Troubleshooting and FAQ

Troubleshooting and FAQ

Problems people have actually hit, with what fixed them. Add yours. For anything not here, run wfweb with --debug and attach the log to an issue: see Reporting Bugs.

Connecting

The browser warns about the certificate. Expected. The server makes a self-signed certificate on first start because the browser only allows the microphone and audio playback on HTTPS. Accept it once per browser. To use your own, put wfweb-web.crt and wfweb-web.key in wfweb's data directory (where things live).

The page loads but the UI is frozen, or there is no audio. You opened port 8081 (the plain-HTTP REST port) instead of 8080. Use https://<host>:8080.

No serial port found. Pass it explicitly: --serial-port /dev/ttyUSB0 (Linux), --serial-port COM5 (Windows). In Docker also pass --device /dev/ttyUSB0. On Linux the user running wfweb must be in the dialout group.

Control works but the radio ignores frequency or mode changes (older Icom). The radio's CI-V port is slower than the rate in use. Rigs like the IC-7600, IC-7100, IC-9100 and IC-706 cap at 19200; wfweb's rig files know the cap and auto-detect tries the lower rates. If you hard-coded SerialPortBaud=115200 in the settings file, remove it (#99).

The radio does not come on after being powered off from wfweb. Over LAN, make sure Network Control is ON in the radio's network menu. Over USB on an IC-7600 it cannot work: that radio only accepts power-on on its [REMOTE] jack (#104).

After unplugging and replugging the USB cable, CI-V recovers but audio says "No compatible audio device found". Known and deliberate: audio is set up once at start and is not re-detected on hotplug. Restart wfweb (#104).

Scope and waterfall

Black waterfall; the log says Rig (FA) error, last command sent: "Scope Data Output". The radio refuses to send scope data. On the IC-7300: MENU › SET › Connectors › CI-V, set CI-V USB Port = Unlink from [REMOTE], CI-V USB Baud Rate = 115200, CI-V USB Echo Back = OFF. Use the USB cable, not the [REMOTE] jack (#132).

The waterfall marker does not move with the frequency. The radio is in Fixed scope mode while the page expects Center, or the other way round. Pick the scope mode from the page (CENTER / FIXED / SCROLL) and it stays in step (#75).

Audio

No audio in the browser until I click something. Browsers refuse to start audio before a user gesture. Tap anywhere on the page once; on phones this is every page load.

RX audio stutters. Open FUNC › AUDIO and look at the BUFFER tile: it shows the jitter buffer, which sizes itself to the jitter it measures and reports underruns to the browser console as [Audio]. Pin it to 200 ms if a Wi-Fi link keeps catching it out. On a Pi, a USB hub shared with the radio's codec is a common cause.

Distorted or robotic SSB TX audio from the browser mic (Windows server). Fixed in 0.9.3 (the Windows audio backend wrote 40 ms blocks). If a phone still chops, set the BUFFER tile to 200 ms (#136).

The squelch slider makes no difference to what I hear. The radio squelches its speaker but not the USB audio unless ACC/USB AF SQL is ON in its Connectors menu. It ships OFF (#146).

No modulation when I transmit from the browser mic (LAN-attached IC-7610). The radio's DATA OFF MOD must be the input the connection uses, LAN in that case. wfweb picks it by name on the rigs it knows; check the radio's menu if the mic is silent (#72).

COMP goes off while I transmit FT8 (or JS8, RTTY, SSTV, FreeDV…). On purpose. wfweb's digital modes transmit in plain USB/LSB, where the radio keeps the speech compressor in the path, so wfweb switches COMP off just before it keys and back on after. It never switches COMP on if it was off, and FUNC › COMP during the over takes over.

I hear every CW element twice, or the sidetone is late. Two sidetones exist: the browser's TONE (CW bar, on by default) and the radio's own, which only reaches you over USB with ACC/USB AF Beep/Speech… Output ON. Keep one. TONE through Bluetooth headphones is too late to send a paddle by ear, and turns amber to say so. See Operating CW.

Modes

FT8 logs the wrong RST received. Fixed in 0.9.3 (an R prefix was kept in the report) (#140).

RTTY comes out as garbage. Press REV: the station may be sending with mark and space the other way round. If the strip shows the signal off the marked pair, click it or press AUTOTUNE. The bar's mark tone selector must match the radio's RTTY MARK FREQUENCY (2125 Hz by default). See Operating RTTY.

The radio goes to LSB when I open the RTTY bar. On purpose: the radio's RTTY mode keys FSK from its key jack, which CI-V cannot drive, so wfweb transmits RTTY as AFSK tones on LSB. The AFSK button turns it off (receive only, in the radio's RTTY mode), and closing the bar puts the mode back.

An SSTV picture never started. The header (VIS) was missed: press START and the panel locks on the sync pulses, names the mode and keeps the lines already heard. Pinning the RX mode instead of AUTO also catches pictures without a header. See Operating SSTV.

I cannot reach 60 m from the band picker. The FT8/FT4 and JS8 band dropdowns list 60 m on rigs that have it. The BAND picker follows the radio's band-stacking registers, and no Icom has a 60 m key (#116).

The filter buttons are dead in memory mode. Fixed in 0.9.3 (#138).

"Memories not supported on this radio" (IC-718 and other rigs without CI-V memory commands). wfweb keeps its own memory list for those rigs since 0.9.1 (#114).

The date in the log is one day off. The QSO is stamped with the browser's clock, in UTC. Check the device's clock and time zone (#127).

Installing

The .deb on Raspberry Pi OS Lite pulls in a desktop's worth of packages. Qt's GUI libraries come in as recommends. Install with --no-install-recommends, or use the AppImage (#133).

AppImage: FUSE error. Run it with --appimage-extract-and-run.

Windows: QSslSocket: cannot resolve EVP_PKEY_base_id in the console, and the page sits on "Powering on". Seen on an early release; the Windows zip has shipped its own OpenSSL since, so upgrade first. If it persists on a current release, open an issue with the log (#56).

Build from source fails with ft8ts.mjs missing. The FT8 decoder is a git submodule: git submodule update --init (#15).

Phones

The page hangs on a phone when opened by host name, but works by IP. Seen on iOS with a self-signed certificate and a DNS name; opening the server by its IP address works. Unexplained so far; a report with the browser and iOS version helps.

I keep touching things while operating. Lock the page with the padlock in the scope's corner; only PTT stays live. See Phones and Tablets.