Web UI¶

Access the panadapter remotely from any browser on your WiFi network.

Quick Start¶

Enable WiFi in the settings drawer
Open your browser to http://qmx.local
You'll see the same spectrum and waterfall as the Tab5

No installation, no configuration, and no IP address to write down.

Why a name and not an address. The Tab5 picks its own network - it remembers up to six and moves to whichever is on the air - so its IP address changes without anyone deciding it should, and the only place it is shown is the Tab5's own bottom bar, which is no help when the Tab5 is in the shack and you are not. qmx.local does not change.

If qmx.local does not resolve, the IP still works exactly as before - read it off the Tab5's bottom bar. Windows and macOS resolve .local names out of the box; a few Linux setups need avahi-daemon installed, and some guest/hotel networks block the multicast that makes it work.

On a phone¶

The layout is built for a landscape screen and reflows fine there. In portrait on a phone (v1.9.4), the top and bottom bars now scroll sideways if a control doesn't fit — swipe them like the decode list — and the page itself scrolls vertically if the whole layout is taller than the screen. Before this a portrait phone (Randy N4OPI, iPhone Safari) could lose the top and bottom bar controls entirely with no way to reach them.

Remote Control¶

The web UI provides full remote control:

Frequency — tap the VFO to open the numeric keypad (drag it by its title bar to reposition; toggle between a 10-key and a phone-style digit layout), or click the spectrum to tune
Mode — buttons for USB, LSB, CW, DiGi
Bandwidth — selectors for SSB filter width or CW passband
Band — jump between configured bands
Memory — recall, edit and clear your 32 saved channels (see Memory channels below)
Zoom — pinch or scroll to zoom the spectrum
RIT — click the RIT pill to arm it, then click a caller to receive off your transmit frequency without moving the dial. See RIT

Everything mirrors the Tab5 display with sub-second latency.

Spectrum Waterfall¶

The waterfall is live-streamed from the Tab5 every ~100 ms. You see the same real-time signal activity as on the device itself.

Click anywhere on the spectrum to tune to that frequency. The waterfall updates continuously — no refresh needed.

Whole-band plan strip. Along the bottom of the view (above the status bar) is a colour-coded CW/Digi/Phone strip spanning the entire current band, mirroring the one on the Tab5. A draggable "visible window" marks the slice currently on screen — drag it, or tap anywhere on the strip, to retune — and a marker shows the VFO position.

Adjustable split. Drag the divider between the spectrum and the waterfall to give either one more room. Your chosen split is remembered in the browser.

In FT8 or FT4 mode the live stream pauses. The browser stops streaming the spectrum/waterfall and shows a notice plus the log and upload controls instead. This is deliberate — while you're operating digital modes the stream would compete with the on-device decoder and the WiFi link, so pausing it keeps FT8 decoding and WiFi noticeably steadier (new in v0.20.0). Switch the Tab5 back to Panadapter mode and the stream resumes automatically.

FT8 Control¶

When the Tab5 is in FT8/FT4 mode, the browser pauses the live spectrum stream (see Spectrum Waterfall above) and instead shows a live TX status banner, a Call CQ button, and the log and upload controls — download your ADIF, upload to QRZ/eQSL/LoTW, grab the diagnostic log. Everything else about operating FT8 (watching the decode list, tapping a station to reply) happens on the Tab5 itself.

The status banner (new in v1.3.6) mirrors the Tab5's own TX label so you can watch the radio from another room: red while transmitting — including the "call 2 of 4" counter when a CQ stop limit is set — amber when a transmission is armed or a QSO is waiting, green on QSO complete, orange on timeout, and the persistent "CQ stopped after N calls - no answer" once an auto-stopped CQ run ends. The browser tab's title also shows a red dot while transmitting, so even a background tab signals when the radio is on the air.

Live spots on the browser spectrum¶

The POTA and RBN spots the Tab5 draws on its own trace are now drawn on the browser's spectrum too, from the same store on the device - so the two screens can never disagree about who is on the air.

Amber is a POTA activation, green an RBN (CW skimmer) spot, and grey a station you have already worked on this band.
Spots fade with age and are gone at 30 minutes, exactly as on the Tab5.
Click a callsign to tune to it - frequency and mode (CW, DiGi, or USB/LSB by band). Bandwidth is deliberately left alone: the QMX keeps a filter per mode.
Counts at the bottom corners - < spots (3) - say how many more are on this band just outside your window; click one to jump to the nearest.
On a crowded band only so many callsigns fit; unworked and fresher spots keep their labels, and a spot that cannot fit one is not drawn at all rather than left as a line pointing at nothing.

