Winɘlink

A Winlink (RMS Express & VARA) installer Script for the Raspberry Pi 4, Orange Pi 4 LTS, and x86/x64 Linux (Mint/Ubuntu/Debian). Raspberry Pi 3B+ also kind of works.

This project has lots of bugs and should be considered alpha software.

RMS Express/Trimode & VARA running on a Raspberry Pi 4B (RPiOS) [video sped-up]

VARA running on a Raspberry Pi 4B (Twister OS)

Installation

Copy/paste these commands into your Raspberry Pi 4's terminal:

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WheezyE/Winelink/main/install_winelink.sh && \
     bash install_winelink.sh

If desired, you can tell the script to only install VARA by running `curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WheezyE/Winelink/main/install_winelink.sh && bash install_winelink.sh vara_only`

I don't have much time to maintain Winelink these days. I've merged VARA HF into pi-apps as a backup option for users in case this script breaks in the future. If needed, simply run `wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Botspot/pi-apps/master/install | bash` then run `~/pi-apps/manage install VARA\ HF` (or run pi-apps and follow the on-screen prompts) to install VARA HF.

Known issues

RMS Express sometimes won't connect (over TCP) to ARDOP & VARA. Just close RMS Express and re-open it (this is a bug in wine).
VARA's CPU gauge doesn't display (this is a bug in wine).
VARA doesn't connect to DRA boards at this time (this might be a bug in wine or box86).
Wine can sometimes freeze your OS completely if it gets overloaded. If this happens on a Raspberry Pi, you can SSH into the Pi and then run wineserver -k to force-quit Wine. You can also just power-off/on your system.
Enabling VARA HF's waterfall display can sometimes crash RMS Express & VARA.
Enabling VARA's Monitor Mode can freeze VARA. (Users might have to delete their VARA config file to recover: rm ~/.wine/drive_c/VARA/VARA.ini)

Credits

ptitSeb for box86 (& everyone on the TwisterOS discord)

 (ptitSeb, pale, chills340, Itai-Nelken, Heasterian, phoenixbyrd,
  monkaBlyat, lowspecman420, epychan, !FlameKat53, #lukefrenner,
  icecream95, SpacingBat3, Botspot, Icenowy, Longhorn, et.al.)

madewokherd (Esme) for wine-mono debugging
Botspot for their RPi3 kernel switching code
N7ACW, AD7HE, & KK6FVG for getting me started in ham radio
KM4ACK & OH8STN for inspiration

K6ETA & DCJ21's 'Winlink on Linux' guides for early proof-of-concept

  "My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together"
                                              - Nelson Mandela

Donations

If you feel that you are able and would like to support this project, please consider sending donations to ptitSeb, madewokherd (CodeWeavers/WineHQ), or KM4ACK - without whom, this script would not exist.

Sebastien "ptitSeb" Chevalier (author of Box86, incredible developer, & really nice guy) paypal.me/0ptitSeb
Madewokherd (author of wine-mono & wonderful person) https://www.winehq.org/donate
Jason "KM4ACK" Oleham (author of Build-a-Pi, Linux elmer, & ham radio pioneer) paypal.me/km4ack

Stuff for nerds

How it works

This script will help you install Box86, Wine, winetricks, Windows DLL's, RMS Express, & VARA. You will then be prompted to configure RMS Express & VARA to send/receive audio from a USB sound card plugged into your Pi. This installer will only work on the Raspberry Pi 4B for now (support for earlier Raspberry Pi models is planned for later).

To run Windows .exe files on RPi4 (ARM/Linux), we need an x86 emulator (Box86) and a Windows API Call interpreter (Wine). Box86 is open-source and runs about 5x faster than ExaGear/Qemu (see these benchmarks). ExaGear is also closed source abandonware and Qemu (qemu-system & qemu-user-static) also has issues running more complex Wine programs on the Pi. Box86 is much smaller in file size and much easier to install too.

Distribution

If you use this script in your project (or are inspired by it) just please be sure to mention ptitSeb, Box86, and myself (KI7POL). This script is free to use, open-source, and should not be monetized (for further information see the license file).

Future Work: Roadmap

Future work: More platforms

Make a multi-platform Wine installer & build/invoke box86 if needed. (Linode may be helpful here)

Android testing notes

Termux/PRoot/AnBox86_64

Try using BT/USB/TCP Bridge Pro to connect USB devices to RMS Express (credits: Torsten, DL1THM / harenber)
Create alpha version of Winelink for AnBox86_64
Speed benchmarks with different devices (Fire HD10 Tablet is a bit slow, Retroid Pocket 2 TBD)
~~See if termux-usb can be adapted somehow to allow connections without root?~~
See if a python wrapper could be written for TermuxUSB-OTG-USB connections between RMS Express & FT-891.
OTG-USB-CAT (order OTG_USB_C-USB)
Audio in/out (ARDOP works with alsa / hiccups with pulseaudio)
Proof-of-concept
Fix AnBox86

Legal

All software used by this script is free and legal to use (with the exception of VARA, of course, which is shareware). Box86, Wine, wine-mono, winetricks, and AutoHotKey, are all open-source (which avoids the legal problems of use & distribution that ExaGear had - ExaGear also ran much slower than Box86 and is no-longer maintained, despite what Huawei says these days). All proprietary Windows DLL files required by Wine are downloaded directly from Microsoft and installed according to their redistribution guidelines. Raspberry Pi is a trademark of the Raspberry Pi Foundation

WheezyE/Winelink