Chattervox on MacOS

Install Direwolf

The official Direwolf User Manual uses MacPorts to manage installation and dependencies. I don't particularly like MacPorts, so here are some instructions for installing Direwolf via Homebrew.

# Install Direwolf via Homebrew
brew install tdsmith/ham/direwolf
# If this installed without any errors, great, skip ahead to the next section!

# If that didn't seem to work, try...
brew doctor
brew install hamlib
brew link hamlib

# and then try installing direwolf again
brew install tdsmith/ham/direwolf

Configure Direwolf

Next copy this direwolf.conf file to your home directory (e.g. ~/direwolf.conf). This is where Direwolf will load its configuration from by default.

Next, plug in a TRRS (Tip Ring Ring Sleeve) audio cable into your Mac. This cable must be plugged in before running the next command, so that we can get the correct name of the audio input and output devices on your machine.

dirwolf

You should see something like this printed to the screen.

Dire Wolf DEVELOPMENT version 1.4 E (Feb 24 2019)
Includes optional support for:  hamlib

Reading config file direwolf.conf
Audio input device for receive: External Microphone:0  (channel 0)
Audio out device for transmit: External Headphones:1  (channel 0)
Number of devices = 4
--------------------------------------- device #0
[ Default Input ]
Name        = "External Microphone"
Host API    = Core Audio
Max inputs  = 1
Max outputs = 0
--------------------------------------- device #1
[ Default Output ]
Name        = "External Headphones"
Host API    = Core Audio
Max inputs  = 0
Max outputs = 2
--------------------------------------- device #2
Name        = "MacBook Pro Microphone"
Host API    = Core Audio
Max inputs  = 1
Max outputs = 0
--------------------------------------- device #3
Name        = "MacBook Pro Speakers"
Host API    = Core Audio
Max inputs  = 0
Max outputs = 2

If direwolf keeps running without exiting, the default direwolf.conf configuration is likely suitable for your install. If it quits with a message like "pointless to continue with no audio device", we need to edit the ~/direwolf.conf so that it uses the correct microphone and speaker device names and input numbers.

Using the audio device information output by Direwolf, edit this line in ~/direwolf.conf:

ADEVICE	  "External Microphone:0" "External Headphones:1"

Using the following format, replacing *_NAME and *_DEVICE_NUMBER with the corresponding name and device number of the microphone and speaker used by the TRRS cable:

ADEVICE "MICROPHONE_NAME:MICROPHONE_DEVICE_NUMBER" "SPEAKER_NAME:SPEAKER_DEVICE_NUMBER"

Once you've edited the config, try running direwolf again.

Install Chattervox

If you already have npm, installing Chattervox is easy:

npm install -g --cli chattervox

If you don't yet have npm, I recommend installing it with the Node Version Manager.

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.34.0/install.sh | bash
source ~/.bash_profile # or ~/.bashrc, whatever you use

# Install Node.js 8
nvm install v8

npm install -g --cli chattervox

You should now have Chattervox installed! Run chattervox chat to get started.

Troubleshooting

There have been reports that some folks have trouble getting certain MacBook versions to recognize the microphone device when using an APRS cable with a Baofeng. This user was able to trick their MacBook into behaving as expected like so:

I use a MacBook Air and a MacBook Pro. The air doesn’t have any problem when connecting via TRRS. However my newer Pro has a quirk where it won’t recognize when I plug my ham radio into the TRRS. I found a way around the glitch. I plug in a pair of Apple TRRS headphones, confirm the headphones/mic are working, then quickly unplug the headphones and plug in the radio adapter cable. Starts working fine after that. Hope that works for ya.