I wrote recently about my use of Hamclock. I had finally moved my setup to one of my main shack monitors, and utilized a new Raspberry-Pi Zero 2W.
Unfortunately, I had a couple of issues. First, the mini HDMI connection to the Zero 2W became intermittent. I used a mini HDMI adapter to connect to the Pi, but the stress on that board mounted connector may not be robust enough. Then the Pi just stopped responding, and I had no choice but to remove power. It also was a pain to run headless, as I had trouble with the VNC, so I had to often connect up a mouse and keyboard to the Pi.
So, I wasn’t thrilled with the situation. So I ordered the Inovato Quadra 4K. It is $49, and another $10 for the wireless keyboard.
The only extra I ordered with it was the mini wireless keyboard. I didn’t want to deal with pulling out another keyboard and mouse when I wanted to interface with the Hamclock. Once you get it setup the way you want it, one doesn’t need to normally interface with it, but I wanted to have this simpler option. The mini keyboard is OK, the touchpad gets a little to get used to. It has two standard USB ports, so one is taken up by the mini keyboards wireless device.
The device is a little less than 4 x 4 inches square, and just under 1 inch high. It is light and all plastic, not a fancy aluminum case. It has a power socket and an ethernet connection if you don’t want to use wi-fi. It actually can be located remotely from your shack and display the hamclock on a monitor using a browser, but I have not tried that setup. I connect directly to a monitor.
If placed flat near your operating position, the device has a scrolling LED display on one side that shows the current IP address of the device and the CPU temperature.
The setup is fairly similar to the standard Hamclock setup. There is a Quickstart page on the Inovato website for reference. It is a Linux device similar to a Raspberry-Pi, running Debian Linux with a GUI. It is not too difficult to deal with but helps if one has used Linux before.
One nice thing I noticed right away, the standard Hamclock has only a few fixed screen sizes and it will pick one closest to the monitor it senses. So the full screen option on the Hamclock on my Raspberry-Pi did not quite fill my 1080P 22 inch monitor screen, but the Quadra 4K does fill it nicely.
Everything else seems the same, the layout and all the options are available. Once you are in full screen, in order to get back out in case you wanted to do anything on the desktop requires a keyboard sequence which is documented on the Inovato web pages.
The device can display on a 4K TV screen. I have an ARRL World map above my operating position, as well as other various wall displays, so I think I am happy with the 22 inch monitor at the moment. The Geochron display looks a bit prettier from pictures I have seen, especially the maps, but the Geochron starts at around $400 and then sucks you in to subscriptions and additional cost features. So I am happy with the $59 Quadra4K at the moment.
There are several decent YouTube videos showing the Hamclock, some specific to the Quadra 4K. They do a good job of showing off the various features and options of Hamclock.
