A year ago, I reported that I had converted my shack computer to Linux and that I had gotten most of the software I wanted running on it. The one thorn in my side, if you will, was the not1mm contest logging program.
The problem was that the process did not support a critical feature that the Qt build that the not1mm developer, Mike, K6TGE, used. Mike tried his best to help, but it didn’t look like there was a solution.
A couple months ago, Mike reopened the discusssion. He wrote:
Hello @kb6nu. I don’t know if this a completely dead issue for you or not but…
I’ve built a flatpak of the program, and there’s a very very small chance that the Qt libraries in the flatpak’s runtime may be compiled with different optimizations which may possibly have a minuscule chance of working with your older processor.
Well, guess what? It actually did work. When I first installed the flatpak, I got an error message that I did have the right KDE platform or some such installed (sorry, I didn’t copy the exact error message). After a little searching, though, I discovered how to install the correct version. Once I did that, the app ran just fine.
Of course, that was only part of the challenge. The next part was getting the program to talk to the radio. I had managed to get QLog to talk to my IC-7610, but that was months ago, and I didn’t remember how I’d done it. I fooled around with the configuration settings, but couldn’t get them communicating.
Fortunately, for me, the solution was in the very next discussion on the not1mm github: “not1MM, CW and IC-7300: newb #698.” In that discussion, the poster asked:
I would really love to use not1mm on my Linux system for CW contests only, rather than dual boot into Win10 for N1MM. The logging aspect works just fine. However, I find the documnetation to get CW working confusing as well as rig control to change bands ( I do not have a winkeyer). I can see the ports just fine in /dev but that’s as far as I have got.
To which, Mike replied:
Use rigctld for CAT control. After configuring rigctld to connect to your 7300, have not1mm to connect to the rigctld daemon for CAT control. Once CAT control is working, change the CW configurations keying method to CAT. And you should be good to go.
I hadn’t read the fine manual, and being a Linux newbie—especially with ham radio software—I didn’t think about configuring and running rigctld. So, it was back to the internet to figure out how to do that. I found a webpage that included a command for connecting an IC-7300 to rigctld (which I can’t seem to find now that I’m writing about it). As Linux commands tend to be, this was a multiple line command:
/usr/bin/rigctld -m 1028 -r /dev/ttyUSB0 -t 4532 -s 38400 –set-conf=data_bits=8,stop_bits=1,serial_parity=None,serial_handshake=None,dtr_state=OFF,rts_state=ON -vvvvv
I tried that, but failed to get a connection. So, I figured that I had to play around with the options and called up the rigctld man page.
-m sets the model number, and 1028 is the number for the IC-7300. Fortunately, rigctld has a command that will list the other radios it supports, so I was able to easily figure out that the number for the IC-7610 was 3078. I guess that 38400 was the baud rate and set that to 115200, which is the speed that I have my radio set to. That made the command:
rigctld -m 3078 -r /dev/ttyUSB0 -t 4532 -s 115200 –set-conf=data_bits=8,stop_bits=1,serial_parity=None,serial_handshake=None,dtr_state=OFF,rts_state=ON -vvvvv
That worked! Not only does not1mm now get information from the radio, such as frequency and mode, but I can also send CW from the program.
As a test, I used it last night when operating as W1AW/8. It took a bit of getting used to some of the controls (such as the auto CQ repeat timer), but I’m very happy now that I have a good Linux contest logger up and running. Thanks again, Mike!
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