QUISK(1)

💖 QUISK(1) — the manual page, but make it make sense 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because today we're learning about quisk, aka a Software Defined Radio (SDR), and honestly? she's iconic. this is the QUISK(1) manual page and i'm about to give you the whole tour. no skips, no skimming, we're doing this properly 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

quisk — a Software Defined Radio (SDR). that's the whole name section, she's mysterious like that 💅

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so. QUISK is the software that controls a receiver and a transmitter. that's her job, that's her whole thing.

fun pronunciation lore: QUISK rhymes with "brisk", and it's literally QSK plus a few extra letters so it's easier to actually say out loud. and what's QSK? it's a Q signal meaning full breakin CW, and QUISK was designed for low latency CW operation. she works fine for SSB and AM too, ngl, she's versatile like that.

right now she runs under Linux using ALSA sound drivers or PortAudio, and here's everything she can do 👇

• Quisk can control the HiQSDR. periodt.
• as a receiver she can use the SDR-IQ by RfSpace as a sample source. there are several decimation rates available. (the screen shots below were taken using the SDR-IQ, fyi.) the QUISK receiver will read the sample data, tune it, filter it, demodulate it, and send the audio to the sound card for output to external headphones or speakers. she does the whole pipeline herself, no notes 👑
• as a receiver she can also use your soundcard as a sample source. you supply a complex (I/Q) mixer to convert radio spectrum to a low IF, and send that IF to the left and right inputs of the sound card in your computer. the demodulated audio goes to the same soundcard for output. cute, right?
• Quisk can control SoftRock hardware for both receive and transmit. both!! she's doing both!!
• as a transmitter she can control my SSB/CW exciter and my transceiver using Ethernet.
• as a transmitter she can accept microphone input and send that to your transmitter for SSB operation. for CW, QUISK can mute the audio and substitute a side tone. Quisk can send transmit data to your sound card for use with SoftRock or similar. and if you're not using SoftRock hardware and not using Ethernet, then you can modify the C code in microphone.c to connect to your hardware. diy era 🛠️
• if you have the SDR-IQ or the Softrock hardware, then QUISK is ready for you to use as a receiver, like, immediately. but if you have other receive hardware, then you'll need to change the file quisk_hardware.py to connect your receiver to QUISK. for example, if you change your VFO frequency with a serial port, then you need to change quisk_hardware.py to send characters to the serial port. and the good news? quisk_hardware.py is written in Python, which is a very easy language to learn and use. you got this bestie 💪

🎀 SETUP 🎀

some deployments of quisk will only need to use sound hardware with ALSA. easy. but other setups will use serial ports (or USB serial ports) and may need permissions set up (perhaps using udev) to allow the quisk program's user access to those ports. so like, check your permissions, bestie. see documentation in /usr/share/doc/quisk for more information, as well as configuration file examples.

the default configuration file is ~/.quisk_conf.py

⚠️ the configuration file must be customized for the user (see the commented examples) before running quisk. do not skip this step, i'm so serious 😭

⭐ SYNOPSIS ⭐

quisk [options]

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -h, --help — show this help message and exit. the classic. the icon. when in doubt, ask her for help 🫶
• -c CONFIG_FILE_PATH, --config=CONFIG_FILE_PATH — Specify the configuration file path. you tell her which config file to use, she uses it.
• --config2=CONFIG_FILE_PATH2 — Specify a second configuration file to read after the first. two configs?? she's highkey multitasking 🔥

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• http://james.ahlstrom.name/quisk/ — go look, it's giving official ✨
• Sample config files are in /usr/share/doc/quisk/quisk_conf*
  • copy one, edit and save as ~/.quisk_conf.py
• For use with a Funcube Dongle see the program qthid in package qthid-fcd-controller.

and that's the whole page, no cap. this was quisk 3.5.11, dated January 2012, manual page QUISK(1) — ty for coming to my ted talk, now go tune something 💖🦋🌸