cs-fetch

A simple program to lookup amateur radio call sign information via the HamQTH.com API. Includes GUI and interactive command-line interfaces.

This repository is no longer actively maintained. Feel free to use and fork it, but I cannot provide support or honor feature requests

Overview

cs-fetch (or callsign-fetch) is intended to be a simple, fast and flexible way to look up information about amateur (ham) radio call as an aid to radio operation and monitoring. It is not a full featured logging application.

Currently, cs-fetch supports fetching information from the HamQTH.com database, with plans to allow selectable use of FCC and QRZ.com databases.

cs-fetch is written in Python and uses PyQt5 for the GUI interface. Bug/issue reports and code contributions are welcome.

Features include:

• Interactive command line and GUI interfaces
• User-configurable results
• API session memory and auto-renewal
• Basic validation of callsign input
• Cross-platform with QT-based GUI
• Optional dark mode

You can read more about the HamQTH API here: https://www.hamqth.com/developers.php

Installation

The simplest way to run cs-fetch is to download one of the executable files pre-built for your operating system. These are packaged as .zip archives in the directory executables/. Separate executable files are provided for command line and GUI versions. Before running, open cf.conf in your favorite text editor and add your HamQTH.com username/password to the [Credentials] section. Then you can run cs-fetch by executing cf (command line version) or cfgui (GUI version).

Currently executables are provided for Windows 10 (may work on earlier Windows versions, but has not been tested). Ubuntu, Raspbian and Mac packages coming soon.

Running from source

If you want to download the python source files and run the application that way, follow these instructions.

cs-fetch was written and tested with Python 3.7.0, so you should have this version or a newer installed. It may work with earlier versions of Python, but I have not tested this.

Download/clone the repository into your directory of choice. To install all required python packages, run this command in the installation directory:

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Before running, add your HamQTH.com credentials to the [Credentials] section in cf.conf. You can create a HamQTH account here.

By default the program will print all fields returned by HamQTH that are not empty. This can be configured by setting any undesired fields to field_name = no under[Fields to print] in cf.conf. The order in which fields are printed can also be changed by reordering this section.

Usage

For the GUI version, run from the installation directory:

python cfgui.py

For the command line version, run from the installation directory:

python cf.py

Important Files

• cf.py: cs-fetch command line version
• cfgui.py cs-fetch GUI version
• cf.conf: This is the configuration file for the script, enter your HamQTH.com credentials here before use.
• /gui: Contains required files for the PyQt5 GUI
• requirements.txt: python requirements file

TODO

• Ubuntu/Raspbian/Mac executable packaging
• Support fetching from FCC and QRZ databases
• Offline mode, lookup of location based on callsign prefix

License

This project is released under the terms of the GNU GPL v3.0. See LICENSE file for details.