ColorSpot

This script is a command line DX cluster client. It adds the following benefits to the default telnet stream:

• displays the DX station's country
• displays the DX station's continent
• displays if the DX station uses LotW
• downloads your LotW QSL file and marks all lines with countries that need to be confirmed (optional)
• displays lines in different colors depending on the continent or band (user configurable)

Screnshot

Limitations

The following limitations are present:

• read-only: you can't send commands to the dx cluster server via this tool
• no filters: you need to configure your filter on the server

Installation

ColorSpot needs Python 3 and the following libraries:

• colored
• requests

Furthermore, you need an account at LotW for some of the features.

Before installing ColorSpot, please make sure that pip, setuptools and wheel are installed and up-to-date:

# python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel

Finally, install ColorSpot with pip:

# python3 -m pip install colorspot

Updating

To update colorspot, execute the following command:

# python3 -m pip install --upgrade colorspot

Usage

• execute the application with "colorspot"
• colorspot creates a default config file and states its location (e.g. ~/.config/colorspot/colorspot.ini)
• adapt ~/.config/colorspot/colorspot.ini to your needs. Important setting are:
  • cluster/host and cluster/port: Change this if you want to use another cluster server
  • cluster/user: Enter here your call sign
  • lotw/user: Enter here your lotw user name (your call sign). Leave at "N0CALL" to disable this feature.
  • lotw/password: Enter here your lotw password
  • lotw/mode: Enter here the mode you would like to filter the QSL download from LotW
• execute the application again with "colorspot"
• the software now tries to download the following files and stores them into the configuration directory:
  • https://www.country-files.com/bigcty/download/bigcty.zip (will be extracted)
  • https://lotw.arrl.org/lotw-user-activity.csv
  • https://lotw.arrl.org/lotwuser/lotwreport.adi?login={}&password={}&qso_query=1&qso_qsl=yes&qso_mode={}&qso_qsldetail=yes&qso_qslsince=1970-01-01

License

see