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weechat-radio:$ Why WeeChat Radio

I built WeeChat Radio as an alternative to a lot of the otherwise slightly complicated and overly busy radio applications that have existed for several years now.

It uses the chat framework of WeeChat: channels, nicknames and a chat window you may already know. The wcr program acts as a small chat server on your computer, so you can chat from WeeChat itself or from the built-in desktop app and terminal UI. Over the air it uses modem73, which turns each message into data packets and sends them through your radio as audio.

WeeChat Radio aims to be as powerful as those without being as hard to pick up. See how it lines up feature by feature on compare apps.

As well as being easy to get to grips with, it also supports multiple modes, so people without a radio can join in chat rooms via the internet.

Because of its hybrid approach, it even allows cross-frequency conversations when most stations are not connected to the internet, so long as there is an internet-connected station with a radio that can bridge the gap between frequencies.

WeeChat Radio also supports message relaying, or “hops”, so you can talk via radio only with a group where not everyone has a clear line of sight to everyone else. The signal is relayed up and down the group as determined by the software. A 20m path across Europe and a 2m path around Kyiv are drawn on that page.

WeeChat Radio was built with Cursor, and very quickly, so it may have hints of AI across it. I have tried to test the core features as much as possible to make sure they do work. If you find a bug, please report it on GitHub and I will do my best to fix it.

WeeChat Radio is built and maintained by Tobias Franklin M7TJF.