Amateur radio geekery

[altivo]

I was fairly good this weekend, did lots of little chores. I was going to work on that Linux installation puzzle for work, but I didn't. Too bad. Today I finally got around to trying to bring up the various ham radio tools I use on the DEC Alpha. I installed it under the radio desk over a year ago with that intention, so I could get rid of the cables running from my desktop machine over to it, and free up the serial and sound ports on the desktop.

I expected to encounter all sorts of obstacles. After all, even though I'm running Debian on the Alpha, it's a very different CPU with totally different machine language. To my surprise, almost all the programs I normally use for ham radio on Linux were available already packaged for the Alpha and in the Debian archives.

The two toughest ones, fldigi and echolinux, are not there though. I now have fldigi up and running. It wasn't hard, I just had to install all the dependencies myself and then compile the software from source. No glitches, it compiled without error or warning, and seems to be running normally. This is a newer version than what I had, so there are new features and modes, even.

Alas, I'm not sure the same will be true of echolinux. While fldigi is a user interface for keyboard modes ranging from old fashioned RTTY (radioteletype) to some of the newest such as Olivia, and uses the sound card to send and receive encoded signals through a standard SSB transmitter, the echolinux program is a VoIP application (similar to Skype, for those of you who aren't hams) that transmits digital voice over the internet and the radio spectrum. Like the authors of fldigi, the programmers who created echolinux make no claims that their code will work other than on an IBM-Intel architecture. If they've written it all in C and other high level languages, there's a chance, though. I haven't looked at the source yet, so I don't know myself.

Cut to spare the uninterested. I have now installed and tried out the following. All are working.

• libhamlib - library of routines used by many ham programs
• grig - desktop controller for amateur radio transceivers
• rigctl - another similar control program, called by some other programs
• gpsk31 - Program specifically designed for PSK31 mode
• xdx - DX Cluster logging program, good as any for windows
• colordx - another DX cluster program, works in text mode
• fldigi - Single interface for dozens of digital modes, RTTY and CW up to the latest Olivia
• xlog - logging program, similar to logger for windoze

Comments

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I bow to your radio/computer geekiness O.O
*waves flags*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You know, the Aussie hams are among the world's leaders at this stuff. You should find one and have him/her show it to you.

[swift-fox.livejournal.com]

I just got fldigi working on my desk top last night. The local E-comm team is using the MST64-2K setting to send blocks of text back and forth to the different stations. I was using my HT, my computer speakers and a computer microphone and sending and receiving using the speaker mic.

It's pretty slick.

Let me check with W3YJ regarding Echolink and Linux. He's a total Linux geek and he's the trustee of one of the local EchoLink repeaters here in Pittsburgh.

73

KS3IFT

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Mmm. I recommend that you get a direct plug-in interface set up rather than relying on the speakers and mic. The reason is that you can really create a messy signal with lots of splash and splatter that way, where a wired interface lets you set levels and keep them in most cases.

I like fldigi. There are lots of digital programs for Linux and all of them work, but fldigi puts almost all the modes (missing only SSTV and packet I guess) in one place, with a very handy control interface for the user.

I haven't tried compiling echolinux yet. It might just run. Like fldigi, it's disconcerting to have the authors say "only supported on Intel" but that one still works fine so far. The original Echolink author apparently dislikes Linux, as he's said repeatedly that there will "NEVER" be a Linux or Macintosh version of the software. I guess he's not willing to share his source code even. The echolinux and echo-gui folks had to start from scratch and work it out for themselves.

Never say never

[aerofox.livejournal.com]

I don't understand why someone would act that way, unless they are doing the work purely for profit. Providing the source code would be a good gesture for the HAM community, though... Both Loriana and myself have run across greedy self-centered individuals who have tickets...

I would like to try out PSK31 sometime.

Re: Never say never

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You should try it. It's like RTTY, only more reliable and gets through amazing noise with very low power.

Yeah, I'm not sure what the deal is with Echolink. As far as I know, he's not selling anything or making a profit off it in any way. All I can guess from his attitude is that he's one of those "Windows is the only REAL operating system" people.

You can check out PSK31 in receive mode just by feeding the output of an SSB receiver into the mic or line input on a sound card. There's decent PSK software available to download for just about any modern machine, Mac, PC, or whatever, and most operating systems. The good software can copy several QSOs at the same time, displaying each in a separate window.