That’s right, we’ve got yet another interview in this show. Is anyone screaming “UNCLE!” yet? George from Sierra Radio Systems and Nick from Pignology are our guests tonight, talking about several of their ham radio related products. They have a product launch they’re doing at the Dayton Hamvention this year and wanted to let everyone know what they have in store so it’s out there before the chaos in Ohio. Don’t despair, howver. This is not a sales pitch. Instead, our fine feathered guests get down into the nitty gritty of their product, explaining what it does, how it does it, what hardware it uses and what software as well. You’ll be happy to know it’s all Free Software based and an incredible find for anyone looking for comprehensive remote station control. George and Nick also happen to be responsible for a significant chunk of the donation money LHS needed to be a part of Dayton this year so we are eternally grateful to them for that. The best part of all this: That’s only HALF of the show. This one’s so packed full of information it might just explode.
Welcome to the first episode of Linux in the Ham Shack that doesn’t have Richard it in, on purpose. I can personally say that I feel his absence rather heavily in this program, but overall I think the show went rather well. Harrison, VE2HKW, was kind enough to be a guest host to help me out. Episode #102 will also have a couple of guest hosts, rather likeable ones at that, and so it will go until a permanent(?) replacement is found for Richard. We can only hope he comes back one day to grace us with tales of strippers on scooters and discharging firearms indoors. Until then, I soldier on. Thanks for listening and remember, you can send feedback to info@lhspodcast.info, or by voice mail at 1-909-LHS-SHOW (547-7469).
LHS had the same booth as last year at North Hall #131. Estimated attendance was 25,000 individuals. Russ recounts the experience. Thanks to Matt, KC8BEW, who stopped by and helped out at the booth. The LowSWR podcasters stopped by, too.
Several people at Hamvention asked about contest logging software for Linux, but Russ was at a loss for a recommendation. Upon his return, he discovered…
Stefano, IZ3NVR/KD2BGM was trying to get so2sdr to work under Linux Mint and while it would compile, it did not run, so Russ set about trying to get it going.
It’s not packaged for Debian or Fedora, so it must be built from source, available at the link above.
The program is written in Qt, so it can be run on devices which support that environment, including Linux and Windows. Of course, Qt must be installed in order to compile so2sdr.
Russ also had to install the following packages on his Linux Mint machine: portaudio19-dev (NOT libportaudio-dev; apparently, libportaudio-dev is too old), fftw3 and fftw3-dev
The compilation procedure consists of:
qmake
make
sudo make install
so2sdr compiled and ran fine. It did complain that it wanted a parallel port for switching between radios, but you can ignore that if you don’t need to do that.
Russ gives an overview of the features and capabilities.
There are a few drawbacks:
An apparent lack of SSB support? It seems to be CW-only.
Frequency input checking is broken.
Keystrokes are not intuitive, but are well-documented.
However, the built-in help file is quite useful.
Feedback:
E-mail from Larry, KG4Q, extolling fldigi and JT65-HF. He wishes there was a version of JT65-HF for Linux. Well, Larry, there is! You can download the source here. Also, WSJT does JT65, too.
Chris, K4FH, caught up with Russ at Hamvention and talked about his Linux in the Ham Shack presentation. He managed to put together a fine bunch of slides completely without our help. Sorry, Chris!
Contact Info:
Contact Richard at kb5jbv@gmail.com, Russ at k5tux@lhspodcast.info, or both at the same time at info@lhspodcast.info.
Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.
Leave us a voice mail at 1-909-LHS-SHOW (1-909-547-7469), or record an introduction to the podcast.
+1-909-LHS-SHOW
Call us and leave a message with your questions, thoughts or suggestions and we'll put you on the air!
Please Donate
Please consider a donation to our 2013 Hamvention Fund. We'd like to be there to visit with all of you this year. Our goal is shown on the thermometer at left.