For the February 2025 lecture, Richard Hinsley VK2ARH/W5ARH and Simon Mitchell VK2YU presented an introduction to setting up and using HamClock, an application that provides real time space weather, radio propagation, and many other points of information for use in the shack.

The lecture includes a live demo of the application and brief explanations for setting display options as well as preferred hardware and build options.

You can watch the lecture on VK2MB-TV at https://youtu.be/10VsH0UPzKo.

More information from Simon: If you are looking to install HamClock yourself on a Raspberry Pi, I’d suggest the following hardware/software combo as we used in the demo:

Hardware:

  • Raspberry Pi Zero 2W
  • A microSD card; 32GB cards are available from many outlets for a modest price.
  • A micro USB cable + USB 5V Power supply (5W or 1A minimum).

Software: Raspbian Bookworm 32bit “Lite” version. For the hardware above there is NO benefit in using a 64bit operating system and it may actually be less efficient. The Raspberry Pi Imager software (for setting up the SD card):

Web links:

  • How to set up a HamClock for your shack is a good walkthrough of setup! This actually shows setup using the “Desktop” version of Raspbian which is not necessary. You only need to use the “Lite” (desktop-less) version. Running the desktop version on the hardware listed above is not a desirable experience and is not needed if you are running HamClock as a webpage as demonstrated last night.
  • HamClock official website
  • HamClock 4.13 User Guide

The lecture was soon followed by a “configurathon“!