To setup the Kenwood TS-890S for use with wfview, please use the following steps.

KNS is Kenwood’s name for remote network access. It will be helpful to write down the Username, Password, and IP Address as you get to those steps. You will need to know them later.

Network Setup

Press MENU. On the right hand side of the screen, the second menu down should read “LAN”. If it does not read “LAN”, then press the bottom-right side menu button which will read “MORE” and then you should see “LAN” as the second menu item down. Press “LAN”.

For beginners, you should set menu item 0, DHCP, to “On”. More advanced users may be comfortable with setting this to “Off” and then assigning an appropriate manual IP address. Please do not do use Manual IP addresses unless you really understand what you are doing. Also, please note, the grayed-out IP information shown when DHCP is “On” is not meaningful. The assigned IP address, which you must make a note of, is shown in the bottom-right side of the display.

Press “ESC” to exit the menu.

KNS Setup

Now press “MENU” to enter the menu again.

On the right hand side of the screen, the fourth item down should read “KNS”. If it does not, press the button at the bottom-right side of the screen which is labeled “MORE”. Then press “KNS”.

The screen will show “KNS Status”. Press F4 at the bottom of the screen, which reads “CONFIG”

You will need to setup an “Administrator ID” and “Administrator Password” before proceeding. This is the username and password needed in wfview. For easier typing, plug in a USB keyboard. Set those to values you can remember.

Now, enable “KNS Operation”, which is menu item 0. Set this to “On(Internet)”. You may elect to set it to “On(LAN)”, which makes the waterfall move much faster but causes a lot of traffic on your network. Important: You cannot enable the KNS system until an Administrator username and password are set.

Now enable the “Built-in VoIP” (menu item 3). Important: You cannot enable the VoIP system until an Administrator username and password are set.

On my TS-890, the “Audio Input Level (VoIP)” is set to 13 and the “Audio Output Level (VoIP)” is set to 100. The radio actually runs an ADC and DAC for the VoIP system, thus, it is important to set these so that there isn’t any distortion.

Scroll down to menu item 10, “Session Time” and set it to “Unlimited”. Otherwise you’ll get disconnected by surprise. I suppose you can set that to some other value if you really want to though.

You might also want to set Menu 7, “Speaker Mute” to “On” so as to avoid disturbing people with loud DX at random hours. Or just put a headphone plug in the front of the radio.

 

 

Verify

Once these items are complete, you may wish to ping the radio from your computer and verify that it responds. The radio should even respond when it appears to be “off”. This is because the computer inside the radio is always on, even when the radio and display portions are powered down.

Resources

Here is a link to Kenwood’s documentation on using their network software. The document is complex and wonders around between radio and desktop software options. Kenwood shows how to use their software via a USB port to set the radio up, rather than using the radio’s built-in menus. I find this to be needlessly complicated but anyway, here is the documentation:  KNS Manual

Chapter 15 of the regular “User Manual” details the KNS Setup much better. TS-890 Manual

Audio

Don’t forget to set the transmit audio source to LAN. You can do this by holding down the “MOD.SEL / DATA” button near the VFO knob on the radio, or use wfview’s “Radio Settings” page to set the modulation source to “LAN”. As of wfview version 2.22, input audio source selection in wfview works well, however, there are some combinations of “front and rear” sources that get wfveiw confused.

You will hear beeps sometimes, this is from the radio’s user interface feedback. You can turn off the beep audio if it bothers you, but it does serve a nice purpose of confirming commands you send via wfview.

If you are using wfview’s audio processors (version 2.22 and higher), disable the EQs and Compressor on the radio.

Remote Recommendations

The software running inside the TS-890S is known to occasionally glitch. This can result in no audio, corrupted waterfall data, and difficulty connecting.

Through extensive testing, we have determined that this radio is quite sensitive to being placed directly on the internet. We strongly recommend setting up WireGuard on your local network and using WireGuard to VPN into your home network when you are outside. This will almost entirely remove any glitching and make the radio a lot happier. Many home routers support hosting a WireGuard VPN, and there are plenty of tutorials online for setting up WireGuard VPN clients on Linux, macOS, and Windows PCs. With the VPN in place, no unintended traffic will reach the rather sensitive ports on the TS-890, and it will work with far greater reliability.

If you do manage to get it to glitch though:

The only way to truly reboot the computer inside the TS-890S is to remove the 12V power for a few seconds and then re-apply. If you’re accessing this radio remotely, it would be good to have a way to remotely cycle power. This could be a high-current relay or one of those 120/240V switched outlets (running to a 12V supply). Generally speaking, if the radio was in the “ON” state and you cycle the 12V off and back on, the radio will generally return to the ON state. If not, it could be necessary to send it a power on command via the RS-232 port on the rear. Don’t forget to allow for a few seconds of boot time before attempting to connect.