from Hacker News

HamClock – a real time space weather dashboard

by ricktdotorg on 8/4/24, 9:26 AM with 9 comments

  • by ricktdotorg on 8/4/24, 9:26 AM

    I was amazed to see that there is barely a mention of HamClock on HN (just a single comment).

    HamClock is a free C app, it runs on basically anything, that displays a map of the world along with various customizable information panels. Obviously the intent is for amateur radio enthusiasts to use it (and we do) but it's just a lot of fun and very interesting to have a HamClock running on a spare monitor. The different panels include various Sun-related data (sun spots, solar flux, wind), Earth data (planetary Kp), space weather, radio stuff (band propagation, band reliability predictions), aurora predictions, its almost endless.

    The map options are similarly [almost] endless. You can even track satellites.

    There's a really great blogpost[0] which goes into more of its usefulness (the Clear Sky site is rather dry) including screenshots.

    You can run it interactively as a GUI app on basically any platform, or just headless and it will listen in various modes (RO or RW etc) on http ports. There's no SSL but i just put mine behind a reverse proxy.

    It's a really great app, not open source, but it is freely available. Was released in 2017, and there's also a good article (updated recently) written by the author of the software[1].

    Do yourself a favor, download and compile HamClock and play around. I am not affiliated with the software or Clear Sky, i just use it and like it.

    [0] https://qso365.co.uk/2024/01/hamclock/

    [1] https://clearskyinstitute.com/ham/HamClock/QST-HamClock.pdf

  • by swalberg on 8/4/24, 2:41 PM

    It is cool and still gets updates. One thing to note is that almost all the information comes via a ClearSky API, so I'd often find that the data didn't line up to more official sources. Not egregiously so, but sometimes I'd go double check against sites like solarham.com or NOAA directly just to make sure (especially WRT R/S/G forecasts). Their spotting information is also super laggy, so you don't find out about how you're being spotted for around 5 minutes.

    However, it is very nice looking and when I did have it up I did pay more attention to things like solar weather.

    73 - N3RTW

  • by wrycoder on 8/4/24, 9:22 PM

    There is also https://www.hamqsl.com/solar.html which gives more elaborate propagation information in various versions for many platforms.

  • by Beijinger on 8/4/24, 5:54 PM

    Great. But would be greater if displayed on a magic mirror. No?

  • by JustFreeDotIo on 8/4/24, 9:34 AM

    Very cool !

  • by iamhamm on 8/4/24, 3:09 PM

    Too Many Connections :(