QUISK is the software that controls a receiver and transmitter. QUISK rhymes with "brisk", and is QSK
plus a few letters to make it easier to pronounce. QSK is a Q signal meaning full breakin CW, and QUISK
has been designed for low latency CW operation. It works fine for SSB and AM too.
It currently runs under Linux using ALSA sound drivers or PortAudio
and offers these capabilities:
Quisk can control the HiQSDR.
As a receiver it 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. 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.
As a receiver it can 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.
Quisk can control SoftRock hardware for both receive and transmit.
As a transmitter it can control my SSB/CW exciter and my transceiver using Ethernet.
As a transmitter it 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. If you are not using SoftRock hardware
and not using Ethernet, then you can modify the C code in microphone.c to connect to your
hardware.
If you have the SDR-IQ or the Softrock hardware, then QUISK is ready for you to use as a receiver.
If you have other receive hardware, then you will 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. The file
quisk_hardware.py is written in the Python programming language, a very easy language to learn and
use.