new program from a small project, rather than anything wrong with it:

• "Windows protected your PC" → More info → Run anyway.
• Norton, McAfee and friends may block or quarantine it outright on reputation alone. Either restore it from quarantine, or use the portable zip on the same release page: Aether-gate-<version>-windows-portable.zip — unzip it anywhere and run AetherGate.exe. No installer, no admin, and nothing written outside that folder and %USERPROFILE%\.aether-gate.
• Every download has a .sha256 beside it if you want to check it arrived intact: certutil -hashfile Aether-gate-Setup-0.5.1.exe SHA256 (PowerShell: Get-FileHash).

Then:

• Windows will ask about the firewall the first time the gate runs. Say Allow, or AetherSDR will not see the radio. (The all-users install can add that rule for you instead.)
• AetherSDR on the same PC? Usually nothing to do — the gate binds its own address, so it and AE coexist on 4992 (verified on Windows 11 with AE on the same laptop, 2026-09-22). Only if the gate reports the port in use, or AE never lists it, set Network / advanced → Port to 5992.
• The Windows build covers Icom LAN radios (IC-9700, IC-705…), RTL-SDR dongles and the test sim. Kenwood/Yaesu CAT is still to come.

⚠️ RTL-SDR dongle on Windows? Run Zadig first

Windows hands a fresh dongle to its TV-tuner driver, and no SDR program can open it until that is changed. This is not an Aether-gate setting — every Windows SDR needs it, once per dongle.

1. Download Zadig and run it (no install needed).
2. Options → List All Devices.
3. In the drop-down pick "Bulk-In, Interface (Interface 0)" — usually shown as RTL2838UHIDIR.
4. Set the driver box on the right to WinUSB, then press Replace Driver.
5. Unplug the dongle and plug it back in.

⚠️ Pick the right line in that drop-down. Zadig replaces the driver of whatever is selected, so choosing your mouse or keyboard there will stop it working until you put the driver back.

Symptom if you skip it: the Setup page starts, the dongle is listed by Windows, and Aether-gate says no devices found.

Raspberry Pi, or a Linux box

Flash the ready-made Pi image from the release: see PI_APPLIANCE.md. On any Linux machine or NAS with Docker, a prebuilt container is published for every release: ghcr.io/nigelfenton/aether-gate:full (every adapter) or :lan (Icom LAN only). See docs/DOCKER.md.

macOS

No packaged Mac build yet — you run it from the source. Two commands of setup, then one to start it. Verified on a Mac mini (Apple Silicon, macOS 26.6.2) with Homebrew installed.

brew install python numpy                  # see both notes below — this is not optional
git clone https://github.com/nigelfenton/Aether-gate.git
cd Aether-gate
python3 -m aether_gate                     # opens the Setup page in your browser

That runs Icom LAN radios (IC-9700, IC-705…) and the test sim. For the other radio families:

brew install hamlib                        # Kenwood / Yaesu / any CAT rig (installs rigctld)
brew install soapysdr soapyrtlsdr          # RTL-SDR dongles, and the IF-tap spectrum for CAT rigs

An IC-7300, or an IC-9700 over USB? Those talk CI-V over a USB serial port, which needs pyserial — and Homebrew has no formula for it. Run the gate from a virtual environment built to keep Homebrew's packages visible:

python3 -m venv --system-site-packages ~/.aether-gate
~/.aether-gate/bin/pip install pyserial
~/.aether-gate/bin/python -m aether_gate

--system-site-packages matters: without it the environment cannot see Homebrew's numpy or SoapySDR either.

Check what it found: the Setup page's Known info / status link lists numpy, SoapySDR, hamlib and any dongles it can see.

Why brew install python numpy, and not the obvious alternatives:

• ⚠️ The Python that comes with macOS is too old. It is 3.9, the gate needs 3.10 or newer, and the failure is not a helpful message but TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for |: 'type' and 'NoneType'. Homebrew's python is 3.14, and once installed, python3 in a new Terminal window is Homebrew's.
• ⚠️ pip install numpy is refused on Homebrew's Python: error: externally-managed-environment. That is Homebrew's policy, not a fault — use brew install numpy, as above. (If you prefer a virtual environment, create it with --system-site-packages, or it will not see SoapySDR either.)
• ⚠️ Whatever installs SoapySDR decides which Python can use it. Homebrew builds its binding for Homebrew's own Python, so running the gate with /usr/bin/python3 gives ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'SoapySDR' even though the dongle support is installed. Use the same python3 throughout.
• RTL-SDR Blog V4: Homebrew ships Osmocom's librtlsdr (2.0.3), not the RTL-SDR Blog fork that deploy/install-pi.sh builds for the Pi. Whether that drives a V4 properly has not been tested here; if a V4 misbehaves on macOS, build the Blog fork and point SoapySDR at it.
• Unlike Windows, macOS needs no driver-swapping step (no Zadig equivalent).

