steeviebops
Member
- Joined
- Nov 19, 2019
- Messages
- 105
- Reaction score
- 74
- Points
- 28
- My Satellite Setup
- A basic 28.2 Freesat config, but have had a long history of satellite TV dating back to the analogue 19.2 days. Using a HP ZBook 15 G5 laptop (Core i7-8850H, 32GB RAM, Quadro video card)
- My Location
- Drogheda, Ireland
Last November I decided to give a go at writing a frontend for hacktv. But I hadn't ever written anything serious and any experience I did have was in Visual Basic 6. Nonetheless, I carried on with the initial intent that it would be for my personal use, but since there has been some interest I thought I'd release my efforts to the public.
I built this with Wine in mind, which is one of the reasons why I chose VB6 over VB.NET. I do have a 64-bit native VB.NET build that I developed side-by-side but found that running it in Wine using Mono is very unstable whereas VB6 is flawless, provided that you install the VB6 runtimes from Microsoft (these aren't required on any modern version of Windows by the way). So if you run the GUI in Wine on Linux it will run the native version of hacktv. I've tested it on Fedora and Mint with GNOME and Cinnamon respectively.
When you run it you'll be presented with pretty much any of the supported options in hacktv on a HackRF. I haven't implemented fl2k or SoapySDR as I don't have access to them so can't test. I've also added a couple of nice features such as the ability to download a teletext service with a couple of clicks; I've added Teefax and even TVARK's SPARK service after finding it on Github. When you run hacktv it will also show the generated syntax in the status bar at the bottom of the window. If you need help with getting something working, sharing these parameters is definitely the best way.
The link below includes the GUI, VB6 source (if anyone is interested, but it does need to be tidied up) and also Windows versions of the latest builds of hacktv. The easiest way to get it working is to download the GUI and one of the two hacktv builds, then place all files in the same directory. But you can change the hacktv location in the settings menu. The GUI will detect what build you choose, and enable or disable the options supported by it.
I do apologise for not writing this in a better language, such as C, but coding isn't my strong point (I work in an IT MSP by trade) so I worked with what I had! For the same reasons I'm also not very confident that it's up to standard but I've tried to make it as stable as possible so it shouldn't do anything untoward.
If any new commands are added to hacktv in future, I will do my best to add them.
I built this with Wine in mind, which is one of the reasons why I chose VB6 over VB.NET. I do have a 64-bit native VB.NET build that I developed side-by-side but found that running it in Wine using Mono is very unstable whereas VB6 is flawless, provided that you install the VB6 runtimes from Microsoft (these aren't required on any modern version of Windows by the way). So if you run the GUI in Wine on Linux it will run the native version of hacktv. I've tested it on Fedora and Mint with GNOME and Cinnamon respectively.
When you run it you'll be presented with pretty much any of the supported options in hacktv on a HackRF. I haven't implemented fl2k or SoapySDR as I don't have access to them so can't test. I've also added a couple of nice features such as the ability to download a teletext service with a couple of clicks; I've added Teefax and even TVARK's SPARK service after finding it on Github. When you run hacktv it will also show the generated syntax in the status bar at the bottom of the window. If you need help with getting something working, sharing these parameters is definitely the best way.
The link below includes the GUI, VB6 source (if anyone is interested, but it does need to be tidied up) and also Windows versions of the latest builds of hacktv. The easiest way to get it working is to download the GUI and one of the two hacktv builds, then place all files in the same directory. But you can change the hacktv location in the settings menu. The GUI will detect what build you choose, and enable or disable the options supported by it.
Microsoft OneDrive
1drv.ms
I do apologise for not writing this in a better language, such as C, but coding isn't my strong point (I work in an IT MSP by trade) so I worked with what I had! For the same reasons I'm also not very confident that it's up to standard but I've tried to make it as stable as possible so it shouldn't do anything untoward.
If any new commands are added to hacktv in future, I will do my best to add them.