Documentation Amateur Radio Beat

What's new for amateur radio operators

Fedora 10 includes a number of applications and libraries that are of interest to amateur radio operators and electronic hobbyists. Many of these applications are included in the Fedora Electronic Lab spin. Fedora also includes a number of VLSI and IC design tools which are not outlined here.

• Sound card mode applications include fldigi, gpsk31, gmfsk, lpsk31, xfhell, and xpsk31.

• The gnuradio package is a software defined radio framework.

• The aprsd and xastir packages provide APRS capabilities.

• The gEDA suite consists of an integrated set of schematics applications for capture, net listing, circuit simulation, and PCB layout.

• The gspiceui, ngspice, and gnucap packages provide circuit simulation capabilities.

There are a variety of other tools for learning Morse code, orbit prediction and tracking satellites, producing schematic diagrams and PCB artwork, amateur radio logbook keeping, and other applications of interest to amateur radio and electronics enthusiasts.

For a complete list of all the amateur radio and electronics related packages see Applications for Amateur Radio on the wiki .

In this release, there are a number of changes.

the geda (gnu Electronic Design Assistant) suite of tools has been updated to version 20080929. This is a bugfix release and there are no major changes visible to the user. pcb has been updated to 0.20081128. gtkwave which is used by the gEDA suite has also been updated to 3.1.13. These are also bugfix releases.

gerbv 2.1.0 is also used as part of the gEDA suite. It includes a number of new features:

• Added ability to select objects, with the option of deleting or viewing basic properties of the objects

• Split off the core functionality of gerbv into a library (libgerbv) to allow developers to quickly write software using Gerber parsing/editing/exporting/rendering functionality. Full DOxygen documentation has also been created to facilitate developers wishing to use libgerbv.

• Added export to RS274X and Excellon functionality, allowing gerbv to translate files between formats. The RS274X export function can also be used to "clean" troublesome files to a more compatible format.

• Added the ability to override the Excellon format "guessing", allowing non-standard drill files to be correctly rendered

• Greatly expanded the command line functionality, including the ability to panelize boards into a single one through the command line

• Added "Aperture usage" tab to Gerber reports. This allows the user to see how often each aperture is used in all visible layers of his project.

gnuradio has been update to version 3.1.2. There are a large number of bugfixes as well as many "fine tuning" changes to the gui. See the gnuradio release log at http://gnuradio.org/trac/wiki/Release3.1Branch for complete details.

iverilog is used for circuit simulation and Fedora 10 includes version 0.9.20080905. This is primarily a bugfix release.

Fedora 10 includes version 3.4.30 of xcircuit, a shcmatic capture ant netlist generation tool. This is a minor upgrade from Fedora 9 and upgrading should pose no problems for users.