Try it with no hardware

python -m aether_gate --adapter sim --ae <your-AE-ip>

A synthetic radio appears in AetherSDR's chooser. (Same host as AE? add --port 5992 so it doesn't clash with AE's own :4992.)

The Setup page — pick a real radio in your browser

Just run it with no arguments:

python -m aether_gate            # opens the Setup UI + your browser
python -m aether_gate --setup    # same, explicit
python -m aether_gate --setup --no-browser   # headless: just prints the URL

This opens the Radio Setup & launcher at http://localhost:8730/. The first visit asks you to choose a setup PIN — the page can start radios and keeps their logins, so it is not left open to everyone on the LAN (forgot it? delete ~/.aether-gate/setup-auth.json and reload). Then pick your radio family (Icom / Kenwood / dongle / sim), fill in its connection fields, and hit Start. Save it as a profile with "connect on launch" and it comes up on its own next time.

The Setup page (:8730) — choose a radio, fill its fields, Start.

The Radio type dropdown picks the adapter family — Icom (LAN), Kenwood (CAT), an SDR dongle, or the built-in sim:

Pick the adapter family from the Radio type dropdown.

The Setup page links to a Known Info / status page (/known) — a turn-it-on health check: is your advertise IP reachable, are the dependencies present, which dongles/serial ports are found, and can each saved profile's radio actually be reached.

The Diagnostics page — what the gate sees from the radio

Every running gate serves a live diagnostics page on its control port (--ctl-port, default 8731): open

http://<gate-ip>:<ctl-port>/radio

for a 1-Hz view of the radio as the gate sees it — link/auth state, VFO frequency + mode, scope frame rate, S-meter, tune counters. There's also raw JSON at /diagnostics if you want to script against it.

The diagnostics page (/radio on the gate's ctl-port) — the radio as the gate sees it.

Command line (the power path)

Anything the Setup page can launch, you can also run directly from the command line:

# Icom IC-9700 over its LAN interface
python -m aether_gate --adapter icom9700 \
    --radio-ip 10.0.0.7 --user <net-user> --pass <net-pass> \
    --ae <AE-ip> --ctl-port 8732

# Icom IC-7300 over USB CI-V + USB audio, RX/control only
python -m aether_gate --adapter icom7300 \
    --usb-civ-port /dev/serial/by-id/usb-Silicon_Labs_CP2102_USB_to_UART_Bridge_Controller_IC-7300_03031092-if00-port0 \
    --usb-civ-baud 115200 \
    --ae <AE-ip> --ctl-port 8731

# Kenwood TS-450S: hamlib CAT + an RTL-SDR-Blog V4 dongle for the waterfall
python -m aether_gate --adapter kenwood --kw-model TS-450S \
    --rig-serial-port /dev/ttyUSB0 --rig-baud 4800 \
    --soapy-driver rtlsdr --gain 40 \
    --ae <AE-ip> --ctl-port 8734

python -m aether_gate --help lists every option.

Configuration via environment

Every flag also has an environment variable: AETHER_GATE_ + the option name in upper case, underscores for dashes. Precedence is CLI flag > environment > built-in default, so an explicit flag always wins.

AETHER_GATE_ADAPTER=icom9700 \
AETHER_GATE_RADIO_IP=10.0.0.7 \
AETHER_GATE_USER=<net-user> \
AETHER_GATE_PW=<net-pass> \
AETHER_GATE_RX_ONLY=1 \
python -m aether_gate

This is aimed at unattended hosts — a systemd unit or a container can be configured without a hand-edited command line, and without a password sitting on one (where it is visible to every user in ps).

Two things worth knowing:

• The name follows the option's destination, not always its spelling. --pass is stored as pw, so it is AETHER_GATE_PW — not AETHER_GATE_PASS.
• On/off flags accept 1/true/yes/on; 0, false, no, off and empty all mean off, so AETHER_GATE_RX_ONLY=0 leaves transmit alone rather than enabling the lock.

