The Amateur Radio Digital Open Protocol (Ardop) is a protocol for exchange of digital data encoded as audio and transmitted over amateur radio. ardopcf is an Open-Source cross-platform implmentation of Ardop. While ardopcf is usable and being used, it is likely to still contain bugs, and it is still under active development. The primary goals of the ongoing develpment effort are to improve both stability and over the air performance. Ongoing efforts to reorganize the code base to make it easier to understand, debug, and maintain help support these goals.
See the latest release page to download ardopcf binaries for Linux and Windows. One of the design goals of ardopcf is to make building from source as simple as possible. So, if binaries compatible with your hardware and operating system are not available, BUILDING.md provides easy to follow step by step instructions for both Linux and Windows users to build ardopcf from the source code. Building from the source code found in the develop branch also provides the opportunity to try the most recent updates to ardopcf that were made since the latest release.
Though improvements have been made to the documentation for users and developers of ardopcf, additional work is needed. The free users subgroup of ardop.groups.io is a useful supplement to the information found here and on the pages linked below. The archives of that group can be read by anyone. Anyone with comments or questions about ardopcf, is encouraged to join and send a message to that group. General comments and requests for assistance are best directed to that group. In contrast, creating a new Issue here in the GitHub repository may be more appropriate to report a bug or suggest a change in the operation of ardopcf.
- USAGE_linux.md and USAGE_windows.md: Basic instructions to install, configure, and run ardopcf. These are split into separate versions for Linux and Windows users in an effort to make them easier to understand and follow, even though it results in some repetition.
- Troubleshooting.md: Some suggestions for anyone having difficulty getting ardopcf to work correctly.
- BUILDING.md: How to build ardopcf from source (Linux and Windows).
- Commandline_options.md: Descriptions of all of the options that can be applied when starting ardopcf.
- Host_Interface_Commands.md: Descriptions of all of the commands that host programs can pass to ardopcf. These may also be applied at startup using the
--hostcommandsoption. - CONTRIBUTING.md: Info about how to contribute to the ongoing development of ardopcf.
- About_Ardop.md: Info about the relationship between the Ardop specification, ardopcf, and other Ardop implementations.
- Motivation.md: Some info about why I am interested in maintaining and improving ardopcf, and why I think you might be interested in using it.
- ARDOP_Overview_20150701.pdf, ARDOP_Specification_20171127.pdf, ARDOP_Protocol_Native_TNC_Commands_20171130.pdf, Host_Interface_Spec_for_WL2K_supported_Protocols_TNCs_20171109.pdf: A few PDF documents written by others which are also included in the
docs/refsdirectory for reference purposes.
Pat Winlink and Hamlib/rigctld are two popular open source programs often used in conjunction with ardopcf. While these are multi-platform programs, they seem to be most commonly used on Linux computers. As a result, information about using them on Windows machines is less common online. So, the following are provided to assist Windows users to install and configure them.
- Pat_windows.md: How to install, configure, and run Pat Winlink on a Windows computer with ardopcf.
- Hamlib_Windows11.md: How to install, configure, and run Hamlib/rigctld on a Windows 11 computer. Hamlib/rigctld are not used directly with ardopcf. However, they can be used by Pat to do CAT control and handle PTT.
ardopcf is released under the MIT open source license. See LICENSE for details. Use, study, and experimentation with this software is not only permitted, it is strongly encouraged. I believe that such activity should be central to both amateur radio and open source software development. However, the authors ask that if this source code is used to develop software that deviates from the Ardop specification, or that is incompatible with existing implementations, that the ardop name not be used for such software. Software claiming to be usable implementations of ardop should all be interoperable. Otherwise, users may be confused and attempts to communicate with this software may fail.