HamDeck (Go)

A ham radio station host and panel: CAT control, a REST API, and a remote panel — Go server, Flutter client.

⚠️ This now runs the station. It was an experiment beside the C++ host when this file was written, and that stopped being true on 09/04/2026: the Go host holds /dev/ttyRIG and the USB codec on VM 105, keys the transmitter, drives the TG-XL, and the C++ host is stopped.

Only one of them can run. The radio is single-instance hardware — one process holds the serial bridge and the codec — so starting the C++ host while this one is up gets neither of them a working radio.

It still talks to a simulated rig when --radio is empty, which is how everything except the station itself is tested. ⚠️ Three real faults passed clean on that simulator and failed on the radio, so the gates below are run against the STATION.

What it is testing

Can one person keep this alive for ten years?	Go's compatibility promise, and a build that is go build rather than CMake plus vendored C libraries
Can it speak to radios nobody here owns?	A rig interface. The simulator and a serial port are both just a Rig; a second model is a table, not a rewrite. The C++ host hardcoded one radio's verbs and that is its ceiling
Can a blind operator use it?	Flutter ships a real screen-reader semantics layer. This is the clearest open goal in remote radio software and it is why Flutter beat a pure-Go UI here

Running it

go build ./cmd/hamdeck-host
./hamdeck-host users set <username>     # prompts twice; creates the first account
./hamdeck-host --panel client/build/web

⚠️ It starts with no accounts rather than a default login, and says so — a shipped credential is a credential everybody has.

Accounts live in /etc/hamdeck-go/users.json, and that is the only place they live. No username in the source, no hash in an environment variable. The same command creates the first account and resets a forgotten password later:

hamdeck-host users list
hamdeck-host users set <name>           # create, or reset a password
hamdeck-host users remove <name>
hamdeck-host users grant <name> tx      # a new account may listen, not transmit

⚠️ The password is prompted for and never taken as an argument — an argument is in the shell history and visible in ps to everyone on the machine. ⚠️ A reset reaches a running host within seconds, so recovering a login does not mean restarting the station and dropping CAT, the receiver and anything on the air.

Layout

• cmd/hamdeck-host — the server. Serves the API and the panel, so "install the server" is the whole setup and a browser is a first-class client.
• cmd/hamdeck-panel — a second panel in pure Go (Gio), kept as a comparison. It works, it is half the download, and it has no accessibility layer.
• client/ — the Flutter panel: web, Linux, and Windows/macOS from the same source.
• internal/rig — the interface the whole point rests on.

Not done yet

⚠️ This list used to name audio, serial CAT and the transmit watchdog. All three are done and on the air; what is left is:

• Users added through the admin routes live in memory only — an account added on the panel is gone at the next restart. The station's own admin comes from /etc/hamdeck-go/env, which does survive.
• The installers are unsigned — SmartScreen warns on Windows, and the DMG needs right-click → Open on macOS. This is the biggest adoption blocker left.
• 371 ms of receive latency, against the C++ host's shorter buffer.
• The transmit/receive switching time has never been measured.
• LAN only. There is no path in from outside the house yet.