It took a minute, but it works.
The last week or so has been a lot of fun diving into some software and tweaking things to get them where I need them to be. There are some really great free options out there for radio communications that do not involve MS Windows or any proprietary solutions.
Looking back on the entry where I decided that it was time to ditch Windows, I was left with figuring out how I was going to send email and continue to be prepared to use Winlink email gateways in the field. I really wanted an RF solution and that narrowed the field. I settled on ARDOP as it checked all of the boxes. Pat was really the only solution for a client. It has a Web UI running on localhost that is quite polished as well as a command line option that can be very, very useful.
The wrinkle in all of this is my prerequisite that I not sacrifice the wireless connection to the IC-705. That means making sure that I’m using wfview and that I know what exactly I’m doing with it. This is where things got frustrating for a bit. So let’s break this up into sections so that I can remember what I did if/when I need to do it again.
wfview
wfview is ONLY FOR ICOM RIGS. This is a drop in replacement (and then some) for the ICOM Remote Utility. It only works with ICOM gear so this isn’t relevant if you’re not an ICOM operator.
That said, wfview is available as a package in the Ubuntu repositories. It’s an apt away. It installs quickly and with that done, it’s a question of making some choices around configuration. They do a great job of walking users through the setup. But there are some configuration elements that are relevant here.
wfview has a checkbox marked rigctrl that lets the user assign a port. This is essentially running rigctrl in wfview and can take the place of rigctrl in this toolchain. That means that it can handle changing frequencies and PTT as needed. So be sure to check that and make sure that when configuring Pat the correct port is set. They recommend NOT using the same port that rigctrl defaults to and instead going up one. I get it. That keeps other applications clear. It also creates confusion and delay if one is not mindful.
The other thing that wfview does is create audio interfaces. It is really, really important to remember that when starting up ARDOP the capture device for ARDOP is the output device from wfview. Think of wfview as the audio source. You put the out of wfview to the in of ARDOP and the in of wfview to the out of ARDOP. Why am I making a big deal out of this? I’ve heard that it can be confusing if you’re up late and screwing around with your radio when you should be in bed.
I heard. From a “source.”
ARDOP
The very talented F1RUM wrote a really, really great blog post about how to get this all running on his setup. His documentation on installing ardopc is stellar because, well, it pulls together things from sources that are difficult to find. The source code for ardopc64 isn’t easy to find and it’s not in the Ubuntu repository. I will put here what he shares here.
sudo apt-get install flrig libhamlib-utils
sudo wget -O /usr/local/bin/ardopc64 “http://www.cantab.net/users/john.wiseman/Downloads/ardopc64”
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/ardopc64
sudo apt install -f # this gets your pesky dependencies
That’s enough to get ardopc64 installed and ready to go. With that in place, it’s really as simple as running the following:
ardopc64 8515 hw:CARD=Loopback,DEV=1 hw:CARD=Loopback_1,DEV=1
Those devices will work great if you’re using wfview and set it up the way they explain it on the documentation site. I didn’t do anything magical when configuring wfview on my end. I was very vanilla and that paid off in keeping me from troubleshooting too much. For any other rig, it’s a question of figuring out what your audio capture and playback devices are. arecord -l and aplay -l are your friends here.
Pat
Pat is also a package that is easily installed. F1RUM explains the configuring that needs to happen in there but you have to be sure that there is a hamlib rig defined and that later in the config the same alias is setup with PPT on. For my future self, my config looks like this:
…a bunch of stuff…
“listen”: [],
“hamlib_rigs”: {
“my_ic705”: {“address”: “localhost:4533”, “network”: “tcp”}
},
NOTE: that 4533 is the rigctrl port within wfview.
and then later in the config:
rig”: “my_ic705”,
“ptt_ctrl”: true,
“beacon_interval”: 0,
“cwid_enabled”: true
},
With it set up, simply run it like this:
pat –listen “ardop,telnet” http
Going to http://localhost:8080 will get you to the web UI. From there, it’s easy to select a gateway, connect, and send/receive mail. Yes, this also makes telnet email available. I plan on scripting this to start this way so that telnet is available (handy to download mail quickly with a connection) but ready to send/receive over RF for practice and in the field.
Conclusion
Getting to a free toolchain wasn’t particularly taxing. It didn’t take months of research. What it did take was living The Linux Experience which means finding exactly the right blogs that have exactly the right morsels of information that can be cobbled together into a working setup. Instead of costing money and time it’s only time. I can live with that.
This setup meets the criteria that I set. Some future work will be to wrap up some of this into scripts and maybe put a bit of a Python GUI on some of it because I want to screw around with that and it seems like this is a good outlet for that kind of project. Next Wednesday, I will do my Winlink Wednesday check-in using this setup.
