VU2CPL
Manoj Ramawarrier

Unified single-page dashboard for the whole shack, built in Vue 3 and served from Node-RED via uibuilder — replacing the legacy AngularJS /ui board. Thirteen collapsible cards (FlexRadio, LP-700, SPE amplifier, rotator, lightning protection, power control, solar conditions, DXCC tracker, RBN skimmer, Raspberry Pi fleet, internet health, GPS NTP, UberSDR receiver) lay out in a responsive masonry grid that adapts from phone to desktop with no build step. Each card polls flow context every 1–5 s, shows a colour-coded collapsed summary and expands for full telemetry. Top bar carries the callsign, a live/offline connectivity pill and four clocks (UTC / IST / sunrise / sunset). PWA-installable on iPad and iPhone via "Add to Home Screen".

Real-time Node-RED flow tracking all four slice receivers via the FlexRadio TCP API, with dual SmartSDR client support (AetherSDR + iPad). Colour-coded active-slice indication — amber for RX, red for TX — now surfaced as the FlexRadio card in the Vue 3 shack dashboard above, and still on the legacy AngularJS /ui board.

Pulls worked DXCC data from Club Log and monitors DX cluster spots via telnet. Compares each incoming spot against the worked log and alerts in real time — red for new DXCC entity, blue for new band, amber for new mode fill. Colour-coded dashboard panel with per-band and per-mode filtering. Club Log DXCC API integration with 24h refresh.

Automatically disconnects antenna and radio when lightning is detected within 25 km. Dual source: Open-Meteo CAPE + WMO weather-code polling (every 5 min — CAPE ≥ 800 J/kg or code ∈ {95,96,99} synthesises a strike distance) + AS3935 local sensor via MQTT. Distance-graded 3×3 disconnect matrix (AS3935 close/medium/far × Open-Meteo cold/lit/severe) so Open-Meteo only corroborates AS3935 hits in the medium and far zones; the <10 km close zone still single-hit-fires. Leaflet/OSM map with storm overlay. 20-min auto-reconnect timer. On disconnect it also sends a transmit set inhibit=1 command to the FLEX-6600 over the SmartSDR API, so the rig can't key up into a disconnected antenna — SmartSDR shows a red TX-Inhibit indicator and a Telegram alert fires. The inhibit clears automatically on reconnect, manual override or bypass; the radio stays powered and RX-capable throughout.

Full remote operation capability including antenna switching via Tasmota MQTT relays. Operates the FLEX-6600 via SmartSDR from anywhere. Integrated with the lightning protection system for safe unattended operation.

Stratum-1 GPS-disciplined NTP server on a Raspberry Pi 3B with a u-blox NEO-M8N. Kernel pps-gpio + chrony pulls PPS error down to ±171 ns — well below anything a userland NTP implementation can match. Publishes chrony status, satellite count and fix quality over MQTT to the shack dashboard, with an LWT offline marker. Production timeserver for the LAN.

PPS-disciplined NTP server on a NodeMCU ESP8266 with a Quectel L89 GPS. Captures the PPS edge on a GPIO interrupt for sub-microsecond second alignment, holds stratum 1 across short PPS dropouts via holdover logic, and falls back to NMEA-only timing (honest stratum 2) on full lock loss. Publishes status over MQTT with the same schema as the Pi NTP server and an LWT offline marker. WiFiManager captive-portal config — no compile-time secrets.

ESP32 firmware bridging an outdoor AS3935 lightning sensor to the shack MQTT broker. Moving the sensor outdoors — battery + solar, IP65 enclosure — recovers the chip's rated ~40 km range that an indoor I²C bus eats. The full AS3935 register surface is exposed over an MQTT command channel, so noise floor, watchdog threshold and TUN_CAP calibration can be tuned live from the dashboard without opening the enclosure. WiFiManager captive portal for first-time setup.

Modern Python 3 remote-control server for SPE Expert HF amplifiers (1.3K-FA / 1.5K-FA / 2K-FA). Runs on a Raspberry Pi over USB serial and serves both a built-in web dashboard and a WebSocket API. Implements the full SPE Application Programmer's Guide Rev 1.1 plus the undocumented RCU command set, so the amplifier's LCD can be mirrored frame-by-frame. Mixed-client broadcast — text JSON for browsers, binary RCU frames for the MacExpert companion app — over the same socket. Threaded reader + async writer survive the USB-serial poll glitches that crash naive serial_asyncio setups. Optional flex: config opens a second connection to a FlexRadio 6000-series rig over the SmartSDR TCP API and orchestrates an SM5TOG-style ATU tune plus the full sub-band SWEEP; leave flex.host empty and the server auto-discovers the radio via SmartSDR's UDP broadcast on port 4992. All four UIs (MacExpert, the bundled dashboard, Node-RED /ui, Vue /shack) receive the same tune_event stream. Based on original work by OH2GEK, rewritten and extended.

