Installing CHIRP and FLDIGI

Horizon_Brave · 2016-08-11 21:09:25

Hey everyone. So this will probably apply to an absolutely tiny tiny amount of people, but it'll serve as a log for me just in case I ever have to do it again...plus even if I help just one person out, it's time well spent.

PART ONE: Chirp

Well in my post here, I detail that I got into ham radio and got myself a small handheld transmitter, a cheap little Baofeng, shown below:
https://www.amazon.com/Warranty-Dual-Ba … ds=baofeng

Anyway the radio functionality, it does what it's supposed to do, and have some nifty features. one such thing you can set up is the "CHIRP" software. This is open source and even linux developed software that allows interfaces with many such devices. I was sort of surprised though to find that it actually has support and is in Jessie stable for downloading:

https://packages.debian.org/jessie/chirp

So you know what to do,

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install chirp

This will install the base chirp package, but I found out the hard way that it also requires some additional packages of the python variety.

Go ahead and scoop these up too...

sudo apt-get install python-gtk  python-serial  python-libxml2

You now may need to set your user to the newly created "dialout" group. You can do this with:

sudo usermod -aG dialout <username>

*NOTE* that if you're having trouble getting it from the repo..you can download chirp as a tarball, and extract it and install it manually.
You can get the tarball at :
Chirp Tarball

Once you download the tarball, you'll need to extract it:

tar xzf chirp-0.1.12.tar.gz

then cd to that extracted directory, and finally:

sudo python setup.py install

You should be up and running and off to the races! Because this application is reliant on the 3.5mm jack to USB cable to emulate the computer's serial connection, the drivers needed is :
usbserial

Do an

lsmod | grep usbserial

to see if the driver has been loaded. This was one of the drivers in the python-serial package I believe. if it's not on your lsmod output, then you'll have to load it.

so you need to get the device ID and vendor of the radio. So plug it in, and turn on the radio.

Then do an lsusb and find the device in question. mine looked like this:

Bus 003 Device 003: ID 067b:2303 Prolific Technology, Inc. PL2303 Serial Port

What you need to capture is the colon separated number. On mine it's 067b:2303
Now, we have the vendor and ID number so split them up and add the 0x prefix and manually insert the driver:

sudo modprobe usbserial vendor=0x067b product=0x2303

You should be good to go! I'm not certain, but you may have to insert the module usbserial into /etc/modules to be loaded after reboots. I'll play around with it and get back..

So having rebooted after I unplugged the Baofeng radio, indeed the driver isn't loaded by udev , so let's add it to /etc/modules as sudo.

sudo vi /etc/modules

and add the line usbserial

Next post, get on the digital transmission with fldigi software!

Last edited by Horizon_Brave (2016-08-11 21:24:18)

Horizon_Brave · 2016-08-12 22:53:36

Alright, I return with the 2nd part of the one two punch to get your UHF/VHF radio working with Chirp and FLDigi. At the stopping point above, Chirp should be installed, and good to mess with. Like I said earlier, you may have to run Chirp as root, to be able to sync it with your radio. Just as a FYI, I'm doing this with the outlook of using a Baofeng Handheld radio. Honestly this isn't really practical as the Baofeng's don't make use of HF transmitting... which is sort of needed for *most* data/rtty transmission. But I'm doing this because there documentation I've seen out there leaves out some key things...

The only problem I have with Chirp is that it very very simple. I have a list of 21 channels in memory. If I want to move something from channel 21 up to channel 1, I haven't found a way to just highlight and drag it to the top. You have to right click it 20 times and and select Move Up. You've better off manually doing it on the radio's interface.. Anyway, gripes aside, Now that Chirp is installed, you can go to the Radio menu on the top and download the settings from your radio. Then you can make edits at necessary. Then Upload those changes back to the radio later. Something else that would have been really appreciated with this software is an ability to make notes and comments for each station. We have websites like QRZ that pretty much do this, but still it'd be nice to have a list of my favorite repeaters and stations and a place to add comments to, like describing where, and what the channel is?!

Part Two Installing FLDigi

I'll (try) to leave the theory out of this, and leave that for my post in the Off-Topic thread. This is just to get the software FLDigi setup and what you need to know for operating procedures.

