Richard Fakenberg (OK1BR) (@ok1br) header
Richard Fakenberg (OK1BR) (@ok1br) profile picture

Richard Fakenberg (OK1BR)

@ok1br

OK1BR · CW, contesting, homebrew. Building the native Linux ham stack I wanted to exist: SDR, skimmer, logbook — all in C/GTK4, no Wine. JO60TD

Joined July 2025
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Photo by Richard Fakenberg (OK1BR) (@ok1br)Photo by Richard Fakenberg (OK1BR) (@ok1br)Photo by Richard Fakenberg (OK1BR) (@ok1br)Photo by Richard Fakenberg (OK1BR) (@ok1br)Photo by Richard Fakenberg (OK1BR) (@ok1br)Photo by Richard Fakenberg (OK1BR) (@ok1br)Photo by Richard Fakenberg (OK1BR) (@ok1br)Photo by Richard Fakenberg (OK1BR) (@ok1br)Photo by Richard Fakenberg (OK1BR) (@ok1br)Photo by Richard Fakenberg (OK1BR) (@ok1br)
sdr-for-linux 0.6.0 is out, on a new DSP base: WDSP 2.11 with neural NR and PureSignal 3.0. New: parametric RX & TX equalizer on a drawn curve, synchronous AM, TCI over a Unix socket, and TX that unkeys within 1 s if the radio link drops. 73 de OK1BR #hamradio #sdr #linux
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My SDR and logger share one PC, yet phoned each other over a network port. Now I pick: TCP for the LAN, a Unix socket (0600) for this box, or both at once. TCI is WebSocket; it never cared what carries it. Same IQ rate either way. 73 de OK1BR #hamradio #sdr #linux
Image from Richard Fakenberg (OK1BR) (@ok1br)
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log-for-linux 0.4.0: I didn't write this changelog. Three contests did. SAC CW, CQ WW RTTY, CQ WW SSB: 229 QSOs, three robots said OK. SAC's even recounted my score: Diff 0. New: CQ WW RTTY preset, zones prefilled from the call. 73 de OK1BR #hamradio #contesting #rtty #linux
Image from Richard Fakenberg (OK1BR) (@ok1br)
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Firmware updates used to mean jumpers and crossed fingers. I gave Claude the task: it found a LAN flasher, read its code, checked the hash and took my ANAN G2E to 11.1.0. 2440 blocks, 1.4 s, checksum OK. Thanks Rick N1GP (firmware) & DG6EU (flasher)! 73 de OK1BR #hamradio #sdr
Image from Richard Fakenberg (OK1BR) (@ok1br)
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Saturday, CQ WW RTTY, one 5120 px monitor. My waterfall had a secret: wider than ~2100 px, it fell to 30 fps and scrolled at half speed. SDR for Linux 0.5.2 draws the spectrum on the GPU: 60 fps at full width, a third of the frame time. 73 de OK1BR #hamradio #sdr #rtty #linux
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Every few months the desktop gets bored of itself. Time for a GNOME theme refresh again. 73 de OK1BR #GNOME #Linux #ArchLinux #unixporn
Image from Richard Fakenberg (OK1BR) (@ok1br)
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skimmer-for-linux 0.5.0 ships the neural CW engine I ran live through SAC CW this weekend, on GPU or CPU. On a 20 m recording it pulls 10 stations where the classical decoder finds 7, and it now keeps its callsign dictionary current on its own. #hamradio #cw #sdr #linux
🤖 Made with AI
Image from Richard Fakenberg (OK1BR) (@ok1br)
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A graphics card copying Morse live in SAC CW. DeepCW neural decoder (model by e04) in skimmer-for-linux on RTX 5070: 1536 channels over 192 kHz of 20 m, ~90 stations tabled while I log. First contest hour: 4 bugs the recordings missed. 73 de OK1BR #hamradio #cw #contesting #linux
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At YO DX HF I never counted my score. The logbook knew every QSO, it just never added them up. log-for-linux 0.3.1 counts it live: points × mults. Plus, YO county CT and Portugal fought over one mult. New SAC preset for the weekend. 73 de OK1BR #hamradio #cw #linux #archlinux
Black-and-white photo of a contest desk at night: a chrome iambic Morse paddle with clear finger pieces, a notepad of pencil tally marks, the pencil set aside, and behind them a monitor with the log-for-linux window on a dark Linux desktop.

ALT Black-and-white photo of a contest desk at night: a chrome iambic Morse paddle with clear finger pieces, a notepad of pencil tally marks, the pencil set aside, and behind them a monitor with the log-for-linux window on a dark Linux desktop.

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Two VFOs, A/B and A=B. Yes, my SDR app only just learned that. sdr-for-linux 0.5.1 also brings CTUN, filter edges you drag right on the spectrum, and the TX passband drawn in red. Tested live on the ANAN G2E for a week. 73 de OK1BR #hamradio #sdr #linux #archlinux
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My CW skimmer only ever knew one TCI server: mine. Then SM0ONR aimed it at a SunSDR. Connected. Silence. BW to 156 kHz: waterfall, decodes, spots on the ExpertSDR3 panorama. skimmer-for-linux 0.4.1 drops 5 assumptions only mine met. 73 de OK1BR #hamradio #cw #sdr #linux
Black card: skimmer-for-linux, Multi-channel CW skimmer, 1536 channels at once, above rows of grey and white Morse code.

