Being a Ham Radio operator that likes CW (Morse code) and contesting, it helps to have a programmable keyer that will get text from a computer. In my search, I found the Winkeyer USB by K1EL Systems. There are several variants of the Winkeyer that include kits as well as fully assembled keyers. In this post, I will show you how to run Winkeyer on a Raspberry Pi computer.
Most logging programs have some way to send a pre-set string of characters to your rig, such as “CQ CQ CQ FD DE WB8ERJ WB8ERJ FD AR”. which is fine however when running CW at any speed faster than say 13 WPM, the computer is prone to timing problems and your CW comes out like you have terrible CW skills. This is because sending Morse Code that is generated by the computer has timing problems – especially in a Windows environment!
So by using the Winkeyer instead of the computer to key the transmitter, the task of actually generating the Morse Code is off-loaded from your computer, and your Morse Code is sent perfectly.
I have used Winkeyer with N3FJP‘s contest logging software and it works just fine with that logging software, and I am sure many others. But there is a problem, I rarely run Windows computers and usually run Linux on a Raspberry Pi computer. Specifically an install package by Jason, KM4ACK. Now this particular install package is targeted to portable / off-grid Ham Radio Operations. Since I have been doing POTA acvitations, Jason’s setup works great, and I highly recommend it.
So I needed a way to run Winkeyer in the Raspberry pi. On K1EL’s site there is this page that mentions winkeydaemon. Which is the answer to the problem. However not being completely fluent in the world of Linux, the task was a bit daunting. Maybe its just me and my lack of Linux knowledge, but I found the documentation to be rather difficult to follow.