So Let's take a look at what the software FLDigi actually does.
While I don't mind actually talking in conversation, I can tell I am definitely a generation brought up with the ease and convention of texting. I suppose this takes away from the idea of real Ham radio, but since I learned about RTTY, Data and Packet Radio, I've been sort of enamoured. So what FLDigi is, is a software package available for free and it's Ma' Deb safe:

FLDigi

The software is basically a modem, that's built as software. So you can connect your radio, either to an external sound controller device (recommended) or if you're very disciplined (and short on cash) you can get some 3.5mm audio cables and plug it into your computers audio and mic jacks. These two audio ports obviously interface with your computer's onboard sound card. So for us Bunsenlabers, We'll be dealing with Pulse Audio/ ALSA most likely.

So first things first, let's get FLDigi:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install fldigi

Likewise if you're the adventurous type, you can install it from its source tarball. (If you do though, make sure you have the other required components. You'll also need to grab libportaudio2, and libsample. When installing the .deb package, these come bundled up.

Once you've downloaded the tarball, cd t o the directory and let tar do it's work.

tar xzf ../downloads/fldigi-xxx.taz.gz

So once you have it installed, and you have no dependencies left, you're ready to fire it up. Again just so we're all on the same page here..What we've just installed is a modem, that will take our text from the keyboard, modulate it digitally, send it to via audio tones to our line sound card. The sound card dutifully passes it to whatever device is connected, in our case the Radio we have. The radio picks up the audio and then modulates it via analog modulation. In the case of most data for Ham Radio, it's recommended to use Amplitiude modulation, and further more Single Side Band AM.

So let's start it up, run it and it will most likely take you through a mini walkthrough to get the software setup. This includes inputting some HAM information. Just to note, everything that the wizard takes you through can easily be changed from the Configure drop down menu option. A lot of the UI graphical options aren't important. What you want to pay attention to is the configuration of the RIG tab, Audio tab, and Misc tab.

RIG TAB:
So in my case, I'm using a Baofeng handheld... We need a way to tell the radio to transmit once it receives the digital modulated data from fldigi. There's two methods. You can have fldigi specially send a signal to the radio to tell it to go into transmit....OR the Baofeng has a VOX mode which will be triggered if it receives any data at a certain specified level. So on the RIG tab in options, If you want to use VOX to control the rig, you need to check the box "PTT tone on right audio channel"

If you're not using a Baofeng and have a *real* transceiver you'll need to check the "Use separate serial port PTT" check both RTS and DTR. You must then press the Initialize button.

Make sure to save the configs often.

Audio Tab:
In the Audio tab, we have different options for where to get and where to send the modulated signals. Remember, we want the radio to send the audio of the frequency that you set on the radio, to the computer's sound card. Then we want to send the key strokes that are going to be digitized to the audio output of the soundcard, to the radio.

So, in this case, we need to check the "Port Audio" box. And set drop downs to "pulse" (meaning pulseaudio, our mixer) likewise, this software written with linux in mind, gives you a check box for "pulseaudio" as well. Either method works for me.

Misc Tab:

In the Misc tab, everything should be good as default except for one thing, that apparently is important...but I haven't figured out what it's really for. But for the sake of completeness, let's just do it.

Okay so you need to download one other small piece of software. No worries, it's in the repo's as well, but I'm just not sure what it's usefulness is... anyway, It's called flmsg :

flmsg

sudo apt-get install flmsg

Once installed, go back to the misc tab, and click the sub tab NBEMS (don't ask me what that stands for?)

click the locate button and set the path to the flmsg binary. It's most likely in /usr/bin/flmsg

At this point... As long as you're wired up correctly, should be able to start receiving signals, and your waterfall display should be able to start it's display.

Note, on the top bar across the top of the GUI there's a bunch of info for frequency, Call, Out, and some drop downs... screen shot below.

I had to dig around and inquire, but for the case of a Baofeng Handheld, this won't come into play. So let it be know, do NOT worry about putting anything into any of the top menu fields. What it's there for, if if we had a real transceiver and wanted to sync it up. Meaning you could plug a serial or usb plug from your radio to your pc and the data sent between the two. Unfortunately, the Baofeng handhelds use only one method to send data and voice. So you can only have either the USB cable plugged in...or the audio cables. So it'd be pointless to use the USB cable, when you can't send the audio over it.

Anyway that'll end it for here! Operating FLDigi, and receiving transmissions and sending is a topic for another day. As I stated, unfortunately using a Baofeng handheld for UHF/ VHF doesn't really take advantage of the FLDigi software since it can't transmit on the bands that FLDigi makes use of for most of the data communications, like PSK31 baud.

You can do some CW (morse code) which I may go into in a later session. For now, 73, and I go back to saving up for an HF transceiver!

#1 2016-08-11 21:09:25