ALT Black card: skimmer-for-linux, Multi-channel CW skimmer, 1536 channels at once, above rows of grey and white Morse code.

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skimmer-for-linux 0.4.0 — the best feature is one I deleted. The station list is gone, 190 lines out. The waterfall column took its job: a dot per call on its frequency. Click one, the radio tunes there. 1536 channels decoded at once. 73 de OK1BR #hamradio #cw #sdr #linux
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I don't own an ANAN G2. W1IZZ does — he ran my code on his. Twice. He sent back numbers, not adjectives: PureSignal feedback 151 in a 129–181 window, wattmeter within 2 W of an LP-100A. sdr-for-linux 0.5.0, G2-tested. 73 de OK1BR #hamradio #sdr #hpsdr #anan #linux
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An RTL-SDR dongle, aimed at empty sky, now makes my passwords. Useless — /dev/urandom was right there. Fun — every character carries measured entropy, not vibes: NIST SP 800-90B, half thrown away. radio-noise-key-generator 0.1.0 73 de OK1BR #hamradio #rtlsdr #sdr #linux
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73 RTTY QSOs in SARTG WW RTTY — whole stack my own, three releases today. • sdr-for-linux 0.4.0: native RTTY, direct FSK 45.45 Bd/170 Hz • skimmer-for-linux 0.3.0: RTTY decode, 768 ch, 11% CPU • log-for-linux 0.3.0: macros key the FSK 73 de OK1BR #hamradio #rtty #sdr
Black card. White heading OK1BR, subtitle "Native Linux ham radio software, written in C", and a line listing sdr-for-linux, skimmer-for-linux and log-for-linux. Below it a white spectrum trace with three signal peaks over a faint grid, and three vertical signal-strength bar meters beneath them.

ALT Black card. White heading OK1BR, subtitle "Native Linux ham radio software, written in C", and a line listing sdr-for-linux, skimmer-for-linux and log-for-linux. Below it a white spectrum trace with three signal peaks over a faint grid, and three vertical signal-strength bar meters beneath them.

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sdr-for-linux 0.3.0 — GPU rendering is now the default, not an experiment. • Waterfall is a GPU texture, cairo draws only the spectrum strip • Our own drawing: ~1.1 ms/frame. A busy band scales 1 ms, not 13 ms • paru -S sdr-for-linux 73 de OK1BR #hamradio #sdr #amateurradio
Black card with the sdr-for-linux name, the line "SDR transceiver for HPSDR / ANAN / Hermes Lite 2" and "RX + TX, PureSignal, TCI server". Below, a white spectrum trace with three signal peaks over a grid, and waterfall streaks under each peak. Callsign OK1BR in the corner.

ALT Black card with the sdr-for-linux name, the line "SDR transceiver for HPSDR / ANAN / Hermes Lite 2" and "RX + TX, PureSignal, TCI server". Below, a white spectrum trace with three signal peaks over a grid, and waterfall streaks under each peak. Callsign OK1BR in the corner.

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The AUR is taking uploads again after June's malicious-package incident — 50 packages in half an hour, against 7 in nine days last week. My ham radio apps are finally up: paru -S sdr-for-linux skimmer-for-linux log-for-linux 73 de OK1BR #archlinux #hamradio #amateurradio #sdr
Black title card: OK1BR — native Linux ham radio software, written in C. Below it the names sdr-for-linux, skimmer-for-linux and log-for-linux, and a monochrome spectrum trace with three signal peaks above a waterfall.

ALT Black title card: OK1BR — native Linux ham radio software, written in C. Below it the names sdr-for-linux, skimmer-for-linux and log-for-linux, and a monochrome spectrum trace with three signal peaks above a waterfall.

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During WAE a station gave me no number. My logbook didn't know why: WAE scores EU-to-DX only. Now it knows before I log. And the same verdict reaches my skimmer, where unscorable calls gray out like dups. github.com/OK1BR/log-for-lin… 73 de OK1BR #hamradio #contesting
Image from Richard Fakenberg (OK1BR) (@ok1br)
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skimmer-for-linux: I trained a neural net to read hand-keyed CW my decoder can't. Offline it cut errors 4x. On the air it rewrote what the classical decoder had right: fixed the hard 10%, broke the easy 90%. Deleted. Not every problem is a neural one. 73 de OK1BR #hamradio
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Three native Linux apps for ham radio, in C and GTK4: sdr-for-linux — SDR transceiver skimmer-for-linux — CW skimmer log-for-linux — contest logbook One family, linked over TCI. Built and proven on the air, in real contests. github.com/OK1BR 73 de OK1BR #hamradio
OK1BR - Overview

OK1BR - Overview

Software Architect, UNIX Systems Administrator and HAM Radio Operator — building native Linux apps in plain C (GTK4/libadwaita). - OK1BR

github.com
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