Setting up Dire Wolf

Dire Wolf is a software-based TNC (Terminal Node Controller). Traditionally, TNC’s were physical hardware devices that amateur radio operators connected to their radios for the purpose of running digital modes over packet radio. To make things simple you can think of a TNC as a modem (for those of you born before the 1980’s). Its role is to take analog RF signals received/transmitted by your radio and encode/decode them into a digital signal. This digital signal can be used by various packet-based software applications to run APRS (YAAC or Xastir), Winlink (Pat) or even connect to a BBS.

Before getting started, it should be noted that these instructions are written for Linux, specifically Ubuntu 21.10. A basic understanding of Linux is recommended.

Build and Install Dire Wolf

Install Development Toolchain

Since we are building Dire Wolf from source code, we will need to install some software development tools. Open a terminal and exeute the following commands.

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install git gcc g++ make cmake libasound2-dev libudev-dev -y

Build and Install Dire Wolf

Open a terminal and execute the following commands to build and install Dire wolf from source.

$ cd
$ git clone https://www.github.com/wb2osz/direwolf && cd direwolf
$ mkdir build && cd build
$ cmake ..
$ make -j4
$ sudo make install
$ make install-conf

Configure Dire Wolf

1. Change back to the root of your home directory.

$ cd

2. Connect your soundcard to your computer.

3. Determine the audio device for your soundcard. In my case, the newly connected USB soundcard appears as USB audio codec.

   $ arecord -l
   **** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
   card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC256 Analog [ALC256 Analog]
   Subdevices: 1/1
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
   card 1: CODEC [USB audio CODEC], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
   Subdevices: 1/1
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

   In this case, our audio device is: card 1, device 0. We will use this to construct our audio device identifer in the next step. Replace the card number (1) and device number (0) to form plughw:1,0. Change these values based on your output from arecord.

4. Edit direwolf.conf by running: nano direwolf.conf.

   1. Set the audio device.

      ADEVICE plughw:1,0

   2. Set MYCALL with your call sign.

5. Start Dire Wolf.

$ direwolf

Adjust Audio Levels

In order to properly have your incoming and outgoing transmitions encoded and decoded by your station and remote stations, you will need to ensure that the audio coming in and out of your sound card is properly tuned. This is a bit of an art and better handled by other resources online. Instead, I have provided some default settings that I typically start when configuring the sound card. There are also radio-specific settings (volume, mic gain, etc.) that need to be configured. This is beyond the scope of this post.

1. Open a terminal and run: alsamixer

2. Press F6 and select your sound card device.

3. Make a note of your default settings.

4. Ummute the Mic if it is muted. Use the arrow key to select the Mic, then press the m key to unmute the microphone. Set the volume to 100 to start.

5. Unmute the Speaker if it is muted. Set the Speaker to 100 to start.

6. Mute the AGC (Automated Gain Control). Use m to toggle the mute.

7. Exit alsamixer by hitting the <ESC> key. Then, save your settings.

$ sudo alsactl store