DM3MAT - Install qdmr

How to install qdmr

This page describes various methods to install qdmr on your system. Ranging from simply downloading an App-package to building qdmr from its sources. As time goes by, qdmr gets added to more and more Linux distributions, allowing to install it using the systems package manager (see badge below).

Install qdmr under Ubuntu

Under Ubuntu Linux, consider adding my PPA (personal package archive) to your list of software sources with

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hmatuschek/ppa
    sudo apt-get update

Now you can install the GUI application with

    sudo apt-get install qdmr

Please note that there is also a command-line tool called dmrconf. This tool allows you to up- and download codeplugs from the command line. To install dmrconf run

    sudo apt-get install dmrconf

For now, releases newer or equal to Focal (20.04) are supported. Support for Bionic (18.04) has been removed since release 0.9.0 as the libyaml-cpp version is way too old in Bionic.

Install qdmr under Debian/Raspbian

I do not provide binary packages for Debian or its Raspberry Pi derivative Raspbian. Consequently, the recommended way to install qdmr on Debian is to build it form sources (see below). You may also contact the DebianHAMs and suggest qdmr for inclusion into the Debian distribution.

The Ubuntu packages provided at the PPA do not work under Debian!

Install qdmr under OpenSuSE Tumbleweed

There are binary packages for qdmr provided for OpenSuSE Tumbleweed in the hardware:sdr repository. To add that repository to your packages sources run

    sudo zypper ar obs://hardware:sdr hardware:sdr

after that, you can install qdmr simply by running

    sudo zypper install qdmr

You will also receive updates this way.

Install qdmr under Gentoo Linux

Gentoo users need no help: you find qdmr as net-wireless/qdmr. However, if you build your own kernel, make sure to enable USB Modem (CDC ACM). Otherwise you may not be able to access the radios.

Install qdmr under Arch Linux

qdmr is already part of this distribution. So you only need to run

    sudo pacman -S qdmr

Install qdmr under MacOS

The preferred way to install qdmr under MacOS is to use MacPorts. MacPorts is a software package manager for MacOS. This not only allows to distribute software for different MacOS versions but also to receive updates semi-automatically. After installing MacPorts, you can easily install qdmr with

    sudo port install qdmr

This will install both, the qdmr GUI application as well as the dmrconf command-line tool. MacPorts will also crate an App link in the Launcher.

If you are running MacOS 11 on an Intel X86-64 CPU, you may also download the App bundle from the release page at github.

Windows

There are no windows binaries for qdmr. Consider using the manufacturer CPS.

If you are running Windows 10, you may install Ubuntu under Windows 10 and follow the Ubuntu instructions above.

Install qdmr using Snap

If you are running Ubuntu Linux, consider using the PPA source instead of the snap image. The snap image system does restrict the access to serial ports and thus access to some radios using this interface. Direct raw USB access, however is possible. Hence you may use the snap image if you plan to use qdmr with radios like the Radioddity RD-5R or TyT UV390 or Retevis RT3S.

You may install the snap image of qdmr with

    sudo snap install qdmr

Snap package and USB interface

If you use the snap image of qdmr, you must (for now) grant access to the raw USB interface for qdmr. Otherwise, qdmr will not find any USB devices. That is, execute

    snap connect qdmr:raw-usb

in a terminal. I will request an auto-connect for this snap image, so that this step will not be necessary in the future. For the time being, however, you have to do that manually.

Snap package and serial interface

Please note that it is very hard to gain access to a serial port for a snap image, hence it is (for now) impossible to access the OpenGD77 and the upcoming AnyTone devices using the snap package of qdmr. Please resort to the DEB package from my PPA. Any other direct USB (non-serial) interface should work (i.e., RD5-R, GD77 and Retevis/TyT).

Build qdmr from sources

In a first step, get the current sources from the github release page. Download the tar.gz archive.

Install build dependencies

Then the dependencies must be installed. The name of these packages depends on the distribution you are using. Here are some examples for Ubuntu/Debian, Arch and Fedora.

Ubuntu

    sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake libusb-1.0-0-dev libyaml-cpp-dev
    sudo apt-get install qtbase5-dev qttools5-dev qttools5-dev-tools qtpositioning5-dev libqt5serialport5-dev

Arch Linux

    sudo pacman -S base-devel cmake libusb qt5-tools qt5-serialport qt5-location yaml-cpp

Fedora

    sudo dnf install libusb-devel yaml-cpp-devel gcc-c++
    sudo dnf install qt5-qtlocation-devel qt5-qtserialport-devel qt5-qttools-static qt5-qttools-devel qt5-qtbase-devel

Unpack, build and install

Then unpack the sources with

    tar -xf qdmr-X.X.X.tar.gz 
    cd qdmr-X.X.X

Configure and build the software

    mkdir build 
    cd build 
    cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local
    make

Install qdmr

To install the build software run

    sudo make install

Finally, you may need to run

    sudo ldconfig

to let the linker find the new runtime library libdmrconf.

Gain access to USB/serial devices.

The install step above or installing a binary package should also have installed a rule file that grants raw USB access to the radios. You may need to execute

    sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
    sudo udevadm trigger

to activate these new rules. However, your user needs to be a member of the dialout group. This membership is also needed to gain raw access to USB serial devices like the OpenGD77 or AnyTone devices.

To this end, first check if your user is a member of the dialout group with

    groups

If dialout is not listed there, run

    sudo adduser YOUR_USER dialout

This should grant your user raw access to the serial and USB interfaces to the radios.

Best & 73,
Hannes, DM3MAT