Ham on RPi4 – Install Pat Winlink on Raspberry Pi 4
Total credit for this post goes to Jason, KM4ACK
Fighting sinus headache plus cold/flu symptoms this morning and having a bit of difficulty focusing – and yet, I was able to follow along with the instructions provided in Jason’s latest YouTube video and have “Pat Winlink” running just fine on my Raspberry Pi 4b 4gb. Have already received and responded to a Winlink eMail message via Telnet using this setup with my buddy Patrick, K6PFG.
Note that you MUST already have a Winlink account issued by https://www.winlink.org/ before you can configure this program. I have already been through this a few years ago, if you have not, that link will explain most of what you need to do. (Gaining a winlink account is certainly beyond the scope of a blog post). 😉
Here is a link to his video:
Install Winlink on Raspberry Pi 4 Part 1 2019
You might consider subscribing to his YouTube channel – (I already have). Believe he mentioned getting into rig control with this stuff in his next video and I sure don’t want to miss it.
Note: Please don’t misunderstand, as of this post, both our RPi4s are still on our coffee table, not in our Ham Shack, therefore neither of them are currently connected to a radio nor device like the USB Signalink. The software works as indicated above, but that is for Telnet only.
73, dave/W6TUX
Link mentioned in the video Pat Winlink – https://getpat.io
Setting up Pat Winlink to run as a background service – Go to this page:
https://github.com/la5nta/pat/wiki/The-web-GUI
and scroll down “Running Pat as a background service” and you will see the following two commands which you will need to edit/run:
sudo systemctl start pat@YOUR-LINUX-USERNAMEsudo systemctl enable pat@YOUR-LINUX-USERNAMEFinal Note: We already have a copy of the absolute latest version of “Winlink Express” running on the Lenovo Thinkpad running Windows 10 that is currently dedicated to our Ham Shack running on the network. So I will not be running Pat Winlink as a service, rather as one that I can start manually, (although I have run both commands above to validate they work on Raspbian Buster). That software is enabled to run/test development versions of Winlink Express and will continue to do so. My “end goal” is to have something similar set up on Raspberry Pi that can be taken portable with our Yeasu FT-817 and USB Signalink for our go kit and portable operation away from the Home QTH. I will be continuing test efforts to that end on the RPi4. (Hope that makes some kind of sense).
73, dave/W6TUX