Tag: linux

Qthid Funcube Dongle Controller

Qthid is simple cross platform controller application for the Funcube Dongle Pro and Pro+ software defined radio receivers. It is written using the HID API library and the Qt GUI toolkit. It is a fork and evolution of the qthid002.zip package by Howard Long, G6LVB, available on the Funcube Dongle download page.

Qthid 4.0

Qthid is free (libre) software licensed under the GNU General Public License. This allows you to copy, modify and distribute the software without any restrictions, provided that your modification are distributed under a compatible license.

Status

The current stable release v4.0 provides full support for the Funcube Dongle API available with firmware 18f or later:

  • Change frequency and apply frequency correction.
  • Change RF gains and filters.
  • Change IF gains and filters.
  • LNA enhancement, bias current, etc.
  • I/Q correction.
  • Auto-repeat tuning buttons (click and hold button to scan).
  • Variable frequency step.
  • Upgrade and verify the firmware.
  • The crashes and freezes in the original qthid002 have been eliminated (I hope).
  • Tested on Mac OS X and Linux (32 and 64 bit).
  • Use of v3.0 and later requires firmware 18f or later. Use v2.2 to upgrade earlier firmwares.
  • Works on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and Windows 7.

There is also a quick-hack release v4.1 that supports the new Funcube Dongle Pro+ devices. This does not work with the original Funcube Dongle Pro!

Qthid 4.1 for Linux

Download and Install

If you are using Debian or Ubuntu Linux you can try to install the Debian package available for wheezy (testing) or sid (unstable). These packages contain everything to set up and configure your Funcube Dongle.

For other systems you can try my pre-compiled binary packages available in the download section at SourceForge. You will also find source packages there. Regardless of which option you try, be sure to read the README.txt file.

The latest development code is available directly from my Github repository:

  git clone git://github.com/csete/qthid.git

(Note that in order to get the Pro+ code you need to switch to the “fcdpp” branch.)

If you have a Github account you can fork it directly in Github and our repositories will be part of the same network. See the Pro Git manual for other awesome things you can do with the git repository.

Help and Support

I recommend to use the FCDevelopment Yahoo group if you have an original Pro device or the FCD Pro Plus Yahoo group if you have the newer Pro+ device. Pretty much everybody who knows something about the Funcube Dongle and the software API is there. Alternatively, you can post a comment to this page. I any case I prefer public forum for troubleshooting so that there is a record for future reference.

Funcube Dongle with Quisk SDR

Today I have spent some time trying the Funcube Dongle with Quisk SDR. The setup procedure was quite painless and the results very satisfactory: Using an Arrow II hand-held yagi connected directly to the FCD I could receive the HO-68 CW beacon with very good SNR.

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Improved search in the Gpredict saetllite selector

Charles AA1VS has done some cool tweaking to the search functionality in the Gpredict satellite selector. Check out the video below to see how it works.

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CuteSDR – Open source SDR for Linux, Mac and Windows

CuteSDR screenshotIt looks like Moe Wheatley, AE4JY, is working on a cross platform software defined radio receiver intended for SDR hardware from RFSPACE. It is written using the Qt toolkit and will be available soon under an open source license with the purpose of providing an SDR interface program example for other developers. It is still very early and no code has been released yet, but you can watch this first demo video published few days ago and you can also join the CuteSDR Yahoo group if you are interested in following the project.

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Test driving Quisk SDR

Before getting my hands all dirty with adding UHD driver to Quisk, I decided to take it for a test drive using some pre-recorded samples. I have used a 250 ksps recording of the HO-68 / XW-1 linear transponder downlink that I have recorded on November 9, 2010 using the USRP and the RFX400 daughterboard.

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Quisk – A software defined radio for Linux

Few days ago I learned about the Quisk software defined radio application for Linux. It is written by James Ahlstrom N2ADR with contributions from other radio amateurs around the world. A quick glance at the home page and the documentation suggested that it is a rather simple application where it is easy to add support for other hardware.

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Filter design and analysis in Linux

I was reading an article in the Danish hamradio magazine about a 1.8 MHz to 70 MHz SDR transceiver. In particular the RF frontend caught my attention because a set of band pass filters and a pre-amp would be a very useful companion for the USRP+LFRX, as would a power amplifier and a set of low pass filters be for the LFTX.

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Replace Shotwell with F-spot as default editor

As you may already know, Ubuntu 10.10 ditched F-spot as default photo organizer in favor of Shotwell. Now, Shotwell may be a better photo organizer than F-spot – I can’t comment on that since I do not use any of these apps for organizing – it does have at least one very significant flaw that made switch back to F-spot.

Why do I need any of these apps if don’t use them for organizing? Laziness, I guess. In Ubuntu 10.04 I found a very convenient way to do some very simple editing tasks such as cropping. If I opened a photo in Eog (Eye of Gnome – the default image viewer) there was a button on the right end of the toolbar called “Edit Image”, which opened the image in F-spot. In F-spot I could do the cropping then save the image with all original EXIF metadata preserved. In Ubuntu 10.10 this “Edit Image” button opens Shotwell and I can do the cropping here as well, unfortunately, when saving the image all original EXIF metadata will be lost forever! From a photographer’s point of view this is extremely bad and there should at least be a warning of some kind.

Fortunately I still had the original photo in my camera and no harm done.

Next I investigated how to replace Shotwell with F-spot as default editor for Eog. One would think that this would be configurable via the preferences. Well, yeah, sort of, if you call the gconf-editor a preferences dialog. I found a related post on the Ubuntu Launchpad where someone wanted to replace F-spot with Gimp. Basically the same problem and it also worked the other way around for replacing Shotwell with F-spot. After doing so I could safely uninstall Shotwell – No, it will not remove the “ubuntu-desktop” package 😉

Ubuntu 10.10 on the Acer Aspire 5745G Laptop

Now that Ubuntu 10.10 is out I am slowly upgrading my computers one by one. Today it was time to perform the upgrade on my newest (in terms of technology) and most bad ass computer, the Acer Aspire 5745G Laptop. I have previously written about running Ubuntu 10.04 on it, which was the first Linux OS I have installed. Already with Ubuntu 10.04 everything was working and only the Ethernet interface required manual installation of driver. Installing Ubuntu 10.10 was a simple matter of performing the upgrade from within the package manager.

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Gumstix OVero Fire and Tobi after the crash landing

The connectors on the Tobi expansion board got broken during the crash landingAs I mentioned last week, the Gumstix Overo Fire COM and the Tobi expansion board looked surprisingly well after the crash landing of the failed rocket. Yesterday, I have had a chance to take a closer look at the boards and see what damage has occurred to them. Once I separated the two boards from each other it was obvious that the 70 pin AVX connectors were damaged on both board. The electrical connections on the Gumstix Overo Fire are still OK despite the damaged connector, but the Tobi board got damaged beyond repair (PCB tracks ripped off). Below you will find some close-up photos and a video about the damaged connectors.

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