Swift / SwiftUI macOS app that mirrors and controls SPE Expert HF amplifiers over either local USB serial or remote WebSocket (via spe-remote). Two-way live mirror of the amp's LCD using RCU 0x6A frames — every sub-menu (CAT, CONFIG, TEMP/FANS, RX ANT, TUN ANT → PORT, ALARMS LOG, MANUAL TUNE, ANTENNA matrix, YAESU / TEN-TEC pickers, STANDBY banner) tracked with cursor-accurate state. Auto-detects the model (1.3K / 1.5K / 2K) from the status frame, auto-scales the power display to the LOW/MID/HIGH level, and offers tap-to-cycle status chips for STATUS / BAND / ANT / IN / LEVEL / MODE / CAT. Universal binary (Apple Silicon + Intel).

Go WebSocket bridge for the Telepost LP-500 / LP-700 USB-HID power and SWR meter. Owns the meter's HID handle and fans live telemetry out to many concurrent clients — browsers, phones, logging PCs — while routing control verbs back. Cross-compiles to Linux (arm64 / armv7) and macOS; ships a systemd unit and udev rules for headless Raspberry Pi deployment. LAN-only, zero auth. Forked from and tracking the original LP-700-Server by Vinod VU3ESV.

Native SwiftUI macOS client that talks to LP-700-Server over WebSocket. Live power / SWR / channel / alarm display, full control-verb support, settings persistence, a menu-bar glance-view, and macOS notifications for alarm states. Pairs with LP-700-Server so a single HID-attached meter drives operating positions, logging PCs and phones simultaneously. Forked from and tracking the original LP-700-App by Vinod VU3ESV.

Single macOS container app that hosts independent amateur-radio control apps as plugins in one window — switchable between a vertical sidebar and horizontal tabs. Each plugin stays in its own repo and ships as a standalone .app; the suite loads it through the RadioPluginKit contract — the host links only the contract, never compiles a plugin in. Plugins are discovered at runtime (browse a catalog or sideload a .radioplugin) and run out-of-process as sandboxed ExtensionKit extensions, so crash isolation is real and adding one never requires rebuilding the suite. Ships with an empty catalog: published plugins today are LP-700, LP-100A, Band Pass Filter and Antenna Switch; SPE amplifier (MacExpert) and SO2R Box are next. Notarized release pipeline, macOS 14+. Original concept and reference implementation by Vinod VU3ESV — upstream at VU3ESV/AmateurRadioSuite.

Python WebSocket gateway that owns the Idiom Press Rotor-EZ (Hy-Gain DCU-1 compatible) FTDI serial port on the shack Raspberry Pi and fans azimuth out to any number of clients — Node-RED, a built-in web UI, future Mac apps. The third shack USB device lifted into a gateway service alongside spe-remote and LP-700-Server: same threaded-reader + asyncio-writer pattern, so the serial port has a single owner and clients no longer have to restart Node-RED to free it. Self-contained web UI on port 8090 — large heading readout, click-to-slew compass dial, preset bearings (N/NE/E/SE/S/SW/W/NW), prominent STOP, and LP/+180° long-path. JSON state + heartbeat events over /ws, /healthz endpoint, all writes serialised through one lock so poll queries and client commands never interleave on the wire.

Native macOS controller for the YCCC SO2R Box Plus contesting switch. USB-HID to the box; live front-panel mirror in the SwiftUI UI (TX/RX, footswitch, speed pot) using the YCCC HID protocol — reverse-engineered and documented. Hosts OTRSP and Winkeyer TCP servers, so N1MM+, Win-Test, WriteLog and TR4W see it as a standard SO2R interface. Supports the default 2-radio SO2R mode and the 4-radio SO2R+ mode.