Spots are sent only while the Tab5 is showing the panadapter, and only when they have actually changed, so they cost the WiFi link almost nothing between refreshes.

The decode list, from another room¶

In FT8/FT4 the browser used to show a transmit banner and nothing else - you could see that your radio was transmitting, but not who was answering. The FT8 panel now carries the decode list: callsign, message, country, SNR, DT, audio tone, distance and bearing, slot (E/O) and age.

The country column replaced a GRID column, because the grid was already sitting in the message text next to it. The country is the one thing in that row you cannot read off the message, and unlike the Tab5 — where it has to squeeze into three letters — the browser has room to spell it out. Both screens work it out the same way from the callsign, so they cannot disagree. (Randy N4OPI)

The KM and BRG columns arrived in v1.8.3 (asked for by Tony Abbey). They sit after the tone, in the same order the Tab5 uses, and the header reads MI instead of KM if you have Distance in miles ticked. The Tab5 works the distance out and sends it, rather than the browser calculating its own, so the two screens cannot disagree — and where a station has not sent a grid the column shows a dash rather than a made-up number.

It is the same list the Tab5 shows, not a second opinion: the ordering comes from the device (the station you are working first, then anything addressed to you, then CQ calls, then strongest signal) and your Options-window settings are applied to it. The station being worked is highlighted, and anything carrying your own callsign stands out, as on the Tab5.

Click a station to work it (at the operator's own request). The confirm dialog states what will happen, and then the browser runs the same intelligent Transmit a Tab5 row-tap runs: a fresh CQ starts the full automatic QSO (you are not in front of the radio to click each exchange step); anything mid-exchange sends the one correct next message. The outcome comes back in plain words under the TX banner - "Armed: ...", "Busy: working X", or a refusal if the station has aged out of the list, because transmitting at a station that may have left is worse than asking you to click again.

Who is calling you. Below the table, the pileup - stations answering you while you are busy - each clickable with the same confirm. And the grey-list (stations the auto pickers skip after repeated no-answers) is shown with a one-click clear, so "why is it ignoring that station?" is answerable from another room.

Switching the Tab5 back to the panadapter¶

If you left the Tab5 in FT8/FT4 and want the spectrum back, use the Radio menu in the bottom bar — it carries the Panadapter ↔ FT8 switch.

Next to Call CQ is TXCQ ANY / EVEN / ODD, which chooses the 15-second slot your CQ transmits in — the same three states as the button on the Tab5, and the same setting underneath, so changing it on either surface is reflected on the other. ANY takes whichever window comes first; EVEN and ODD lock it.

Call CQ from the browser¶

Asked for by Dennis WN4FLA. A CQ run that has timed out, or that has reached its CQ stop limit, otherwise needs a walk back to the Tab5 to start it again. The Call CQ button under the status banner does it from wherever you are.

It asks first. The button keys the radio, and a mis-click from another room should not put a carrier on the air, so it confirms ("Start calling CQ on the Tab5?") before anything is sent.
It calls exactly what the Tab5 would. The active CQ preset, the current TX tone (honouring TX Hold, or picking the nearest clear slot as usual) and the TXCQ ANY / EVEN / ODD parity are all the ones set on the device — the two buttons share one code path, so they cannot drift apart. To change any of those, long-press Call CQ on the Tab5.
It takes about a second. The request is handed to the Tab5's own display task rather than acted on inside the web request, so the button greys out and reads "Calling..." briefly. Watch the status banner, not the button, to see the CQ start.
Only in FT8/FT4 mode. The button is part of the FT8 panel, and a request that arrives when the Tab5 is not in FT8 is discarded rather than queued — so it can never fire minutes later, unasked, when you next switch modes.
If your callsign and grid are not set, the Tab5 shows the reason on its own screen and nothing is transmitted.

Not yet confirmed on the air. The endpoint, the hand-off, the preset/tone/parity reuse and the error path are all verified on hardware; the final key-down is inferred from sharing the Tab5 button's code. Please report how it behaves.

Apart from Call CQ, transmit is still initiated on the Tab5 — replies and pounces need the decode list in front of you, and only one interface should be keying the QMX.

Choosing your TX tone¶

TX tone on the FT8 panel opens the same picker the Tab5 has, against the same live occupancy of the 200-2800 Hz window - it is the device's own map, the one its automatic clear-slot picker uses, so a slot shown busy here is one the device would avoid anyway.

