psk31lx - amateur radio PSK31 modem via soundcard

psk31lx [-d audiodevice] [-q] [-l] [-x]

psk31lx uses a soundcard to receive and transmit PSK31, an extremely narrow band HF-mode. PSK31 is a mode for keyboard QSO's.

-d

specifies the audio device to use. If no device is specified, the default value /dev/audio is used.

-q

turns on QPSK mode (default is BPSK)

-l

turns on inverted mode. Overrides LSB setting in initialisation file

-x

turns on TX-follows-RX-frequency. Overrides TXTRACK setting in initialisation file

psk31lx needs its code table psk31.cod for varicode coding. The default location for this file is /usr/share/psk31lx/ and can be modified at compile time. If this file does not exist, psk31lx additionally searches the current home and working directory for this file.

psk31lx searches for its configuration file at the following places:

$(HOME)/.psk31

$(HOME)/psk31.ini

./psk31.ini

/usr/share/psk31lx/psk31.ini

The configuration file contains lines of the form NAME=NUMBER and NAME=" STRING" . It contains the following entries:

CALL

Operators callsign, used for CW ID

FREQ

Local IF frequency used by the encoder/decoder. The actual PSK31 operating frequency is by FREQ Hz above (below for LSB) the frequency setting of your transceiver

LSB

A value of 1 turns on "inverted mode" for LSB operation (significant only for QPSK).

TXTRACK

Setting TXTRACK to 1 turns on the TX-follows-RX-frequency switch

PASSALL

Setting PASSALL to 1 turns on the PASSALL flag (display decoder output regardless of the DCD flag)

MACRO1..9

Defines Macro texts which can be transmitted by the appropriate function keys F1..F9

The simpliest way to use PSK31 is to connect input and output of the soundcard to your transmitter, and to use the TRX's internal VOX for keying. psk31lx does not yet provide functionality for explicitly keying the transmitter. It also does not yet control the sound cards mixer, thus input and output control must be done via an external audio mixer tool.

This document does not yet contain information on how to use PSK31. If you are new to PSK31, please have a look at the operation hints given in MSDOS or Windows software packages for PSK31.

Currently my PSK31 for Linux/Soundcard is distributed via my personal amateur radio home page located at http://home.pages.de/~dl9rdz/hamradio/

Excellent information about PSK31 in general and lots of PSK31 related software can be found at the official PSK31 homepage, located at http://bipt106.bi.ehu.es/psk31.html

psk31sb was written by Hansi Reiser (Email: Hansi.Reiser@stud.uni-erlangen.de or dl9rdz@amsat.org; Amateur Packet Radio: dl9rdz@oe5xbl.#oe5.aut.eu)

It is based on algorithms developed by Peter Martinez G3PLX and based on the MSDOS software for PSK31 written by Andrew Senior G0TJZ and Peter Martinet G3PLX.