I’ve tried a few times to compile and run WSJT on the Pi in order to decode JT65 mode transmissions – I think I got close, but I ran into other issues with the soundcard configuration that has tripped me up, like configuring WSJT to listen and transmit to my soundcard’s inputs and outputs.
I’ve seen some other posts on getting WSPR running, so this looks like it’s more possible.
From going through the WSJT dependencies, I’d already installed all the libportaudio and python-* dependencies. If you’re following this from scratch through, I’d start with George Smart’s article here. To get a working config I followed George’s article first and then picked up LX3KR’s article here to get the soundcard config working – I also wanted to run WSPR in headless mode, so I picked up the steps at this point:
cp WsprMod/w.so WsprModNoGui/
I’m not sure the suggestion for the .asoundrc file worked for me, as referencing the input as 2#audio and output as 3#radioconv in the WSPR.INI didn’t work.
At this point I did some guessing. When wspr starts up, it writes a list of audio devices to audio_caps file in your wspr dir. Here’s what mine looks like with my Rigblaster Advantage attached:
pi@raspberrypi ~/amateur_radio/wspr $ cat audio_caps 0 1 2 0 0 RIGblaster Advantage Audio: USB Audio (hw:0,0) 1 128 128 0 0 sysdefault 2 0 2 1 0 front 3 0 2 1 0 surround40 4 0 2 1 0 iec958 5 1 2 0 0 spdif 6 128 128 0 0 default 7 0 2 1 0 dmix
So I’m guessing the Rigblaster is device 0 and sysdefault is 1.
From the suggested config in WSPR.INI, it configures the in and out like this:
AudioIn 2#radio AudioOut 3#radioconv
2 and 3 don’t seem to match up with anything I’m seeing, but since the other earlier step changed the USB sound card devices to be default, I set these instead:
AudioIn 1 AudioOut 1
Before starting up wspr I also ran alsamixer and set the vol and mic levels to be roughly 3/4 volume.
Now when starting up it looks like wspr sees my devices and off it goes:
pi@raspberrypi ~/amateur_radio/wspr $ python wspr_nogui.py ****************************************************************** WSPR Version 3.00_r2326, by K1JT Run date: Thu Apr 17 05:14:05 2014 UTC setting g.Win32 ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.rear ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.center_lfe ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.side ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.hdmi ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.hdmi ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.modem ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.modem ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.phoneline ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.phoneline ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:957:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) The dmix plugin supports only playback stream Audio config ok 2014 Apr 17 05:14:06 Rx Noise: -30 dB
The last few lines repeat for a minute or so then it starts reporting the actual volume level. You want to adjust the radio volume or volume on the Rigblaster so that the level is close to 0db. +/- a few doesn’t seem to make much difference.
The other values I changed are:
PctTx 0
This is percent tx time. Leave it at 0 for rx only, otherwise change to a %age of time value that you want to send your own transmissions. I changed it to 5.
iband 2
This represents the band you’re listening to, counted from the list of freq values. 600m is 1, 160m is 2 and so on.
Start it up and off you go!
python wspr_nogui.py