xara Modem

HamBros, an answer to pray hath arrived! A drop-in replacement for VARA on Linux! No more messing around with WINE or Bottles just to send an off grid email. Let’s dive in to xara!

⚠️ UPDATE: I now have a Comfy Guide to Winlink on Linux available covering xara & pat!

📥 INSTALLATION

My last post on this topic was super complicated and convoluted. This is a xillion times simpler. We owe a lot to the absolute legend x0rro who made this project possible. This tutorial is set up on Linux Mint 22.3 Zena. Get thee to the terminal!

🔄 Update the System

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

📥 Install Dependencies

sudo apt install cargo-1.91 libpulse-dev libasound2-dev

📥 Install xara Modem

⚠️ NOTE: add --features registered if you have a registered version of VARA. Otherwise you can leave it out and use the following:

cargo-1.91 install --locked --force --git https://github.com/x0rro/xara xara

☎️ Dialout Group

For all things digital ham radio on linux, your user needs to be in the dialout group. This gives you access to serial ports and modems and such. On Debian/Ubuntu/Mint it is:

sudo adduser $USER dialout

Check these notes for other distributions. You can check if it worked by typing groups into the terminal. You might have to logout/login afterwards to make it take effect.

⚙️ CONFIGURATION

The configuration is quite minimal. You basically need a .conf file for xara with the optimal options:

cd ~/.config && nano xara.conf

Copy and Paste this configuration into that xara.conf file:

call = ve5rev
hf = 2300
audio = alsa
capture = plughw:1,0
playback = plughw:1,0
radio
ptt = rigctld:127.0.0.1:4532

🛠️ Customize the Config File

✳️ You need to update it with your callsign.

✳️ You need to select the correct sound card audio for your system. To determine your capture/playback device(plughw), plug in your radio via USB and run the following in terminal:

arecord -l

This will show you your USB device such as Card 1 … device 0.

✳️ This config assumes you are using rigctld for push to talk (ptt). There’s actually many choices for this in the xara project notes. But this setup works really well.

💻 OPERATION

1️⃣ Start Rigctld

rigctld is a network daemon that’s part of Hamlib, a library widely used in amateur radio software for controlling radios.

The following is specific for the Icom 705. I have instructions on how to set this up for other rigs as well as more details about what each piece of the command does. The radio is connected to the computer via USB.

rigctld -m 3085 -r /dev/ttyACM0 -s 38400 -T 127.0.0.1 -t 4532 &

⚠️ NOTE: You can also use FLRig instead of this.

✳️ You can determine where your radio is on your system with this command:

ls -l /dev/serial/by-id/

In my case, the IC705 is at /dev/ttyACM0

Rigctld will run in the background, thanks to that final & at the end of the command.

2️⃣ Start xara

Now you can fire up the xara modem:

cd ~/.cargo/bin && ./xara --config ~/.config/xara.conf

This will continue to run in the terminal.

3️⃣ Start pat winlink

Switch to a new terminal tab and run pat:

pat http

Using pat, choose VARA HF (xara listens on the same ports). Use pat as per normal to connect to a gateway.

🦾 AUTOMATION

I like to run each of these commands manually in their own terminal tab. Here’s a handy way to keep them all close by. We can add a function to the shell to spit the commands out. Copy the following into your .bashrc or .zshrc file:

function xara-start() {
	echo "1-Start Rigctld: rigctld -m 3085 -r /dev/ttyACM0 -s 38400 -T 127.0.0.1 -t 4532 &"
	echo "2-Start xara: cd ~/.cargo/bin && ./xara --config ~/.config/xara.conf"
	echo "3-Start pat: pat http"
}

Then just source .zshrc to make it active. Now when you want to get this all running you can type xara-start in the terminal and the commands will display. Then you can copy and paste them into different terminal tabs.

😎 CONCLUSION

And that’s it! With minimal configuring, you’re up and running natively on Linux with a great replacement for VARA!

73 de VE5REV