Green is free, red a station or its guard band, pink the station you are working, white where you will transmit.
Click a slot to choose it - a mouse can go straight there, where the Tab5 needs a drag. −50 / +50 nudge, and Find a clear slot walks outward to the nearest free one, exactly as the automatic picker does.
TX Hold keeps the exact tone you picked. With it off, each transmission takes the nearest clear slot, and a CQ that gets clashed moves itself.
Grey means unknown, not free. If nothing has been decoded yet the device has no picture of the band, and the strip says so rather than showing reassuring green.
The occupancy picture refreshes itself every 3 seconds while the picker is open (v1.9.4) — it used to be read once, when you opened it, so a slow decision (reading the strip, weighing E vs O) could cross a 15-second slot boundary and land you on a slot that filled in while you were choosing. Your own in-progress pick is never disturbed by the refresh, only the busy/clear colouring under it.

Changing the tone mid-QSO is fine - your partner tracks your time slot, not your audio frequency - but it is refused mid-burst, and the reason is shown rather than the change silently half-applying.

Both time windows, always (asked for by Roy KI0ER). The strip is two rows - EVEN above, ODD below - because two stations only collide if they transmit in the same window, and only you know which window you are about to pounce into. The verdict says where your pick stands: "Clear in EVEN - busy in ODD", or judges just your own window once a transmission has fixed it. The Tab5's own mini strip and picker show the same two rows.

Memory channels¶

The Memory button opens your 32 channels as a grid. Tune recalls one - frequency and mode together - and Edit changes or clears it. An empty slot offers the frequency you are on now, so storing the current VFO is two clicks.

A frequency outside an amateur band is refused, exactly as the Tab5 refuses it: a channel you cannot legally tune is worse than no channel.

Antenna Tune from the browser (QMX 1.04+)¶

With a QMX on firmware 1.04+, an Antenna Tune button appears in the bottom bar. It keys the radio with a steady carrier, so it confirms first - and while running, the button itself becomes the readout: live power and SWR, click again to stop. Both ends carry a 60-second safety stop: the device's own timer fires even if the browser tab dies, and the radio's prior mode is restored, never left keyed. Stopping Tune from the QMX's own front panel is honoured too.

Settings, with a real keyboard¶

The Settings button in the bottom bar edits the things you type - which is exactly what the Tab5's touchscreen is worst at:

Your callsign and grid. Previously reachable from a browser only by downloading the config file, editing it and uploading it back.
The three CQ messages, which preset is active, and the CQ stop limit.
The FT8 include/exclude filter terms (both pairs) and the filter toggles.
Everyday switches: POTA and RBN spots, PSK Reporter, grey-listing, distance units, I/Q balance, band-plan region, and the QMX volume in dB.
WiFi: add another network from a laptop. The Tab5 remembers up to six.
Show RIT button, matching the Tab5 setting — hide the RIT button on the panadapter if you never use it.
The rest of the radio and display settings, which used to be Tab5-only: CW pitch, IF calibration, SWR protection, the battery charge limit, the 180° screen flip, Fox/Hound mode, simulation mode and the spot mode filter.

Saved straight to the Tab5 - its own settings drawer shows the same values next time you open it.

Also here: the Display & waterfall group - brightness, waterfall black level, contrast, FFT window, colour map, display sleep, the 180° flip, the dB scale range, spectrum smoothing and spur suppression - the controls you want to tune from a laptop while watching the Tab5's screen. Every change applies live and is stored, exactly as the drawer's own sliders do, and the browser's own spectrum and waterfall follow them as well. Adaptive floor is gone from both the browser and the Tab5 drawer as of v1.8.3 — it could not change anything (see Spectrum & Waterfall), and a control that cannot change anything is worse than a missing one. The auto-answer robot switch is here too, carrying the same permanent warning the Tab5 shows beside it: it transmits unattended - never leave it running unsupervised.

One deliberate omission: your WiFi password is never sent to the browser, so the field is always blank; leave it blank and the stored one is kept.

Help, in the browser¶

The Help ? button in the bottom bar opens the same two doors the Tab5 has, served by the Tab5 itself - so it works with no internet at all, and the text always matches the firmware you are running.

A list of symptoms and questions in plain words - "My radio is not showing up", "Nothing appears in the decode list", "How do I change what my CQ says?". Pick the one that fits and the manual opens at the section that answers it.
Rows the Tab5 can see are happening right now are highlighted and moved to the top, exactly as on the device. It ranks; you choose.
The whole manual, with a Contents list, Back, and links between chapters.

See Getting Help for what the device can detect and why it never navigates for you.

CAT Control (Advanced)¶

The CAT section lets you send raw Kenwood-style commands directly to the QMX:

FA;        → reads current frequency
FA14074000;  → sets frequency to 14.074 MHz
MD;        → reads current mode
MD2;       → sets USB mode

This is for advanced troubleshooting — most users don't need it.

