This is a companion project to the FT8 softmodem
software.
One of the first things I wanted to do when doing command-line FT8
operation is to view the spots and transmissions from my station.
The solution I wanted would also be low-bandwidth, so that I could
view the progress of the station while operating remotely, such as
on a low-budget cell-phone plan. This is the solution I put
together.
The program is a Python 3
script that emulates the monitor windows from
WSJT-X,
but in a console window, using only text. It does basic
color-coding and filtering. Messages that include
my call
are placed in the right-hand panel, while other received spots
are placed in the left-hand panel. Messages are not
duplicated between the panels as in WSJT-X, so as to
declutter the display a bit.
The display includes a two-line waterfall at the bottom of the
screen, as well. This divides the available columns into
frequency bins, and then displays each received and transmitted
message in the closest bin. The waterfall shows the last
few timeslots, and decays away older spots as the receiver runs.
ft8con running on Linux
There is a one-line status at the top, showing the RF, AF, mode,
and current
Zulu time.
When started with command-line option -1, the application
runs in a single-column view, that only shows messages that include
my own call. This can be handy when viewing on a portrait
orientation, such as a cell phone.
By default, the time, SNR, AF, and message text are shown for
each new spot. The Δt column is not shown, but spots
with excessive Δt are marked with an asterisk (*). When
started with the -t option, the Δt column is also shown
for all spots, provided enough space is available.
The SNR column can be disabled with the -s option, for
use when a very narrow terminal is used.
When started with -q, or when the A command is
typed while running, only CQ frames will be shown in the
left-hand panel.
To set the station callsign, use -m mycall. This
only needs to be done once, since the call is saved to disk
when the program exits.
The data source for ft8con is the ALL.TXT file
that is generated by WSJT-X. This file contains
all the received and transmitted messages, along with frequencies
and other information. ft8con watches this file,
and reads new spots from it as they are written. This file
can also be generated by the ft8modem package's
ft8cat program by using the -a option. This
option can also be used in ft8con to specify the path to
ALL.TXT.
The software can be downloaded below. It is reasonably
complete in its current form, but please email me with bug
reports if you find any.
Click the link above to download software packages. The source is being
released under the GPL version 3, which is also available on the download page.
Release History
2024-09-10 - Fix subtle bug in blocked-call list handling. 2024-09-04 - Initial release.
