Building HAM Clock on an old RaspberryPi

I’ve got a couple of old RaspberryPi computers on the shelf in the shack and so decided it was time for me to put one of them to good use. The first model on the shelf is the oldest and is one of the very first RaspberryPi 1 computers that was released. (It’s the one with the yellow analog video signal output on the board!). This particular model is extremely slow but, I hang onto it just as a reminder of the first SBC in the line.

The second one is a RaspberryPi 2, a quad core machine that is only slightly faster than the first model but, it’s powerful enough to run HAM Clock.

It didn’t take long to install a vanilla Raspbian Desktop O/S and get it configured on the local LAN. I installed a few packages that I like to have available on all my Linux machines and then started on the HAM Clock install.

The first thing I needed to do was install the X11 development library that is required to compile the HAM Clock binary. To do this, open a terminal and enter the command below to install the package.

sudo apt install libx11-dev

You will need to type in your password to obtain root privileges to complete the installation process and then wait for the package to be installed.

The HAM Clock source code is available from the HAM Clock Website under the Download tab in .zip format. Once downloaded unzip the file and change directory into the ESPHamClock folder ready to compile the code.

cd ~/Downloads/ESPHamClock

Once in the ESPHamClock directory you can run a command to get details on how to compile the source code.

make help

This will check your system to see what screen resolutions are available and then list out the options available to you for compiling the code as shown below.

The following targets are available (as appropriate for your system)

    hamclock-800x480          X11 GUI desktop version, AKA hamclock
    hamclock-1600x960         X11 GUI desktop version, larger, AKA hamclock-big
    hamclock-2400x1440        X11 GUI desktop version, larger yet
    hamclock-3200x1920        X11 GUI desktop version, huge

    hamclock-web-800x480      web server only (no display)
    hamclock-web-1600x960     web server only (no display), larger
    hamclock-web-2400x1440    web server only (no display), larger yet
    hamclock-web-3200x1920    web server only (no display), huge

    hamclock-fb0-800x480      RPi stand-alone /dev/fb0, AKA hamclock-fb0-small
    hamclock-fb0-1600x960     RPi stand-alone /dev/fb0, larger, AKA hamclock-fb0
    hamclock-fb0-2400x1440    RPi stand-alone /dev/fb0, larger yet
    hamclock-fb0-3200x1920    RPi stand-alone /dev/fb0, huge

For my system 1600×960 was the best option and so I compiled the code using the command as follows.

make hamclock-1600x960

It’s no surprise that it takes a while to compile the code on such a low powered device. I can’t tell you how long exactly as I went and made a brew and did a few other things whilst it was running but, it took a while!

Once the compilation was complete you then need to install the application to your desktop environment and move the binary to the correct directory.

make install

Once the install is complete there should be an icon on the GUI desktop to start the app. If like mine it didn’t create the icon then you can start the HAM Clock by using the following command in the terminal.

/usr/local/bin/hamclock &

The first time you start the app you’ll need to enter your station information, callsign, location etc and then select the settings you want to use. There are 4 pages of options for configuring the app all of which are described in the user documentation.

Once the configuration is complete the map will populate with the default panels and data. I tailored my panels to show the items of interest to me namely, POTA, SOTA, International Beacon Project and the ISS space station track. I was hoping to be able to display more than one satellite at a time on the map however, the interface only allows for one bird to be tracked at a time.

You can access the HAM Clock from another computer using a web browser pointed at your RaspberryPi on your local LAN using either the IP address or the hostname of the device.

http://<hostname>:8081/live.html

or

http://<ip-address>:8081/live.html

You can also control the HAM Clock remotely via web browser using a set of web commands that are detailed on port 8080 of the device.

http://<hostname or ip-address>:8080/

This is a great addition to any HAM shack especially if, like me you have an old HDTV on the wall of the shack that is crying out to display something useful.

More soon …