Bottom Bar Menus¶

The bottom bar groups its actions into four popup menus, plus a battery indicator (e.g. 🔋 87% (8.0V)):

QSO Logs (n) ▲ — only visible when QSOs exist; n is the QSO count:

ADIF download ↓ — QSO log as an ADIF file (import into WSJT-X, EQSL, etc.)
Today only, dated file ↓ — just today's contacts, named qso-YYYY-MM-DD.adi. For anyone who files each day's log separately, the date is already in the filename rather than something to add by hand afterwards (Gyula HA3HZ)
QRZ upload ↑ — upload ADIF to QRZ Logbook (requires API key on first use, saved for future sessions)
↳ Change QRZ API key — appears once a key is stored, and replaces it. New in v1.8.3: before that the prompt only ever appeared when nothing was stored, so a key typed wrongly or later reissued could not be changed from the page at all (reported by Brian WA6JFK)
eQSL upload ↑ — upload ADIF to eQSL (requires username/password on first use, saved)
↳ Change eQSL login — same, for the eQSL username and password
LoTW setup / LoTW ↑ — upload ADIF to ARRL's Logbook of The World (see LoTW Upload below)
Cloudlog upload ↑ — upload to your own Cloudlog or Wavelog. Asks for the server address, your API key and the station profile ID on first use. Plain http:// is accepted for a server on the same network as the Tab5, given as a numeric address such as http://192.168.1.20; anything else needs https://. The check is repeated at every upload, so away from home the upload refuses instead of sending your key across someone else's network. If the server is on your own LAN this is the only upload that needs no internet at all (Mark G4MEM)
↳ Change Cloudlog server — appears once a server is stored, and replaces the address, key and station profile
View / edit log — opens the QSO log right in the browser (call, mode, band, frequency, date/time, reports, grid — newest first). Click any column header to sort by it (click again to reverse) — sorting by Date groups an activation's QSOs together. Each row has a ✕ to delete that one record, and a Delete all button clears the whole log (no undo, so it asks you to type DELETE to confirm — download the ADIF first if you want a copy). Handy before a POTA activation: start with an empty log and the ADIF at the end is exactly the file you submit. Three columns are editable — the two reports and P2P ref. Click one and type the corrected value, or leave it empty (for a report, that records that none was exchanged). P2P ref is the park or summit the other station was activating, i.e. a Park-to-Park or Summit-to-Summit contact: while you are operating, that reference is on the POTA spots page on your phone and in nothing the radio sends you, so you write it down and enter it when you get home (Don Adams WB0LQW). Type the reference alone — US-1241, G/LD-049, DLFF-0123 — and the Tab5 works out the programme from its shape and writes both SIG and SIG_INFO; clear the reference and both go with it. Nothing else can be changed: callsign, band, mode, date and time are what QRZ, eQSL and LoTW match a contact on, so those stay read-only and a wrong one is a delete-and-re-log. If the QSO has already been uploaded, an edit corrects the Tab5's log only — the copy the logbook holds is unchanged (Gyula HA3HZ)

Files ▲:

Config download ↓ — all settings as a text file (backup or transfer to another Tab5). It is also the way to change a stored credential by hand: the qrz_key, eqsl_user and eqsl_pass lines are in there in plain text, and an edited file uploaded back takes effect on the next upload with no restart. Note it holds your WiFi password in plain text too, so treat the file accordingly
Config upload ↑ — restore settings from a backup file
SD Files — opens the microSD file browser (http://<tab5-ip>/files, new in v1.3.0): browse the card from your computer without pulling it — download logs and config backups, upload files, delete
Diagnostic download ↓ — downloads both diagnostic logs: the live session log (always on, nothing to enable) and the flash-persisted copy from before the last reboot/power-off

Miscellaneous ▲ also carries Prepare for flashing — closes the USB host cleanly before you unplug the radio or reflash the Tab5, so the QMX is not left half-open.

