Plug your Apple Mac into your Ham radio?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
- Let's see what the Apple Mac brings to the amateur radio shack. The new Mac M4 Mini is an affordable alternative that runs many, if not most, of your favorite ham radio apps. Let's see what works and what doesn't! This time, on KM6LYW Radio :).
- วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Congrats on the new Mac. You will love it. Looking forward to seeing more videos on the Mac. BTW, the RTL-SDR works great with SDR++.
I recently got my Fathers old 1986 Macintosh Plus up and running old-school packet radio. I got a BlueSCSI drive for it so no more loading 800K floppy disks. I have it running an old AEA PK-232MBX that I had sitting around. Pretty cool setup and been a lot of fun, just waiting to get my antenna put up if the weather will ever cooperate...
Congrats on the Mac and welcome to the club!
I am but an apprentice, you are the master!
@@KM6LYW You teased me for a minute with that Pat Winlink. I've been going down a huge rabbit hole trying to get it to work on Mac. But I don't want to remote into another device like your digpi. I want everything running natively & my radio plugged into my Mac. I'm tempted to try the Pat install from WG1V's instructions to get Pat, VaraHF and VaraFM working. Not sure how well that will go for me. I'll most likely hit a brick wall.
Update. Tried it last night. Failed miserably. Most of his commands and links don't work. I am doomed.
@@hamradiotube Agreed, keep in mind DigiPi is about 20 bucks, giving you access to every data mode sans vara. Pat guys are working on built-in AX25 support iirc so you can get packet wilink. I'm looking into porting ARDOP to mac, so we'll have all-mac winlink on HF.
Update: The new SDRConnect from SDRPlay works great on the MacMiniM4, no stuttering, and has a high-pass (PL) filter. There's a source patch for SDR++ mac scroll wheel on github. SDR++ still isn't working with SDRPlay on M4Mini. 3.14 API service runs for a few minute and locks up. 3.15 API doesn't work at all. RTLSDR+SDR++ works great. The SDRPlay guys are doing great work, helping the SDR++ developers.
I loved windows until version 8 came out and M$ knew better how my desktop should run than me. I love how clean macOS is and I wish linux was a little more "sharp" as you saw.
Welcome to the Mac world. I use one daily for work but stick with Linux for radio. Next up, you’ll buy an iPhone 😂
Sent from my M1 mini - been doing mac for past 20 years. First version of linux installed was Debian 1.0 Way to go Craig!
Now I can use my Mac! Awesome stuff Craig.
You are going to love the Mac. I recommend Warp for your command line interface. I recommend Homebrew for some command line tools. VSCode works great on the mac for an IDE. And when you start an unsigned app for the first time. You can right click the app, then press the option key (or alt key for a winblows keyboard) to change the right click contextual menu to force the mac to open the app in question. And the windows key will be your command key. Now I am curious what "brews" you are going to come up with for the rest of us. Linux and Mac are like peas and carrots.
Rodger rodger -- this is kinda why I made this video, so you guys could help me out. Homebrew installed, love it!
They keyboard shortcuts are pretty intuitive for Mac... Command + Q = Quit, Command + P = Print. The multi touch trackpad has some great functionality like switching virtual displays, showing all your windows, showing your desktop. I also recommend Alfred for the Mac... lots of automation available.
.. and shift+command+3 for screen print? :) Yah, I agree, I need to learn the keyboard command codes for sure. thanks!
@@KM6LYW ahh yeah built in screenshots are finger twisters... it's functional but I like an app called Shottr instead.
@@KM6LYW Command + Option + Shift + 4 will bring up cross hairs to do a screen shot then load it directly into your clipboard to paste anywhere.
@@hazer72 Yah, I just need more experience. I just found smooze.co to get the mouse/scroll-wheel under control. The mac mouse/accel/scroll settings are really off-putting for the new Mac person coming from Linux :). smooze.co mouse setup saved the day.
Try using SDR Connect from SDR play to run your RSP, works really well on my MacBook Air M3
i did! thanks. after a few minutes the audio stutters however. i suspect macos15.2 is too new for old things?
