KG7NUX

At the prodding of an interested user, I’ve finally got a copy of the 6.14 Beta source updated with the changes to support SDL rendering. There was a bug I ran into a while ago that affected serial comms, so I never finished getting this updated. But I squashed it last night and everything has run for 12+ hours on both of my test devices.

A macOS binary for Intel and Apple Silicon can be downloaded here. As with the previous distribution, this is command line software and requires you to use the terminal to run it. Should work on macOS 11+.

Source code is available on GitHub. Keep in mind this is not the official 6.14 Beta – the source has been modified to include an SDL renderer option which makes it much nicer to run on macOS without needing X11. If you don’t want SDL rendering, it should still build for X11 just fine I would think. All the SDL changes are #ifdef’d

Just a minor update to the macOS control software for Elecraft’s W1 wattmeter kit. Added support for Apple Silicon and updated the sandboxing and signing to modern standards. Download 1.1.0 . Requires macOS 11+ and works on Intel and Apple Silicon machines, 64-bit only.

Source available on GitHub

I just started a GitHub repository that includes some modified source to Mark Sims’s excellent Lady Heather’s GPS Disciplined Oscillator Control Program

Most of the changes made were a port to SDL so it played nicely fullscreen with the Mac’s multiple screens and so I could do some trick scaling with the window contents to permit running a bunch of them at once and still see everything.

Previously, the MacOS version required X11, and there are all sorts of weird things that occur with X11 regarding full screen (such as, can’t actually get a real top to bottom full screen, can’t restore to the previous window size, etc.)

Anyhow, mostly fully working except for writing of screen shots, though I’ll have that done soon as well.

A zipped up binary with the required SDL dylib can be downloaded here.

Keep in mind that this is not a nice Mac app bundle – it’s a command line program that should be launched from the terminal.

Finally got the KX1 kit built and fully operational. I actually finished the kit last Tuesday, but realized while using it over the weekend that pushing on a portion of the case resulted in the signal dropping out (send and receive.) After some groveling through the circuit, I finally found where I had melted the enamel on one of the LPF toroids from the KXB3080 kit when I reflowed the joint on the opposite side. Moved just right, it would short to ground. Oops.

Ended up with the base KX1, along with the KXAT1 internal tuner, KXB3080 30/80m module, and the power mod.

Many thanks to Elecraft and their parts department – they mailed me a replacement envelope of inductors when a cat decided that my nicely laid out row of inductors was ready for destruction.

Working on a Elecraft KX1 build and had need of an accurate wattmeter to judge it’s output. I got the W1 mini-module (also from Elecraft). After putting it all together, I quickly realized that the existing OS X software didn’t quite work very well. It was written in Java and unsigned, and without manually disabling every security option just to run it, I was pretty much out of luck.

The serial protocol used by the W1 is pretty basic, so I hacked together this replacement over the weekend and got it all working enough that I could continue with my build.

Well … I would have continued had I not had a cat “incident” that resulted in a loss of 6 of the 7 inductors included in the KX1 kit. Fortunately, Elecraft was kind enough to mail out some replacements so I expect I can finish this up in the next few days.

Download Here: W1Control_1.0.2.zip (385 KiB)
(32/64 Bit, Requires OS X 10.7 or above)

Source available on GitHub