vielmetti / ferrite Goto Github PK

"Ferrite" is the working name for an amateur radio focus containerized
desktop. It is to be based on Universal Blue (https://ublue.it/) and is
inspired by Ham-Pi, PiSDR, and other related projects that try to
corral a whole bunch of ham radio software into a single distribution.

Target hardware includes the RTL-SDR and Airspy HF+ software defined
radios. I hope to be able to tune and process and decode ADS-B, APRS,
AM, FM (narrowband, wideband, and stereo), SSB, a variety of digital
voice modes including DMR, and to decode slow scan TV and radiograms.
I'll do the receive side first, and then look at transmitters.

Universal Blue targets a wide range of hardware, so I'll let that project
shape my selection of what machine this runs on. The Raspberry Pi would
be great to get everything running on, but I'll also hope to get a Chromebook
ready setup to better support mobile and portable operations.

As a start - get Github Actions set up, along the instructions from below at 5.

https://ublue.it/making-your-own/#create-and-configure-your-repository

https://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/ChirpOnLinux

r/Fedora says "use Flatpak" https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/vzxtcp/chirp/

Discussion on Flathub: https://discourse.flathub.org/t/can-not-find-chirp/2390

Marked as 'dead package' because of Python2 dependencies (which have since been fixed, I think): https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/chirp/blob/rawhide/f/dead.package

Assemble the list of the first packages to add to the base image to make it a radio image.

My short list follows. We'll call it 0.01 when there's one in each category.

To program your HT: first chirp for analog radios, then dmrconfig and qdmr for DMR radios.

For software defined radio: first gnuradio because it's non-trivial, then one or more of GQRX, CubicSDR, SDR++. Start with rtl-sdr drivers, try to get Soapy drivers too.

That will be it for a start!

"DMRconfig is a utility for programming digital radios via USB programming cable." Not currently packaged for Fedora.

Source code at https://github.com/OpenRTX/dmrconfig

Dependencies noted for Fedora at OpenRTX/dmrconfig#13

My 2020 notes: https://vielmetti.typepad.com/w8emv/2020/07/dmrconfig-a-configuration-utility-for-dmr-radios.html

Luigi PU2SPY @luigifcruz has a PiSDR image for the Raspberry Pi.

https://github.com/luigifcruz/pisdr-image

The PiSDR is a Raspbian based operating system for the Pi pre-loaded with multiple Software Defined Radio software. It was created to serve as a fast and reliable bootstrap for SDR projects.

The distribution is notable for its support for a wide range of SDR hardware and software, which is documented in the image build. Software is installed out of apt but more often built from Github repositories. The relevant directory with build instructions and code is in the "stage4" directory at https://github.com/luigifcruz/pisdr-image/tree/9bf154df78743ed9419e29510acc53df2e9a5506/stage4

ferrite is unlikely to have anywhere near the comprehensive set of SDR packages that PiSDR has accumulated, and doesn't look to get all of the SDR hardware support out of the box, but it's a place to start to look first.

Follow the directions at https://ublue.it/making-your-own/#set-up-container-signing and set up cosign. Do this before all other things. (but not right yet)

Fedora-hams https://lists.kernelnewbies.org/mailman/listinfo/fedora-hams and the
Fedora Amateur Radio SIG https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/AmateurRadio support ham
radio software on Fedora:

Goal: To improve the Fedora collection by adding packages for Amateur Radio (Ham Radio) operators.

Look for assistance from this group, and also use this group to share information and releases about the effort.