@ The latest version of SDR Connect is only a few days old so should be fully compatible with the latest macOS? I have no problems with stuttering, perhaps contact SDR Play for support? Hope you get it sorted, Happy New Year!
@@landytravels9427 yes! confirmed, newest version of sdrconnect works great! thanks
I just got a MacBook for Xmas and am moving from windows. Been wanting to make the break from windows for years.Hope to get this going with my Ic705 soon. Thanks
We have less choice than on a PC, but if you have the linux point of view, it's more easy to find the way.
I use my SDRPlay (rasp1a) with SDRangel on my Mac, with SDRangel, we can decode DATV, it will be nice for the restart of HamATV in the ISS in 2025.
SDRconnect works well too and is much simpler.
Multiscan 3B for SSTV (a little), and Rumnlog as log.
I have direwolf on my Mac but I don't use it, I use raspberry pi for that, and I connect to it via TCP, by the way QtermTCP works very well for access to my BBS/Node BPQ (F1UBL-2).
Of course, WSJTX improved with my IC-705 (but the buttons don't change size on my side :) ).
I'm taking a look at QTH for APRS actually, but I'm at the beginning.
SSTV: I use Black Cat SSTV (paid app). You can run others through WINE, but I can't get them to pick up the USB ports reliably
Yep, there are some hoops, but the things work reasonably well. The big thing that bugs me is that every time I turn my radio off, and back on, is that the serial port device name changes. (I've got an FT-991A, probably using the same driver you mentioned). Setting up FLRig has helped me a little, as I only need to change it back in one place, but it is still annoying.
I finally decided to try Windows out for digital radio stuff, and it has been more straightforward.
yup, works exactly like linux! thanks!
@@KM6LYW Are you saying that your serial port device name isn't static on Linux? (If that's the case, how on earth does the DigiPi handle it?)
@@ClintonWBlackmore It doesn't handle it. it's the same every time you boot however. you can talk to stuff in serial-by-id as well, but you can't know those strings in advance. linux is really lacking in device enumeration/designation, and it seems mac is no different :)
No Mac - just came for the Bumper Music. Rock on!
I have been using a Mac for ham radio for years. It’s just easier and I have the SDRPlay working with mine and FLDigi. It’s just simple.
I've got a dinosaur Mac Book 5.1 that's running Ubuntu 24.04 but I've been considering getting another SSD to run the older Mac OS for that version...
hello and congratulations for your work, do you think it will be possible in the future to have in digipi also a hotspot function for digital modes like dstar?!
DigiPi doesn't do voice, almost by definition. Though, I suppose that's a grey area. I think there are other great Pi solutions for dstart/c4fm/p25, including pistar, mmdvm and zoomspot. I dare not compete with those guys - great stuff there. Maybe M17?
@ yes I know but it would be interesting to have a single All in one device
Interesting to watch you progress though the transition. Everyone has their own experience. MAC user will talk about HAM app developers. Windows user will talk about HAM app developers, lol. Everything has a use case nothing seems to fit all uses cases.
I couldn't agree more! a broad array of spectacular technologies
What's your plan for a logger?
i honestly don't log... let us know what you come up with however
RUMLogNG
What do you use for time sync on a Mac? I'm used to using dimension 4 on Windows. I have a few old Mac mini's sitting around, so I think it wouldn't be bad to play around with them a bit.
ntp? i have no idea, thats half the fun
I use time.is ...
@@_MisterG wow I knew my old Mac would likely be off, but 1.3seconds is about an eternity when it comes to data mode transfers.
My Mac is running Linux Mint!
LOL! best of both worlds right there.
Yeah, there's plenty of ham radio software for the Mac. One notable exception is software for Winlink. Well, there is, but you need to be a real computer geek to make it work. BTW, I'm mainly a Mac user although I do have a Windows laptop I use for the aforementioned Winlink mode. Congrats on getting the new Mac Mini. 73 and Happy New Year. Ivan VE7IVN
thanks for all the help! everyone, really. Pat works for winlink if you use digipi as a TNC (agwpe port in the above video). I'll look into porting ARDOP to macos, so we can do Winlink on HF.