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VARA HF not working on fresh install

Open corvus-ch opened this issue 9 months ago • 10 comments

Confirmations

  • [x] I searched for similar bug reports in https://github.com/Botspot/pi-apps/issues and found none were relevant.
  • [x] I tried updating Pi-Apps and the issue is still not fixed. How to update Pi-Apps?
  • [x] IMPORTANT: I promise to respond to comments on this issue and write a good bug report https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/how-to-write-good-bug-report/

What happened?

No transmission when using pat winlink with VARA

Description

Running pat connect, I can see that pat connects to the VARA modem and that the modem is listening. However, nothing else happens.

See also https://github.com/km4ack/73Linux/issues/124.

What are your system specs (run the following command in your terminal)?

OS: Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)
OS architecture: 64-bit
Last updated Pi-Apps on: 03/31/2025
Latest Pi-Apps version: 04/01/2025
Kernel: aarch64 6.12.20+rpt-rpi-v8
Device model: Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.4
SOC identifier: bcm2711
Machine-id (hashed): 832e36a7fde2eabbc51c8c8a6f401aecb98ff42f
Serial-number (hashed): df0a1d6bf3e70fd6beca932d48793ce061ca9920
Cpu name: Cortex-A72
Ram size: 7.80 GB
Raspberry Pi OS image version: 2024-11-19
Language: en_US.UTF-8

(Recommended) Error log? Terminal output? Debug messages?

$ pat connect varahf:///HB9AK
2025/04/01 19:53:46 my-rig ready. Dial frequency is 21.113.50 MHz.
2025/04/01 19:53:46 VARA modem (VARA HF v4.8.9) initialized
2025/04/01 19:53:46 Connecting to HB9AK (varahf)...
2025/04/01 19:57:21 VARA modem disconnected unexpectedly!
2025/04/01 19:57:21 Unable to establish connection to remote: connect timeout

corvus-ch avatar Apr 01 '25 20:04 corvus-ch

Hello there 👋 Thanks for submitting your first issue to the Pi-Apps project! We'll try to get back to you as soon as possible. In the meantime, we encourage you join our Discord server, where you can ask any questions you might have.

Please respond as soon as possible if a Pi-Apps maintainer requests more information from you. Stale issues will be closed after a lengthy period of time with no response.

github-actions[bot] avatar Apr 01 '25 20:04 github-actions[bot]

@WheezyE as you were the one who added this to pi-apps, please look into this.

Botspot avatar Apr 01 '25 21:04 Botspot

Word is out on the internet, that for VARA on PI, using Raspbian OS 64bit and 32bit makes a difference. So I tried it again with 32bit.

OS: Raspbian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)
OS architecture: 32-bit
Last updated Pi-Apps on: 04/02/2025
Latest Pi-Apps version: 04/02/2025
Kernel: aarch64 6.12.20+rpt-rpi-v8
Device model: Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.4
SOC identifier: bcm2711
Machine-id (hashed): 9e4d8510b2f07dc67d0ab0ffe4d81a8b3cd35116
Serial-number (hashed): df0a1d6bf3e70fd6beca932d48793ce061ca9920
Cpu name: Cortex-A72
Ram size: 7.80 GB
Raspberry Pi OS image version: 2024-11-19
Language: en_US.UTF-8

This time I got it working. Although, pretty unstable. Some observations:

  • It seems to take longer than on the x86 system I normally use.
  • The VARA UI is updating erratically and most of the time, something is not displaying correctly
  • Looking a Pulse Audio Volume Control, the Playback device of VARA shows up and vanishes erratically (while on RX)
  • Most of the time, I loose connection.
$ pat connect varafm:///HB9AK-14?freq=438075
2025/04/02 14:57:41 my-rig ready. Dial frequency is 438.075.00 MHz.
2025/04/02 14:57:42 VARA modem (VARA FM v4.3.8) initialized
2025/04/02 14:57:42 QSY varafm: 438075
2025/04/02 14:57:45 Connecting to HB9AK-14 (varafm)...
2025/04/02 14:57:54 VARA full speed available, registered to HB9HOX
2025/04/02 14:58:00 Connected to HB9AK-14 (vara)
*** WINLINK gateway TITLIS (3020 m asl) - by SWISS-ARTG ****
[WL2K-5.0-B2FWIHJM$]
;PQ: 92352079
CMS via HB9AK >
>FF
2025/04/02 15:00:00 Exchange failed: connection lost
2025/04/02 15:00:01 QSX varafm: 438075.000

And yes, this is VARA FM. I installed it with a copy of the installation script of VARA HF with file and folder names adapted as needed.

corvus-ch avatar Apr 02 '25 15:04 corvus-ch

@WheezyE please respond.

Botspot avatar Apr 05 '25 06:04 Botspot

@WheezyE I'm going to need consider pulling VARA HF from Pi-Apps if there is not a maintainer able to assist users. You added this app, and your name is in the credits file for this app, and it's your area of expertise. I have no idea how to help this person. You need to respond and help.

