My dog Aris
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Neoklis Kyriazis ("Nick")
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His friend Pico
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Introduction:
The main purpose of this web site is to provide the end result of
several years of work in the field of software development (for the
GNU/Linux
Operating System), e.g the source code (and related material) of
various applications for Ham Radio communication as
well as other purposes. These source packages should be able to
compile on other POSIX/UNIX compatible platforms (*BSD
distributions, Solaris and perhaps Mac OS X), possibly after some
modification.
Some "caveats" are in order here: I don't have
any formal training in Information Technology or Computer
Programing, although I have a B.Sc. Degree from London University
in Electronic Engineering (graduated in 1973, I am of 1948 vintage
and retired early!). I am basically a
teach-your-self C/Linux programmer, learning from books as well as
the Internet, of course. As such it should be expected that there
will be mistakes and/or bad/incorrect programming practices evident
in my source code, even if the applications themselves appear to
work well.
I try my best to test and bug fix my software, but on my own it is difficult to make sure that I have exercised my applications in every possible way, to bring up hidden bugs. I use some tools (gdb, efence and valgrind especially) to check for memory violations/leaks etc, but even so these will only detect bugs if the program is used in such a way as to put the execution flow through faulty code. Therefore my software is offered here "as is" and under the GPL license model, including the standard disclaimers of the GPL.
Since I use the Arch Linux distribution, which is basically a fast-moving "bleeding edge" distribution, I have had reports of compilation or run-time difficulties by users who tried to compile and use some of my software on there own systems. This is particularly true of my apps for X/GTK2 since I use the latest GTK2 releases and there are occasional backward compatibility problems with distros using older versions. There are also problems with sound card compatibilities and I try to modify my source code as I receive bug reports. Be warned!
Software Description:
My software is generally related to my Ham Radio hobby, for which I
acquired a license and a call sign (5B4AZ) in 1973 and operated in
various modes and frequency bands since. I was probably the first
radio amateur in Cyprus to
operate on the early OSCAR
satellites, using mostly home brew gear, including antenna rotors
controlled by a computer I built from Wireless World magazine's
kit, running my own tracking software. And it was based on a 2
(two) MHz Z80 cpu with an MM57109 fpu running at 800 kHz (0.8
MHz)!! It had all of 4 KB (four kilobytes) of RAM and 8 KB of ROM
containing BURP (Basic Using Reverse Polish notation) - of course
no disks at all, just a 300 baud interface to a domestic tape
recorder!!
My current computer is a 2.4 GHz AMD Athlon-64 X2 on an ASUS A8N
SLI motherboard with 1Gb RAM, two 120 Gb SATA-2 hard disks, a
Radeon X300 video card and an EIZO 18-inch LCD monitor. I used
various Linux distributions over the years, but with a 64-bit
processor I also need a 64-bit Linux distribution if I am to enjoy
the full performance of my computer. I chose Arch Linux for this purpose since
its a lean O/S with good package management and an active AMD64
developer community. Arch Linux is a little harder to install than
other User/Desktop-oriented distros but I still thought I should
give it a try.
The software I have developed follow the UNIX approach to an application, e.g to do one job and do it well. For this reason I have on this site for Ham Radio, separate software for PSK31 and Hellschreiber digital communication modes, Morse code decoding, satellite tracking and space communications, QRA grid Locator calculators and a logging application. I also have nec2c, a translation to the C programing language of the well-known NEC2 FORTRAN antenna analysis tool and, still under development, a graphical interactive version of nec2c. This can visualize antenna structures and much of NEC2's output (current/charge distribution, radiation and near field pattern, input impedance/vswr/gain etc) in real time, e.g. as results become available and without producing an output file.
Not related to Ham Radio directly, I have experimental software for Firewire/IIDC camera image/video capture and object tacking, a translation from FORTRAN to C of NORAD's SGP4/SDP4 and SGP8/SDP8 satellite ephemeris routines and a translation from PASCAL to C of Dr. Kelso's sgp4-plb26a library. This I have built into a complete source code package which can and has been used, by me and others, to build satellite/sun/moon tracking programs. Finally I also have an old ncurses-based application that interfaces with a Rockwell Microtracker LP(tm) GPS module and provides control and data read-out from this interesting device.
My Ham Radio Station:
My base station is an FT847 transceiver which I use for both HF and
VHF/UHF operation, including satellite communications. I have an
AT-200Pro auto tuner
for my WIMO 160m G5RV and a
10-30 MHz broadband vertical, which I designed using xnec2c and then built from locally available
materials. For satellite communications I have a Yaesu G-5500 Az-El
rotor system, controlled via a GS-232 interface connected to my
computer. I use my xsatcom satellite
tracking application to control both the rotors and the
transceiver, including Doppler shift correction and frequency
tracking of Tx and Rx, satellite pass predictions and much more. My
satellite antenna system includes a WIMO 7-turn helix for 70cm, an
X-Quad for 2m and an 80 cm barbecue grill dish + DB6NT down converter for 2.4 GHz. For
the 6m band I have a home brew 4 element Yagi, and for the 137 MHz
APT weather satellite band I have a home brew RH polarized
turnstile feeding an R139
receiver.
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