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My last post, I talked about getting Linux setup for my new ham laptop. This is a short post to cover another small step in that process.

Tonight I was working on getting Rig Control working for my FT-857D and CQRLog on Linux. A lot of times, when I read posts like this, or watch youtube videos, people ignore the hardware side and just focus on the software side of things. I am going to try and cover both.

The hardware setup is simple. I am using the programing cable (CT-62B cable) that came with my RT Systems software to connect the CAT port of the FT-857D to a USB port on the laptop.  Windows will see this cable a COM port, in my case, COM3 when I booted to Windows.

I found I had to install a couple things in Linux in order to get this working properly. When I intalled CQRLog, hamlib was installed along with it. I also had to install a package called libftdi1. When I look at the output of “dmesg” I see that the CT-62B cable shows up as ttyUSB0 which is the name of the serial port in Linux that I am going to use to communicate with the radio.

In CQRLog I set the following:

• RIG Model = 122 FT-857
• Device = /dev/ttyUSB0
• Serial Speed = 4800 (This is what the radio is set to)
• Check the box for “Run rigctld when program starts”

Everything else on the TRX control setup in CQRLog is set as default and not changed from the installed values.

One last Linux setting, in the /etc/group file, I had to add my user name to the “dialout” group. This can be done with the command usermod from a terminal. In openSUSE which is what I am running, I ran the command “usermod -G dialout k5unx”. I then logged out and back in and started up CRLog. When I opened the TRX control window the frequency matched what was one the radio and when I spun the radio dial, CQRLog changed with it.

More to come as I get up and running with Linux on my ham radio laptop. 

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