Install freedv on Ubuntu 14.10

Just a note for others who might run in to the same issue. Freedv depends on libtiff4 which is not available for Ubuntu 14.10. Here's how to install freedv and avoid that bump in the road.

# grab the library from an old version of ubuntu
wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/t/tiff3/libtiff4_3.9.7-2ubuntu1_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i libtiff4_3.9.7-2ubuntu1_amd64.deb

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
# add these lines to /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://files.freedv.org/debian/ stable main
deb-src http://files.freedv.org/debian/ stable main

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo apt-get install freedv

Now you'll find the app if you search from the dock.

New version of WSPR Watch for iOS is out

I've updated the iOS app WSPR Watch with support for iPad, iPhone 6 and 6+.

The program is simpler than before but I think more useful with a feature I've long wanted, a direct view of how long ago each of the spots were reported.

As always, it's free and all data is gratefully pulled from the legacy database page on wsprnet.org.

I'm happy to report that there are a couple of equivalents for Android, one from developer Derek G4SWY, who made WSPR World Watch, and another called WsprNetViewer by Joseph D. Glandorf with source code and it's in the Play store. Great work!

My own WSPR beacon station is on 20m running a vertical wire antenna on a 6m squid pole. It doesn't take much to reach around the globe.

wspr on Ubuntu 14.10

The easy solution

Thanks to this post, from Greg, K17MT, here's what you do.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ki7mt/wspr
# press enter when asked something
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wspr ntp

Now you can use the Ubuntu launcher to launch wspr, or as I did, drag the icon to the side dock and launch.

Note that I also recommend installing the ntp time sync service as I find my ubuntu laptop clock drifts off and by default Ubuntu only syncs the clock on each boot.

Watch out for me, vk2tpm, on 20m.

Thanks Greg!

Obsolete below here

Building WSPR on linux is often a bit of a puzzle. With the help of the clearly very clever George Smart M1GEO I got most of the way.

He didn't draw a lot of attention to it, but after running ./autogen.sh you do need to edit the Makefile and change /usr/bin/f2py to /usr/bin/f2py3.4

After successful make and make install, running wspr gave me a python exception ending in ImportError: cannot import name '_imagingtk'

The solution is:

sudo apt-get install tk8.5-dev tcl8.5-dev
sudo pip3 install -I pillow

It's now running although I now get a crash shortly after it starts decoding.

So audio in is working. My guess is something is wrong with the fortran to python interface. Any tips would be most welcome.