While plowing through a stack of old QSTs the other day, I ran across the article, “A Simple Morse Memory Keyer,” by Dave Benson, K1SWL. K1SWL’s design uses a Raspberry Pi Pico, which is a small, inexpensive, yet quite powerful, microcontroller board. Since I had one that I purchased to play around with a while ago, I thought I’d give this project a go.
The software was devloped in BASIC, using the MMBASIC interpreter, but I thought I’d use this project to learn more about Python. You can program the Pico with MicroPython, if you have the right tools. One of those tools is Thonny, an integrated development environment (IDE). There are versions that run on Windows, Macs, and Linux boxes.
I have an old laptop that I installed Lubuntu on a while back, so I thought I’d use that for programming. Unfortunately, I couldn’t seem to install the latest version of Thonny on it. I’m not sure exactly why, but I thought that perhaps something was weird with my Lubuntu installation.
So, I decided to install another ham radio distro. The first one I tried was Andy’s Ham Radio Linux, created by Andy, KB1OIQ. It had gotten a nice write-up on Hack-a-Day, and it looked like just what I needed.
Unfortunately, I never got it to install properly. The first couple of attempts were my fault. My first mistake, I think, was trying to use the Lubuntu Startup Disk Creator. I probably should have gone with one of the tools that KB1OIQ recommends, or the program that I eventually used—Balena Etcher. Plus, I really disliked the Lubuntu default wallpaper!
My next mistake was not reading the Getting Started document. In that document, KB1OIQ details the steps to follow to successfully install his distro. I just plugged the USB stick into the laptop and winged it. Using this approach, I ended up making several mistakes.
Even following the instructions, though, I was never able to install the software correctly. After four attempts, I just gave up and went to Plan B: Dragon OS.
Dragon OS is based on Lubuntu (ironically) and includes a bunch of SDR software. You can see the complete list on the DragonOS Sourceforge page. It supports a wide range of inexpensive SDR hardware, including RTL-SDR, HackRF One, LimeSDR, BladeRF, and many others.
Installing this distro was a breeze. I downloaded the .iso file, burned the installation disk with Balena Etcher, plugged it in, and it installed the very first time. Thonny wasn’t part of the distro, but I opened a terminal window, typed in “pip install thonny”, and in a couple of minutes, I had the latest and great version of the IDE. It took me two days, but I can finally start working on the keyer software now.
So, now, I have some questions for you:
- Are you using Linux in your ham station?
- If so, what distribution?
- What do you like or dislike about it?
- What are some fun Linux software packages, other than Thonny, that I can play with?
Bill Dornbush says
I use the Raspberry Pi Desktop distribution on my old laptop. It works fine, and I have the same desktop on my laptop that I have on my Raspberry Pi’s so the learning curve is greatly diminished. I use it to make image copies of my SD cards as I can compact the image files to very small ones. I mainly use Raspberry Pi’s as my Linux machines in my shack. I have loaded 73Linux which provides all sorts of ham radio programs. I mainly use Pat, the Winlink client that runs on Linux, and YAAC, an APRS client. I run PiGateRMS/LinBPQ to provide a Winlink Gateway on another Pi. I occasionally run WSPR. I use Python mainly for non-ham use, such as an LED Christmas Tree Using a Pi, and a name badge using Pimoroni Tutfy which uses a Pico.
Dave New, N8SBE says
Heh. My K4D is running Linux. But seriously, a number of Raspberry PI projects are lurking around the shack, including a PDP-11 emulator (with a 2/3 scale front panel with working lights and switches). Various hotspots are running off of various PI’s, and the uBitx’s and sBitx do as well.
I used to run Linux exclusively as my desktop system starting with kernel 0.99pl14, but when I got interested in photography again, I ended up going back to the ‘dark side’ so I could run Photoshop on a system with a calibrated monitor. Also, Intuit never released Linux versions of their tax and checkbook programs. I even contacted Intuit at one point, offering to port their software to Linux – they just ghosted me.
Tristan, N7TWM says
I have a Raspberry Pi 400 which I use as my semi-portable station computer. It replaced an old laptop running MX Linux (IIRC).
It runs WSJTX just fine. I’ve not settled on logging software 100% but KLog is sufficing for now.
I’ve also put a whole load of SDR software on various Linux computers – there’s a lot for decoding various protocols like ACARS, HFDL, ADS-B, even your electricity meter (if you have a ‘smart’ meter). The RTL-SDR world has really generated a lot of software (and a whole group of users who seem to eschew the usual Ham Radio forums – if they’re licensed at all).
One day I’ll get an SDR capable of transmitting and try using GNU Radio to define my own transceiver. Add suitable filters and amplifiers and there’s a really interesting station suitable for all sorts of experiments.
Koos van den Hout PE4KH says
For me at home Linux is the primary computing platform so the main shack computer is Linux-only. That does mean I “miss out” on some modes as the software is Windows-only, fine with me. The ‘ecosystem’ with hamlib for central rig control available to all hamradio software on the system works fine and allows multiple programs to fetch the status or control the radio at the same time. I use cqrlog for logging, wsjt-x for some digital modes (ft4/ft8/jt9) and fldigi for others (psk31, psk63, rtty) and tlf for (morse) contesting.
Koos van den Hout PE4KH says
I see I only answered your first question and skimmed along the third one…
The distribution I use for ham radio desktops is Ubuntu. It had great support for hamradio when the ubuntu hams group was still active, now it has good support meaning not all software is available right from the software repositories, you may have to look around.
What I like: I can do hamradio things without much bother. What I dislike: upgrades sometimes break stuff, so upgrading is something that needs to be planned and takes time. And knowledge or willing to try things is also needed. For example my favourite logging program doesn’t work as delivered, I always have to do a workaround to get it running on a new system.
There is a huge amount of software to play with, including logic analyzers, sdr software and others.
What I also like (but this has nothing to do with hamradio but more with security research) is that with enough cpu/memory you can create and use virtual machines easily.