lbussy / wsprrypi

A QRP LF/MF/HF/VHF WSPR transmitter leveraging a Raspberry Pi

Wsprry Pi (Whispery Pi)

A QRP LF/MF/HF/VHF WSPR transmitter leveraging a Raspberry Pi

This is a fork of threeme3/WsprryPi inspired by a conversation with Bruce Raymond of TAPR. It has been updated, improved, and documented for ease of use.

Please see the documentation for background, installation, and use.

wsprrypi's Issues

Known Issue: No Default User

• New Raspbian distros do not ship with a default user - MUST add pi before installing.
• Also, as far as I know, Raspbian is required. Not sure about Bookwork or the rest.

Reported by K2RMA

Spurious lines in WSPR Log

Some lines are shown without a timestamp in wspr.transmit.log for some stderr:

2023-03-15 15:50:40 GMT	Config loaded from: /usr/local/etc/wspr.ini
2023-03-15 15:50:40 GMT	Transmit Enabled: false
2023-03-15 15:50:40 GMT	Call Sign:
2023-03-15 15:50:40 GMT	Grid Square:
2023-03-15 15:50:40 GMT	Transmit Power: 0
2023-03-15 15:50:40 GMT	Frequencies:
2023-03-15 15:50:40 GMT	PPM Offset: 0.000000
2023-03-15 15:50:40 GMT	Do not use NTP sync: true
2023-03-15 15:50:40 GMT	Check NTP Each Run (default): false
2023-03-15 15:50:40 GMT	Use Frequency Randomization: false
2023-03-15 15:50:40 GMT	Power Level: 7
2023-03-15 15:50:40 GMT	Use LED: false
Error: must specify callsign, gridsquare, dBm, and at least one frequency.
Try: wspr --help

Beacon Timing List Not Honored

Please consider adding the ability to control how often WSPR beacons are transmitted using the web GUI as can be done from the command line.

For example, to transmit one WSPR beacon on the 30M band every 8 minutes (repeating indefinitely), a sample command is:

wspr -r -s N9NNN EM10 20 1014020 0 0 0

It sure would be convenient to accomplish the same thing using the web GUI. :)

73,

AA7US

Request: Ability to control drive strength

From WSPRNet.org:

It would be interesting to programmatically control the drive strength to, in turn, control output power. This might also be useful to keep in regulatory compliance if you wanted to put the HiFER band in your 20 meter rotation. Perhaps that might also involve selecting a power level per band.

Some additional feedback on just how low this would need to be driven is here.

Known Issue: Pi Zero (original) Headless

Hi,

A great project, and i want to built several wspr nodes for some other HAM's here in NL. I have one issue with booting, the Pi Zero W, it seems the node only boots when i attach the monitor, the usb keyboard is not needed at all. I have no clue why this hapening, i have a lot of pi's running in unattended mode with no issues. Does someone recognise this issue, and have suggestions to solve? Could it have relation with the activation of the wspr transmition?

73 de pd1eg
Eelco

Logrotate not working

Missed calling the logrotate script to the install script.

Request: Input Validation

From WSPRNet.org:

I wanted WSPR to transmit across a couple bands, but I didn't quite understand the argument syntax until a did a bit of troubleshooting. At first, I tried comma delimited and realized it was space delimited.

Maybe place valid entries in am array, check the web page field against those, etc.

Allow Reboot

@edegraaff suggested a reboot button.

Show Transmission Indicator

@edegraaff suggested a transmission indicator.

Blank lines in wspr error log

There are some blank lines (timestamp only) in the stderr.log.

Known Issue: Error loading shared lib

After installation, the error log will show a failure to load a shared library:

/usr/local/bin/wspr: error while loading shared libraries: libbcm_host.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I caught this after a reboot; it may be due to the libs not being loaded until after a kernel restart. I may add a reboot reminder to this later on, but for now, it is officially labeled: Annyance.

Show Current Time

@edegraaff suggested a time display.

New Install - wspr executable error

Greetings,

I just installed Wsprry Pi 1.2.0 on a trusty old Pi 3 using a fresh download copy of 32 bit Raspberry Pi OS Legacy (Bullseye). The install of Wsprry Pi went fine.

After configuring the web GUI, WSPR beacons do not transmit.

Checking the wspr daemon status from the command line I get this (BOLD added for emphasis):

pi@WSPRPi:~ $ sudo systemctl status wspr
● wspr.service - wspr daemon for: wspr
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/wspr.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2024-02-19 19:00:49 MST; 4s ago
Docs: https://github.com/lbussy/WsprryPi/discussions
Process: 854 ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/wspr -D -i /usr/local/etc/wspr.ini (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Main PID: 854 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
CPU: 6ms

When I run "sudo wspr -h" I get this:

NOTE: I removed some single quotation marks to preserve formatting here.

pi@WSPRPi:/usr/local/bin $ sudo wspr -h
wspr: /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libc.so.6: version GLIBC_2.32 not found (required by wspr)
wspr: /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libc.so.6: version GLIBC_2.34 not found (required by wspr)
wspr: /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libc.so.6: version GLIBC_2.33 not found (required by wspr)
wspr: /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libstdc++.so.6: version GLIBCXX_3.4.29 not found (required by wspr)

Any guidance on how to correct this will be most appreciated.

73,

AA7US

Check for Time Service

@edegraaff reports that when installed on an OG Pi Zero (no "W"), no time synch service is installed, even if a dongle is added.

Consider checking for a list of ntpd-ish services.

Fix wrapped logs

The message about NTP and random offset should be split on the config update.

2024-03-03 15:22:13 GMT	Extra options:
2024-03-03 15:22:13 GMT	- Using NTP to calibrate transmission frequency. - A small random frequency offset will be added to all transmissions.
2024-03-03 15:22:13 GMT	Ready to transmit (setup complete).

Filesystem Error Using Command Line

Attempting to run some wspr beacons by using the command line and have encountered a new error:

terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::filesystem::__cxx11::filesystem_error'
what(): filesystem error: cannot get file time: No such file or directory []
Exiting, caught signal: 6

The wspr daemon was stopped first.

Here's the command I used and the full result:

sudo /usr/local/bin/wspr -s -o -r AA7US DM41 13 10140200 0 0 0
Wsprry Pi v1.1.0 (main).
Running on: Raspberry Pi 2B or 3B (BCM2837).
WSPR packet payload:

• Callsign: AA7US
• Locator: DM41
• Power: 13 dBm
  Requested TX frequencies:
• 10.140200 MHz
• 0.000000 MHz
• 0.000000 MHz
• 0.000000 MHz

Extra options:

• Using NTP to calibrate transmission frequency.
• Transmissions will continue forever until stopped with CTRL-C.
• A small random frequency offset will be added to all transmissions.

Ready to transmit (setup complete).
Center frequency for WSPR trans: 10.140188 MHz.
Waiting for next WSPR transmission window.
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::filesystem::__cxx11::filesystem_error'
what(): filesystem error: cannot get file time: No such file or directory []
Exiting, caught signal: 6

Show Logs

From WSPRNet.org:

Do you think it would be possible to produce some sort of status page, and at the very least, some sort transmission statistics? I was going to take a stab at this, but I wasn't able to figure out what "singleton" does on UDP port 1234. It would be nice to know what it is doing.

Waiting for additional feedback on this one.