Preparing for installation

You will clone from github.com and then run the WD software in a “wsrdaemon” sub-directory of a regular linux user account, e.g., /home/username/wsprdaemon.
Typically, you will create a separate “wsprdaemon” user, e.g., /home/wsprdaemon. However, you can run it under your own (or another’s) account. In which case, for any references in these documents to the “wsprdaemon” user, simply substitute the username you have selected.

N.B. In either case, the account running WD needs sudo privileges as several component installations and process management require it.

Prerequisites

Basic hardware includes:

  • antenna system that includes an appropriate low-pass filter and a low noise pre-amplifier.

  • RX888

  • computer (see below)

  • network connection (add an IGMP-aware ethernet switch if you use inter-computer communications)

  • power management

Antenna System

You have lots of options. A balanced antenna has advantages in common mode rejection. Some active antenna systems reliably in use include

  • DX Engineering

  • N6GN Single antenna system

  • LZ1AQ system

A good quality, low-noise pre-amplifier (LNA) may help the active above. A passive system, like a simple dipole, almost always requires an LNA.

The RX888 has a poor quality 60 MHz low-pass filter (LPF). So, if you plan to set your RX888 to sample at 129.6 MHz you will need an in-line 60 MHz LPF. If sampling at 64.8 MHz, you will need a 30 MHz LPF. You should find these available at TAPR or Pauls Elliott’s Turn Island Systems, among other sources.

Computer requirements

You have lots of options for a computer and network architecture that supports ka9q-radio and WD. However, in order to run it all on one computer, it will need sufficient CPU and memory power and superspeed USB 3 (the RX888 samples at 64.8 or 129.6 MHz!). CPU and memory (RAM and cache) structures vary widely and some, even nominally “powerful” new computers, in their default configuration, may not manage the core and cache optimally. Computers using the Ryzen 5800 chipsets and above seem to work without adjustment.

You can run ka9q-radio (radiod) on a “slower” computer, as long as it has USB 3. It can multicast its output via RTP streams to another computer for processing. This setup will usually require an IGMP-aware ethernet switch to shield your LAN (especially if it relies on WiFi). The prodigious multicast output from radiod can bring a WiFi LAN to a clogged halt.

Power Management

Running an RX888 and wsprdaemon 24x7 remotely poses some unique problems. One annoying such involves the disappearance of the RX888 from the USB bus. When this happens, a power cycle of the computer + RX888 provides the most reliable way to recover this. This means installing and configuring a network-controlled power socket that will reboot the computer + RX888. We cannot provide instruction for all the ways you might accomplish this but still recommend that you set up a solution to enable remote power-cycling.

Operating system

The current version of WD runs on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. Ubuntu seems determined to push “snap” software which has sometimes broken WD through automatic updates that changed critical dependencies. Clint Turner has developed a method to “de-snap” a system to avoid this problem. Alternatively, you can install an Ubuntu-derivative – Mint – which does not use snaps or their progenitor, Debian.

sudo access

Installation and proper function of WD requires root access, best done using sudo.

To avoid entering the su password all the time:

sudo visudo

Edit the line starting with “%sudo” to allow members of group sudo to execute any command:

%sudo   ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

Determine the user to run WD

To run WD as the user “wsprdaemon”, create a wsprdaemon user:

sudo adduser wsprdaemon

Subsequent installation and management of WD will then happen as user “wsprdaemon”. You should then login to the machine as “wsprdaemon.”

Add wsprdaemon (or your username) to groups sudo, plugdev:

sudo usermod -a -G sudo wsprdaemon
sudo usermod -a -G plugdev wsprdaemon

WD includes and installs the ka9q-radio package which creates a “radio” group. So, once the WD script has finished compiling and installing the ka9q-radio package, check that user wsprdaemon (or your username) has been added to the radio group in /etc/group. If not, then:

sudo usermod -a -G radio wsprdaemon

If dedicating this computer to exclusive WD use, you may also want the hostname of your computer to reflect this. For instance:

sudo hostnamectl set-hostname W3USR-B1-1

After changing the hostname, check or update the /etc/hosts file to reflect the change.

Remote Access Setup

If installing WD on a computer you intend to manage remotely, you can make it much easier to login to the other computer via ssh.

First, make sure you have a public key:

ssh-keygen

then use the ssh-copy-id utility to copy this to the remote computer.

ssh-copy-id  wsprdaemon@\<new computer name\>

If you want to suppress the several notices that greet you on every login,

touch .hushlogin

A useful shell command to find your external ip address:

dig +short myip.opendns.com @resolver1.opendns.com

System Pre-requisites and Useful Utilities:

The following list of packages includes what will prove needed or useful for WD and ka9q-radio. As of WD v3.3.1, many but not all of these will get installed automatically. You can safely run the following either way.

sudo apt install btop nmap git tmux vim net-tools iputils-ping avahi-daemon libnss-mdns mdns-scan avahi-utils avahi-discover build-essential make cmake gcc libairspy-dev libairspyhf-dev libavahi-client-dev libbsd-dev libfftw3-dev libhackrf-dev libiniparser-dev libncurses5-dev libopus-dev librtlsdr-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev libusb-dev portaudio19-dev libasound2-dev uuid-dev rsync sox libsox-fmt-all opus-tools flac tcpdump wireshark libhdf5-dev libsamplerate-dev

For ethernet transport, radiod will use your default network interface (NIC). You can enable a specific NIC device in /etc/radio/radiod@.conf and in /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf. This primarily pertains to systems that have more than one NIC and setups that will use multicast between computers, not just on a stand-alone system.

The program “tmux” usefully enables multiple text windows, preserves a session between different logins, and enables two or more users to concurrently join a session.

To enable tmux mouse control, edit .tmux.conf (logged in as wsprdaemon) with

set -g mouse on

When accessing the system with a Mac using iTerm, you can enable mouse “cut and paste”. Goto iTerm2 > Preferences > “General” tab, and in the “Selection” section, check “Applications in terminal may access clipboard”.

You can now proceed to clone wsprdaemon from GitHub.