Ham Radio Control Libraries

Introduction

The Ham Radio Control Libraries, hamlib for short, is a development effort to provide a consistent interface for programmers wanting to incorporate radio control in their programs. hamlib is not a complete user application, but is a software layer intended to make controlling various radios much easier. hamlib will allow authors of such software as logging programs, digital communications programs, or those wanting to develop the ultimate radio control software to concentrate on the user interface and the basic function of the program rather than radio control.

Motivation

Most recent amateur radio transceivers allow external control of their functions through a computer interface. Unfortunately, control commands are not always consistent across a manufacturer's product line and each manufacturer's product line differs greatly from its competitors.

hamlib attempts to solve this problem by presenting a "virtual radio" to the programmer by providing an API to actions such as setting a given VFO's frequency, setting the operating mode, querying the radio of its current status and settings, and giving the application a list of a given radio's capabilities. Unfortunately, what can be accomplished by hamlib is limited by the radios themselves and some offer very limited capability.

Help wanted!

hamlib is currently the project of Frank Singleton, VK3FCS/KM5WS and Stephane Fillod, F4CFE. In the hamlib 1.1.0 ALPHA announcement, Frank said, "Get on board and help us write the frontend and backend libs for all the rigs out there. If we can talk to it, we want to control it!!"

"If you have a rig to test with thats cool, but not essential. I currently develop on Linux 2.2 kernel, but keen to get cross compilation via autoconf to most OS's out there."

Here is the complete text of the hamlib 1.1.0 ALPHA announcement of 23 December 2000.

Status

hamlib is being written on the Linux operating system and plans include portability to various flavors of UNIX and Windows. Although still considered alpha code, Frank reports it works on the backends written so far.

The latest updates and news are available through the hamlib project page here at Sourceforge.Net.