West Mountain RigBlaster Plug and Play & Linux

It is now possible to use the West Mountain rigblaster plug n play with linux. It can be difficult to get going or could be very easy, depending on your distribution and how up to date your kernel is.

You will need a kernel 2.6.20 or greater installed or compiled. The kernel has to have the cp2101 module compiled into it. Most distributions allow you to upgrade your kernel fairly easily and most will have this module automatically compiled into it

When you plug in the plug n play the green light should come on steady, in a terminal type

sudo lsmod | grep 2101

that will let you know if the module loaded by listing it; if no list comes out of the output of that command type in

sudo insmod cp2101

The plug and play should now be ready to use. If you get a module not found error or somethign similiar the kernel you have does not have the cp2101 module compiled into it, and you must recompile/install another kernel.

To find out what port the plug and play is connected to from a terminal type

sudo cat /var/log/messages | grep cp2101

and look for the lines ttyUSB0 or something similiar. This means that the plug and play is connected to device /dev/ttyUSB0 and that is what you enter into your digital mode program (ie gpsk, qsstv, fldigi, etc) as the port to connect to.

If all goes well you should be on the air in no time, see you on 14.070 :-)