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Run it on a Raspberry Pi (the appliance)

A Pi is the natural home: it runs unattended, survives reboots, and can serve several radios at once. See PI_APPLIANCE.md for the flash-and-go install (deploy/install-pi.sh) and deploy/systemd/ for the service units (each radio a boot-enabled service; systemctl stop shuts it down cleanly).

Until AetherSDR gains multi-radio connections, AE connects to one gate at a time — so several radios can sit in the chooser and you pick one like changing rigs on the desk. When AE grows multi-radio, the same Pi already serves them all.

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How it works

Aether-gate reuses flex-sim's proven FlexRadio-emulation core (discovery + FlexLib control + VITA-49 streaming) and adds a per-radio adapter in front of it. Each source normalises to one Flex stream before AE, so AE only ever implements one ingest path.

  your radio ──►  RadioAdapter  ──►  Flex-protocol engine  ──VITA-49 / FlexLib──►  AetherSDR
   (Icom LAN,      (per family)       (from flex-sim)
    CAT+dongle,
    SoapySDR)

Writing an adapter is small: subclass aether_gate.adapters.base.RadioAdapter, set provides, implement one source method, and register it. See adapters/sim.py for the reference and DESIGN.md / RADIO_SUPPORT.md for the architecture.

Transmit: guarded on the Icom LAN path, still unwired everywhere else. When AE keys TX it sends xmit 1 (not transmit set mox, which carries state). The engine routes that to the adapter's key_tx() where one exists — and today only the Icom LAN adapter defines it. On that path the gate really does assert CI-V 1C 00 and real RF leaves the rig, behind a stack of guards: an arm latch, a TX-band whitelist (2m/70cm — 23cm is refused outright), a bare-carrier guard, a 10 s stuck-PTT watchdog, and force-unkey + disarm when AE disconnects.

Note the engine arms automatically on every AE connect, so on a shared LAN any AE client that connects can reach that path. Pass --rx-only (or AETHER_GATE_RX_ONLY=1) to refuse PTT at the CI-V layer and advertise tx_capable=False, so AE greys its TX button instead of offering a control the gate will refuse. Recommended for any unattended or permanently-online gateway.

For every other family — hamlib/CAT (Kenwood, Yaesu), the dongle adapters, sim, and the IC-7300 USB path — there is still no TX seam: the hamlib backend has a working set_ptt (T 1/0), but no adapter exposes key_tx, so the engine never invokes it and keying stays cosmetic. --enable-tx only makes AE offer TX for a CAT rig; it does not key anything.

aether_gate/
  core/       Flex-protocol engine (from flex-sim) + FFT
  adapters/   RadioAdapter contract + per-radio adapters (icom9700, kenwood, soapy, sim)
  setup.py    the Setup/launcher web UI (:8730)
  tests/      offline tests
deploy/       Raspberry Pi installer + systemd service units

Test

python -m aether_gate.tests.test_smoke
python -m aether_gate.tests.test_hamlib

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Credits

Aether-gate stands on other people's work:

• The Icom IC-9700 LAN support would not exist without Justin, W5JWP. The gate's entire Icom RS-BA1 / CI-V-over-LAN transport — the discovery, login/token handshake, the ping/keepalive cadence, the CI-V framing, and the band-scope decoding — is derived from his GPL-3.0 project w5jwp/SDR9700. That project reverse-engineered and documented the protocol the hard way; this gate is only possible because he did that work and released it openly. Attribution and license headers are preserved on every derived file. Thank you, Justin. 🙏
• The Icom IC-7300 USB adapter was contributed by s53zo. The receive-safe IC-7300 bridge — USB CI-V control, the radio's native 27h band-scope decode, and USB Audio CODEC RX capture — came in as an external contribution, hardware-verified on the author's own IC-7300. TX/PTT is deliberately left disabled. Thank you! 🙏
• The FlexRadio-emulation core (discovery, FlexLib control, VITA-49 streaming) comes from flex-sim.
• CAT control is Hamlib; dongle spectrum is SoapySDR.

Privacy

Aether-gate collects nothing and sends nothing about you: no telemetry, no analytics, no account. It talks to your radio and to AetherSDR, plus one optional GitHub check for a newer release (AETHER_GATE_NO_UPDATE_CHECK=1 turns that off). Saved radios and the Setup PIN stay on your own machine. See PRIVACY.md.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later. Because the Icom transport is derived from the GPL-3.0 w5jwp/SDR9700, the whole of Aether-gate is GPL-3.0-or-later; the derived files carry SDR9700's copyright and license headers.