Short Wave Listener app leveraging ka9a-radio

[Michael Hauan]

Greetings!

If you have radiod running, this little app will enable you to browse the EiBi SWL database (published semi-annually at http://www.eibispace.de/) and listen to broadcasts from a web browser.  

The code is at https://github.com/mijahauan/SWL-ka9q.

Simply clone the repo, cd to the repo directory, and run `./swl —status-host bee1-status.local`  replacing “bee1-status.local” with the name of your radiod host status channel (defined in your radiod@.conf file in /etc/radio). First time running, it will download the EiBi database, prepare a small web server, and open a web page to browse stations.  Thereafter,  you can run (again, from the repo root):

./swl stop                     # Stop the server

./swl restart                 # Restart

./swl status                   # Check if running

./swl --no-browser             # Start without opening browser

./swl --status-host NEW_HOST   # Change radiod host

Documentation in the repo provides more detailed information. 

Aside from enabling rudimentary SWL, I created this primarily to demonstrate the use of ka9q-python (https://github.com/mijahauan/ka9q-python) — a utility library you can install with pip and import for use by a client app to interact with radiod on your LAN.  It enables dynamic creation of receivers with any of the features radiod supports.  

The ka9q-python library also demonstrates (as if it needs more such evidence) the cool capabilities of ka9q-radio.  Feel free to use it to create your own apps.  I use it in my hf-timestd application (https://github.com/mijahauan/hf-timestd) and for Grape uploads to PSWS.  Also, Rob Robinett is busy developing version 4 of wsprdaemon-client using the ka9q-python library, as well.  

BTW, the ka9q-python library can interact with other frontend radios besides the RX888.  For instance, using Airspy radios plus radiod, I’m working on web-based apps to display maps centered on your location of available National Weather Service broadcasts, local 2m repeaters, and commercial FM broadcasts, among others (e.g., ADS-B, ATC).  The ka9q-radio package supports several other radio front-ends, too.

73!

Michael AC0G