XRKeyer Files

Welcome to the README document / manual for XRKeyer.

First of all, thank you for deciding to give the software a try! I wrote it because I couldn't seem to find a good CW and voice keyer for linux. I hope it works well for you!

If you tried to use XRKeyer0.20 and it didn't work on cw, I apologize. It's a long story, but basically I lost some source code, but I still had the correct binary file, so I decompiled it. It was not decompiled correctly though and so cw wasn't sent correctly or at all.

What the various files are:

1. install.sh               The installation file. Must be run as superuser.
2. pyxhook.py               This file is used for the systemwide hot keys. Thanks to everyone who wrote it! It made my work a lot easier.
3. README                   This README document
4. uninstall.sh             Run this (as superuser) to uninstall
5. xrkeyer                  This file will go into /usr/bin/ when you install. If you don't install, ignore it
6. xrkeyer0.20.py           The main XRKeyer source code.
7. xrkeyer0.20.rsrc.py      This file contains all the gui information for pythoncard.
8. xrkeyercwtextconvert.py  This contains the source code for the algorithm that converts text to cw, and keys the radio accordingly.

After you run XRKeyer, there will be 2 other files, pyxhook.pyc and xrkeyercwtextconvert.pyc . These are python byte code files.
From http://docs.python.org/2/glossary.html:
"Python source code is compiled into bytecode, the internal representation of a Python program in the CPython interpreter. The bytecode is also cached in .pyc and .pyo files so that executing the same file is faster the second time (recompilation from source to bytecode can be avoided). This “intermediate language” is said to run on a virtual machine that executes the machine code corresponding to each bytecode. Do note that bytecodes are not expected to work between different Python virtual machines, nor to be stable between Python releases."

To install:

1. Unzip XRKeyer.tar.gz to the location of your choice (although you probably already did that!)
2. cd to that location in a terminal
3. You should be able to run the install.sh script by entering sudo ./install.sh into the terminal. However if your user is not in the sudoers file, you will need root privileges before runniing ./install.sh .

If some of the packages in the install script are not in your system's repository (or maybe they are there under a different name), you will need to install them manually. The dependencies for XRKeyer are:

python2.7               Although any python version 2 should work. I don't think it will work with python 3. Let me know what happens if you try!
python-libhamlib2       For keying your radio via Hamlib.
mpg123                  For playing the voice files.
python-xlib             For the hotkeys.
pythoncard              For the GUI
python-serial           For keying your radio via a serial port.

After installing you should be able to start XRKeyer by just typing xrkeyer into a terminal.

If you don't want to install XRKeyer, you can also run XRKeyer by opening a terminal, cd'ing to the unzipped XRKeyer folder, and typing python xrkeyer0.21.py .

If no xrkeyer.prefs file is found, such as when you start it for the first time, you will be guided through a configuration process. Also, XRKeyer's configuration file must be in your current working directory. So if you run it from a different directory, it will make a new configuration file and have you go through the configuration process again.

The main window is split into 2 sections, a CW section and a voice section. The voice section has 6 buttons to play each of the 6 voice memories. You can change each button's name by middle clicking on it. The text box next to each button is for the file name (including the path) that you want to play. You can select a file instead of typing it in, by middle clicking on a text box. XRKeyer will not play .wav files, .only mp3's.
The CW section also has 6 buttons for each of the 6 CW memories. As with the voice buttons, you can change each button's name by middle clicking on it. The text boxes are for the text you wish to send. XRKeyer will take that text, convert it into CW, and then send it using whatever method you specified during setup. There is also a spinner to select what speed you wish to send CW at.

The hotkeys are not the greatest because you cannot use multiple keys (eg. Shift + F4) as a hotkey. I will try to get a better way to do this. If you really want me to figure out a better way soon, let me know! I will try harder if I know that there is someone besides me who wants it done. For now I recommend using the F keys (and that is the default), but if some of the F keys are already in use on your system, you will have to turn some of XRKeyer's hotkeys off. In case you haven't figured out how to edit the hotkeys, it is File > Edit Hotkey .

That's about all I have, I hope that it will get you moving in the right direction!
Thanks for downloading it and trying it out!
If you have comments, suggestions, questions, success reports, bug reports, etc. I would love to hear from you! Please email me at ac0xr@lowswr.com .

73 es gd dx de Brady AC0XR