If you or somebody else cannot help this person, then VARA HF will likely need to be dropped from Pi-Apps.

Botspot avatar Apr 07 '25 19:04 Botspot

I had hoped to get to this one this weekend, but to be honest, I'm not really sure how to help either. I have less time these days than I used to and apologize for not responding this week.

I'd hoped that migrating VARA HF into Pi-Apps would help the community to band together to fix stuff with VARA, but I think the future might just be another modem like mercury. Thank you Botspot, for your consideration of this one. If this is a community non-starter then I understand pulling it.

WheezyE avatar Apr 07 '25 19:04 WheezyE

Word is out on the internet, that for VARA on PI, using Raspbian OS 64bit and 32bit makes a difference. So I tried it again with 32bit. ...

This time I got it working. Although, pretty unstable. Some observations:

  • It seems to take longer than on the x86 system I normally use.
  • The VARA UI is updating erratically and most of the time, something is not displaying correctly
  • Looking a Pulse Audio Volume Control, the Playback device of VARA shows up and vanishes erratically (while on RX)
  • Most of the time, I loose connection.

My best guess is that this might have something to do with audio dropout during the OTA/radio connection with the other station you're calling. I've been mostly focused on the software side and haven't done much OTA testing. KM4ACK I believe has done a lot more than I have and I think his forum might be the best place to get real-use information regarding the VARA HF modem stability during an actual station-to-station OTA connection. This is a bit odd since I haven't heard of people having a problem with OTA connections with VARA HF on the Pi before, but I don't doubt that it could be unstable.

You might try connecting to a winlink gateway using VARA HF through RMS Express (installed via Wine) instead of Pat just for testing purposes. The RMS Express installation should be relatively easy once you have VARA HF installed since it only needs wine-mono (already installed) to function.

May be unrelated but, I also know that if you try to re-connect to VARA HF via TCP/IP after disconnecting control to it (to control it from Pat or RMS Express clients), the TCP/IP port will ignore the request for 60 seconds. https://github.com/WheezyE/Winelink/issues/52

WheezyE avatar Apr 07 '25 19:04 WheezyE

I did two tests today:

Test 1: RMS Express

As suggested by @WheezyE, I installed RMS Express and used it to make a connection.

Observations:

  • very slow UI. Sometimes I was wondering if the click got registered (we are talking 30 seconds and more until a window opened).
  • if VARA gets started by RMS express, its window was black only
  • Connection was possible, but there were still failed connections
  • Connection took around 60s (fetching mails with an empty mailbox and empty outbox)

Test 2: Clean wine

Pi Apps installs quite a lot of stuff into a wine prefix. So I was wondering if I could get rid of anything that is not required for VARA. So I deleted ~/.wine and created it again based on https://github.com/km4ack/73Linux/blob/master/app/stable/x86_64/VARA.bapp. I chose this, as this is known to be working on my x86 machines.

First I downloaded and extracted the following artefacts to ~/Downloads~:

  • https://github.com/km4ack/pi-scripts/raw/master/pdh.dll.zip
  • https://downloads.winlink.org/VARA%20Products/VARA%20FM%20v4.3.8%20%20setup.zip
  • https://downloads.winlink.org/User%20Programs/Winlink_Express_install_1-7-22-0.zip
rm -rf ~/.wine
export WINEARCH=win32
winetricks winxp
winetricks sound=alsa
winetricks vb6run
winetricks -q vcrun2015
wine ~/Downloads/VARA\ FM\ setup\ \(Run\ as\ Administrator\).exe
wine ~/Downloads/Winlink_Express_install.exe
cp pdh.dll ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32

Observations:

  • Snappier UI
  • Successful connections both with RMS Express and pat
  • Still black window if VARA modem gets started by RMS Express
  • Connection time less than 30s (again without any mails being transferred)

corvus-ch avatar Apr 09 '25 13:04 corvus-ch

Where to go from here?

  • Pi Apps should fail if VARA is installed on a 64bit system
  • Use a separate wine prefix for VARA

corvus-ch avatar Apr 09 '25 13:04 corvus-ch

Well done, and thank you for testing these OTA connections.

From your tests, I’m guessing then that the system overhead may be too much on a standard Pi-Apps prefix for the sound to operate at full speed/fidelity (or maybe the sound driver crashes) during connections. I’ll see about getting VARA HF to install into its own wineprefix like you suggested. The other graphics errors should be solvable with wine UI tweaks for the wineprefix (which can be done from wine’s GUI or in the script via wine registry keys). If we get the 32-bit system working it might be worth testing the same method on a 64-bit system. I’ll see what I can do to put together a new script for Pi-Apps.

Thank you very much

WheezyE avatar Apr 09 '25 17:04 WheezyE