The Qthid Funcube Dongle controller version 3.1 has now been released. This release includes the necessary fixes to make qthid work on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. Thanks to Mike KØZAP for the patch!
Tag: mac os x
Qtmm souncard modem decoding APRS data from the ISS
Yesterday I successfully received APRS transmissions from the International Space Station on 145.825 MHz using my Yaesu FT-817 connected to my MacBook Pro via a Signalink audio interface and a USB sound adapter.
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Qthid 3.0 with full API support released!
Qthid 3.0 – the Qt-based controller application for the Funcube Dongle – has been released. This release includes support for the full control API available with the 18f firmware for the Funcube Dongle. This should cover all the functionality provided by the “fully functional windows front-end”.
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Qthid 2.2
A few days ago I tagged and packaged qthid-2.2. This release contains no new functionality compared to the 2.1 release, but it brings various user interface enhancements. In particular Mac users will find that there is now a proper application icon in the bundle.
Qthid 2.1 release
About a week ago I forked Howard’s qthid002 cross platform Funcube Dongle controller application with the objective of continuing development and adding support for the full FCD API that has been available since version 18f of the firmware. This first release contains various fixes for he crashes and freezes that were known to happen, providing a stable application that can be used to change frequency and upgrade the firmware from 18b to 18f.
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 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!
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.
CuteSDR – Open source SDR for Linux, Mac and Windows
It 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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GNU Radio 3.3.0 on Mac OS X – USRP
I have now tried the USRP on Mac OS X using the MacPorts installation and I am happy to report that it works very well. Indeed, the USRP is really plug and play on OS X and there is no need to configure udev or anything like it is the case on e.g. Ubuntu Linux. The video below shows the FM receiver listening on the local APRS frequency.
Grig Download Information
Currently, I can only guarantee installation support for source package, although binary packages may be available from third parties. Brief installation instructions and notes are given below. Please also study the documents available in the source package.
Source Packages
The latest source distribution can be downloaded from the SourceForge download area.
Unpack the source package with:
tar -xvfz grig-x.y.z.tar.gz
Change to the grig-x.y.z directory and build grig:
./configure
make
make install
The last step usually requires you to become root, otherwise you may not have the required permissions to install grig. If you can not or do not want to install grig as root, you can install grig into a custom directory by adding –prefix=somedir to the ./configure step.
If the configure step fails with an error, examine the output. It will usually tell you which package or libraries you need in order to build grig. Please note, the you also need the so-called development packages. In many GNU/Linux systems you can just install the GNOME Development stuff, but I would recommend to just install everything if you can (except if you are running Debian ;-).
Of course, you will also need Hamlib installed and working properly on your system before you can install grig.
If you encounter any show-stoppers, feel free to ask for help, see User Support.
Debian Packages
Joop Stakenborg is kind enough to maintain debian packages for grig. The latest versions of Grig are usually available on testing and unstable. If not, you can check this page for status.
Ubuntu
There are native Ubuntu packages for grig, but they may not be quite up to date. You may want to try the debian package instead.
Fedora Core
Grig is included in Fedora Core, see the status here.
Suse Linux
No recent info available. You can try the Fedora RPM.
Mandriva
No recent info available. You can try the Fedora RPM.
BSD
Grig is available from freshports.
Mac OS X
The source code can be built the same way as under Linux:
./configure
make
make install
This has been reported to work and, since I do not have any Mac, I can not provide any support beyond this. Sorry.
Wintendo
Well, it is possible, it works fine, but I don’t support it anymore. Try Linux instead 😉