Ham Radio Deluxe Vs Linux

29 August 2015

So after a brief discussion at the local radio club, it was asked if HRD can be run or re-compiled under Linux. Those are two destinct problems, with two distinct answers;

Since the source-code for HRD isnt available, re-compiling it for linux just isnt possible.

Running HRD on Linux, thats another matter, after after following the brief set of instructions that you can find here: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=26721 I was in fact able to install and run HRD on Linux. After a small amount of messing about with it I was even able to import my whole log, the only thing I need to check now is that the application can really use the USB / Serial hardware of the machine to talk to the radio, and most importantly that the application's audio performance is good enough for PSK / CW etc (somthing that does not work on my Remote Desktop host (currently in use).

Pi-Star Upgraded with Packet Shaper

03 August 2015

So as they say, necessity is the mother of invention, while listening to a number of stations on D-Star recently, it occured to me that a number of D-Star users suffer from packet loss into the Reflector networks. While this is not completly solvable, there are things we can do to mittigate the issues. Using the iptables firewall built into the linux kernel, I have built a rule set that markes the D-Star voice traffic as "EF" (DSCP 46), this should have the affect that the outbound D-Star Voice traffic will be prioritised over anything else at the internet gateway. That should reduce the packet loss origionating from users with busy internet connections. DStarGateway has been updated by Jonathan Naylor (G4KLX), so that will also be in todays build.

Pi-Star V2 - Release Ready

21 July 2015

I think we are about ready for a general public release for Pi-Star, this image has had many mods tweeks and upgrades as compared to everything else that is out there. What I now lack are the documents and guides to go with the releases. I did run into some un-expected issues with the V2 build, some of the "pistar-keeper" code was not working quite as expected (resolved) and some of the wifi drivers were missing (I was VERY focussed on those damn Ra-Link cards that I broke most of the rest in the process). Final small bugs with the move to the V2 OS Code included the reflector switch code failing to do anything, thankfully that was a very quick fix. As things stand right now, everything appears to work, the beta testers have run out of bugs. If you'd like to give it a try, download from here: http://www.gw6gw.co.uk/pi-star

Pi-Star V2

10 July 2015

So after an interesting time of rebuilding the base system, the new build of Pi-Star is complete! The new compressed size of the image is 378MB, positivly svelt compared to the old 790MB download.

I have also done a little work on the image so that it is now small enough to fit on a 2GB SD card, the old one required a 4GB card.

Over all I am very pleased with the outcome, the upgraded kernel along with the adition of "pistar-watchdog" have made for a really stable platform. Gone are the service failures I was seeing with depressing regularity!

The platform is now in such good shape I think its time for a public release, a few of the local hams are testing it out for relyability and durability, no real issues so far.

Pi-Star Image Updates

30 June 2015

Now that I have Pi-Star mostly stable (by stable I mean feature stable, the platform is already very stable), its time to do somthing about the size of the download. Its currently 800MB (once compressed) , and doesnt need to be this large.

The next project is to rebuild the base system from the ground up, not including any of the things that are not needed. For example, Pi-Star has no need of the GUI at all, it never uses it, especially since all of the config is done via the web portal, with advanced config done on the command line.

I managed to get the system base down to 350MB before compression, thats not bad but it has balooned to 2GB with all of the software / compilers installed. Once I have the G4KLX software compiled, we'll see just how small the download comes out!

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