Packages Hamclock Next

hamclock-next

Maintained SDL2 rewrite of HamClock — grey line, propagation, DX cluster

• Version recorded: 1.6
• Categories: dashboards, propagation
• Upstream: https://github.com/k4drw/hamclock-next
• Supersedes: esphamclock

What it does

Displays a live world map with the grey line, solar and geomagnetic indices, satellite passes, DX cluster spots and band-condition predictions, either full-screen on a dedicated display or in a window.

Why you would want it

It is the at-a-glance station dashboard for deciding which band to work, and it is one of two maintained continuations of HamClock, whose author became a Silent Key in January 2026. The other is openhamclock, which has the larger community and is the default (Q-006) — but it is a Node web application served to a browser, and this one is an ordinary desktop program with no Node and no web server involved. Pick this one for the original's look, or for a machine you would rather not run a server on.

Before it will work

A working network connection and a reachable data backend. Set your latitude, longitude and callsign on first run.

How it installs

• source (cmake) from https://github.com/k4drw/hamclock-next/archive/refs/tags/v1.6.tar.gz
  • build dependencies: patch, libsdl2-dev, libsdl2-ttf-dev, libsdl2-image-dev, libcurl4-openssl-dev, libsqlite3-dev, cmake, build-essential

Binaries this produces:

• hamclock-next

Known problems

Widely reported in mid-2026 to have stopped working after the original author's death. Tested 2026-08-25: hamclock.com is up and serving version 4.27. The host that is gone is clearskyinstitute.com. This manifest defaults to the Open HamClock Backend, a community-run alternative, and the endpoint is a configurable field rather than a string compiled into a launcher script — so switching backends is a one-line change, not a rebuild.

Keeping it current

• probe: github release (k4drw/hamclock-next)
• strategy: rebuild

Source: catalog/packages/hamclock-next.yaml