Radio ▲ (new in v1.6.0) — the things that reach the radio itself:

Switch to FT8/FT4 / Switch to Panadapter — changes the Tab5's own screen from the browser. The label always says where you are going, and it follows the Tab5 if you switch there instead
Memory channels — your 32 channels: click one to tune to it, drag one onto another slot to move it, or onto the bin to clear it
Let me use the QMX menus — stops the Tab5 talking to the QMX so you can use the radio's own menus or its Band Configuration terminal. A bar appears until you hand it back. See Settings
Antenna Tune — QMX 1.04+ only; keys a steady carrier with live power and SWR, and stops itself after 60 seconds
Activation — start or stop a POTA/SOTA session from the browser. While one is running a badge appears in the top bar with the reference and the contact count, so it cannot be forgotten on the drive home
Radio menus — the QMX's own 80×24 menu system, in the browser. Arrow keys, Enter and Back on screen, and your real keyboard works too. Needs the radio's second USB serial port switched on first. See Radio Menus

Miscellaneous ▲:

Tab5 screenshot — current display as PNG, including any open pop-up (band/mode dropdown), not just the base screen
Keyboard shortcuts — assign what the Tab5's snap-on keyboard does (see below)
Reset settings — clear stored settings back to defaults (see Troubleshooting)
Reset WiFi — clear just the WiFi/network state

Keyboard shortcuts¶

Miscellaneous ▸ Keyboard shortcuts assigns what the Tab5's snap-on keyboard does. Each row is a modifier, a key and an action; Add shortcut makes a new one, Remove deletes it, and Restore defaults puts back the nine the firmware ships with.

There are 25 actions — opening any of the setup windows, the manual, the log, the radio menus, plus zoom in and out, brighter and dimmer, flat spectrum, and releasing the radio to its own front panel. Alt is left completely unused by the defaults, so it is free for your own bindings.

The editor is here rather than on the Tab5 for a simple reason: assigning shortcuts is a setup job done once, and doing it on the Tab5 would mean typing on the very keyboard you are configuring.

!!! note "Nothing that transmits can be bound" A button you deliberately press is one thing; a two-key combination that a slipped finger can produce is another.

LoTW Upload¶

Uploading to ARRL's Logbook of The World requires an existing LoTW account and a callsign certificate (made with ARRL's TQSL program).

One-time setup: open the QSO Logs menu → LoTW setup. A guided two-page window walks you through it:

Page 1 explains how to export your callsign certificate from the TQSL program on your PC (Callsign Certificate → Save the Callsign Certificate, which produces a .p12 file), with a button that opens ARRL's own instructions.
Page 2 imports the .p12 file, its passphrase, and your DXCC entity (plus optional CQ/ITU zones, and US state and county — see below). The .p12 is parsed in the browser — the passphrase never reaches the device.

After setup the button reads LoTW ↑. Each click signs all not-yet-uploaded QSOs on the device with your certificate and uploads them to lotw.arrl.org.

US stations: fill in state and county (new in v1.3.3). These were not being sent at all before, which meant US operators' uploaded QSOs earned no Worked All States and no county credit — for them or for the stations they worked. Fill them in if your TQSL station location has them. The county is the name on its own (Arlington), not VA,Arlington. Operators outside the US can leave both blank.

Certificate renewal — LoTW certificates expire roughly every 3 years. Ctrl-click the LoTW ↑ button to re-run setup. From v1.3.3, re-submitting the same certificate no longer re-uploads your whole log — only an actually-changed certificate resets the upload position, because a new key means every QSO has to be re-signed. So you can go back in to add a state and county without resending everything.

If an upload does not appear on LoTW, check ARRL's queue status before assuming a fault — the queue has run hours behind at busy times. LoTW rejects a malformed file at upload time, so anything that reached the queue was signed correctly.

Upload Behaviour¶

Uploads work while FT8 or FT4 is actively running — the panadapter briefly pauses the FFT and SD-archive activity during the HTTPS transfer, then resumes automatically. A result is shown once the upload completes, reporting how many QSOs were sent.

Each upload remembers where it left off — re-uploading skips QSOs that were already sent in a previous session.

Network Requirements¶

WiFi must be on (settings drawer)
IP address shown in settings (or static IP if you prefer)
Both Tab5 and browser on the same LAN (no internet needed)
qmx.local resolves on most networks; guest/hotel WiFi often blocks the multicast it needs, in which case use the IP
5 GHz WiFi works but 2.4 GHz is recommended (longer range)

Limitations¶

One browser at a time — the Tab5 streams the spectrum to a single browser. Open a second one (or a phone, or another tab) and it takes over; the first says "another browser took the live view — click to take it back" and stops, rather than the two fighting over it. Click that message to reclaim it.
Clock sync — the time-sync window is still on the Tab5 only
Real-time chat — no operator messaging
Export formats — ADIF only (import to EQSL, WSJT-X, etc. yourself)
Latency — ~200 ms typical (WiFi dependent)
Stale connection recovery — if the browser's network drops without a clean disconnect (e.g., putting a laptop to sleep), the web view may freeze briefly before recovering. Recovery is automatic and capped at ~5 seconds.

Next: Set up Time Sync or explore Settings.