This must be the coolest application of Linux-based WiNRADiO receiver we have seen yet: An artist was scanning ACARS at Melbourne Airport, and showing the information on LED signs at an exhibition in the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

Zina Kaye made visible a cross section of the data that orbits an airport, drawing connections, in her own words "between the dispersive and disorientating nature of air travel, and the quietly invisible chaos of radio traffic". The work was called 'The Line Ahead' and was seen during the 'Australian Culture Now' exhibition.

Viewers in the gallery were presented with a giddy vision of the chaotic movement of data and the private conversations of aeroplanes: flight numbers, origin and destination shown on three giant LED screens. Behind the scenes, a WiNRADiO-supplied antenna was bolted to the roof of Melbourne Airport, connected to a WiNRADiO receiver sitting on top of a Linux server.

The Open Source ACARSd project decoded the messages, transmitting them to the signs at the gallery.

Kaye finds inspiration in big engineering such as space stations and radio telescopes, and her work often reflects on the systems that make these things work. She exhibits in Australia and Europe.

LinRADiO is an initiative of WiNRADiO Communications, to provide a free forum for Linux users interested in PC-based radio.

Linux and WiNRADiO have much in common:

Linux was created by Linus Torvalds with the help of many developers around the world, to become one of the world's leading operating systems. The iconoclastic Linux is famous for its technical elegance and reliability. Initially scoffed at by the established operating system monopoly, it has become their most serious and feared rival.

Only a decade ago, WiNRADiO was a small start-up company driven by a vision to merge radio and computer technology, and produce the world's first commercially viable PC-based wide-band radio receivers. Initially scoffed at by the communications radio establishment, WiNRADiO has become a major, award-winning supplier of receivers, a driving force setting the pace of radio receiver development.

Not so surprisingly, WiNRADiO receivers are now available for Linux users. WiNRADiO has been always well known for its open user interface and active developer support. Low-level interface drivers have now been released under the GNU public license, and the first such "LiNRADiO" applications are starting to emerge.

Linux developers with interest in radio communications are invited to participate in LinRADiO and the development of this Web site. This site is sponsored by WiNRADiO Communications, and dedicated to free use by the Linux radio community. Contributions are welcome.

  Bert Driehuis is sending diffs (configure.diff and wrgtk.diff) that make WrGtk work on FreeBSD. The diff to configure makes it into a well-behaved Bourne shell script. The wrio.c and wrcmd.c patches take care of the different WiNRADiO models.

 George Muzyka who pioneered WiNRADiO for Linux (LiNRADiO), releases another great contribution: the first GUI for LiNRADiO. Check it out!

  P. Brisset advises that the package formerly known as "wr_kit" is now called "linradio-toolkit". It is available on Source Forge:

linradio-toolkit-0.7.tar.gz
linradio-toolkit-usermode-0.7-1.i386.rpm
linradio-toolkit-module2.4.19-0.7-1.i386.rpm

  "LiNRADiO rocks!" says Aaron Price of the American Association of Variable Star Observers, as he observes meteor showers with LiNRADiO. Never heard of such an interesting application? Look at his Web page.

 Ralph Billes of Nautronix sent us source code for signal strength meter for wrkit-0.1. This patch is filling the gap in the Tcl wrkit package. Details here.

Note: WiNRADiO does not guarantee the correctness of these contributions, or the provided email and Web links.