Native macOS app (universal binary) that merges spots from multiple WSJT-X / JTDX UDP sources and several DX cluster telnet nodes into one unified feed, and re-serves it on a built-in telnet cluster server (port 7300) so loggers like Logger32, N1MM+, Log4OM, and DXKeeper can pick it up. ClubLog integration highlights New DXCC / New Slot / New Band / New Mode in real time; LoTW uploaders are flagged with a green dot from ARRL's user list. NCDXF/IBP and national beacon detection avoids false alerts. Telegram + macOS notifications with per-callsign cooldown. Live filters, sortable resizable columns, auto-clear with disk log, menu-bar background mode. Major rewrite of the original FT8 Cluster Aggregator concept by Vinod VU3ESV — now covers all DX cluster sources, not just FT8.

Native macOS port of LZ2HV's MSHV multi-mode weak-signal program (FT8 / FT4 / Q65 / MSK144 / JT9 / JT65 etc.). Apple Silicon and Intel; verified end-to-end against a FlexRadio 6000-series via AetherSDR's TCI bridge for both RX and TX, with WSJT-X-compatible UDP broadcast feeding RUMlogNG's DXSpots window. Self-contained .app bundle: PortAudio audio backend with Float32/Int24/Int16 fallbacks, FlexRadio CommonRadioAudio + DAX support, real host_processor_info CPU sensor, in-bundle settings/log/wav directories, dark theme, app icon, font defaults. Patches sit on a _MACOS_-conditional macos-port branch on top of upstream main, so Linux and Windows builds remain untouched and new LZ2HV releases merge cleanly.

Native macOS multi-band, multi-mode skimmer for CW + FT8 + FT4, built directly against the HPSDR / Hermes Protocol 1 over UDP. Tested with a Red Pitaya running Pavel Demin's HPSDR-compatible firmware. Up to 8 DDC receivers run in parallel with their own decode pipelines: a CW path (FFT → per-bin peak detect → envelope + Bayesian beam Morse decoder + Patt3Ch.lst callsign validator with confirm-before-emit) and FT8 / FT4 paths (NCO down-conversion → resample to 12 kHz → ft8_lib decode on UTC-aligned slots). Spots feed a built-in DX-cluster telnet server on port 7300, plus uploads to RBN (telnet) and PSK Reporter (UDP). SwiftUI menu-bar UI with live stats. Handles Pavel firmware quirks (rx-count in C4, frequency addressing offset, IQ sign, per-rx sample-rate sharing).

Menu-bar macOS app showing system-clock drift against NTP servers and an attached USB GPS, with a one-click "step the clock now" via chrony. Built for digital-mode operators where ~1 s alignment matters and the LAN may not always reach an upstream NTP source. An optional bundled gpsd + chrony stack turns the Mac itself into a stratum-2 NTP server for the rest of the shack; a small privileged helper daemon lets the app talk to chrony without sudo each time.

Self-contained NanoVNASaver v0.7.3 .app bundle for Apple Silicon. Upstream NanoVNASaver only ships Windows and Raspberry Pi binaries, so this build wraps a Python 3.12 virtual-environment with PySide6 / Qt and the NanoVNASaver package, behind a small bash launcher in Contents/MacOS/. Slimmed from ~1.3 GB to 253 MB by stripping unused Qt frameworks, qml, translations, metatypes, and lipo-thinning every Mach-O binary to arm64. Logs to ~/Library/Logs/NanoVNASaver/nanovnasaver.log for easy support.

Public web-based SDR receiver running on a self-hosted UberSDR instance — drag-tune the HF spectrum waterfall in the browser, switch between LSB / USB / CW / AM / FM / digital modes, adjust the filter, zoom the waterfall, and listen to the off-air audio with no install. The default deep-link below opens at 7.150 MHz LSB so you land mid-40m phone band ready to listen. Hardware is an RX-888 MkII front-end fed by an LZ1AQ wideband active loop (0–30 MHz HF coverage); reachable via UberSDR's zero-config tunnel at vu2cpl.tunnel.ubersdr.org. UberSDR by M9PSY (madpsy), built on Phil Karn KA9Q's ka9q-radio engine; the receive antenna is Chavdar Levkov LZ1AQ's active loop design.

Live, sortable tables of DXCC standings for every Indian (VU / AT / AU) callsign, from two data sources on one page. The LoTW tab parses all 17 ARRL DXCC Standings PDFs each month — Mixed / Phone / CW / Digital / Satellite / bands 160 m to 6 m / Challenge / Honor Roll. The Clublog tab scrapes the Asia Top-2000 Confirmed league every day and pulls out Indian prefixes. Both tabs share the same layout: green highlight for column leaders, red for changes since the last snapshot, click-through to QRZ.com on every callsign. Table layout adapted from the original VU DXCC list template by VU2DCC.