Anthony (KA9NWM), the creator of Helioclock, was kind enough to send along the Live USB Stick version of Helioclock for me to review. I've been evaluating Helioclock in my shack and home office over the last two weeks.
There has been a deluge of ham radio focused, situational awareness "dashboards" that have entered the market over the past several months. Some are free and some cost hundreds of dollars. I've been a HamClock user for many years, and full disclosure, I've contributed code to the Open Ham Clock Backend project to help keep HamClock running. I've also been a regular user of Open Ham Clock since it was released earlier this year. There are many others including DXLook, Ham Radio dashboard, HamDash, 73QRZ, HAM-HQ, and on and on. Most aren't great. A few are very good.
Until recently, there were only two main players in the situational awareness dashboard space and that was Geochron and HamClock. Geochron is the gold standard, exquisitely crafted (and very pricey), while HamClock provides similar information in a more utilitarian package at the low price of free.
Where does Helioclock fit on the spectrum? A beautiful and well-designed display piece that gives Geochron a run for both its price and design.
Setting up and customizing Helioclock
For this review I ran Helioclock on my old gaming rig with 16GB of RAM and a graphics card capable of pushing the full 4K experience to a 55 inch 4K television. Helioclock's minimum specs support a Raspberry Pi 4, so it should be quite capable on a range of hardware.
Helioclock was easy to set up using the Live USB Stick. I plugged it into my rig, pointed the BIOS at the USB stick, and everything just worked. Without a single click or press of a key, a default version of Helioclock starts up, ready to be customized.
I tend to blindly click around in these initial states simply exploring and trying to figure things out for myself. Initial customization steps aren't incredibly intuitive so I would recommend at least glancing at the documentation and getting some queues from the keyboard shortcuts section.
Muscle memory sets in quickly, but then you're presented with a new challenge: The sheer amount of potential information and widgets to display.
I won't list every data point that Helioclock provides, but if you can imagine it, it's probably there. I'll call out a few that are unique or presented in a unique way:
Tropical storms including tracking cones
Visible Planets
Best Band Now
FAA Weathercams
After using Helioclock for a few days it becomes clear that there are two main user types that this device is catering to. Hams, and non-hams that may be interested in weather, planetary events, news, and astronomy. Helioclock provides a pulse on all of these things. The weather focus makes sense considering the author's background as a meteorologist and producer of weather graphics and systems for broadcast television.
I'm rarely on the air with my ham activities. (Too much time spent sifting through content on the internet for my weekly amateur radio newsletter.) As a result, I gravitated more toward the weather and planetary event aspect of Helioclock, eventually turning off most of the ham radio related information. (All the ham info is there. DX spots, PSKreporter integration, WSJT-X integration, POTA, SOTA, satellites, and more.)
The result is a beautiful world map with plenty of eye candy, from lightning strikes to aurora, tropical storms, and a news crawl of my favorite news sites. (You can import any news source with an RSS feed.) At a glance from across the room, Helioclock feels polished, looks professional, and is quite visually interesting. It's a wonderful addition to a techie space such as a ham shack, home office, or even a corporate environment. It looks like an interface you might find in a sci-fi movie, and absolutely worth the $40 to get started.
Let's talk design
I was a designer in a previous career (including designing graphics for broadcast television!) and to this day I can't avoid looking at everything with a designer's eye. I notice every little detail and many times I wish I didn't. Most readers of this section won't notice or care about what I'm pointing out. For the slim percentage of you that do, it's not a deal-breaker.
There are some picky issues such as the satellite imagery not spanning the full map (due to NOAA sats not covering the poles) and the lack of smooth scrolling of the news feed. (This can probably be fixed with some fancy CSS hacks.) The overall style is very "high-tech," even movie UI-esque, but it also looks like a lot of the AI generated web applications out there in terms of color and typographic choices. This one is better than most, but if that style knocks you over every time you see it, be prepared. To be fair, in this context, that style can work really well.
The only major design issue I struggle with is whether Helioclock should be viewed from across the room, or up close on a desk. I don't think Helioclock has figured that out quite yet. Maybe the intent is both. For example, sitting at my workstation, Helioclock is three feet away on a 55 inch 4K TV. The map looks great and is readable. I can pick out every state and country, timezones, POTA spots, etc. What I can't read is most of the information in the panels. The typography is set very small. The information panels, including the clocks, are completely illegible across the room. (Sizing can be adjusted by reducing the resolution to 1080 or simply hitting control+plus on the keyboard.)
Conversely, standing next to the TV, I can read everything, to the point where I have to physically move my head to take everything in. I'd be very curious to try Helioclock on a small monitor next to my desk and see if that might be a better experience for me since I'm interested in the information within the panels.
If the goal is eye candy across the room, none of this really applies.
Helioclock vs. HamClock vs. Geochron
There's really no comparison between Helioclock and HamClock other than they present a lot of the same data points. HamClock feels dated and archaic next to Helioclock's modern design and high resolution maps. It's 1996 vs. 2036.
The most interesting comparison in my view is Helioclock vs. Geochron. Helioclock is very much a contender with the Geochron offering, especially in terms of visual presentation and available data layers. Helioclock provides a very similar experience at $500 less and no recurring subscription for additional data layers. If I were Geochron, I'd be watching Helioclock closely, especially with regard to Atlas.
Here's a side-by-side comparison of Helioclock and Geochron at Hunstville Hamfest:
This review really only scratches the surface of what Helioclock is capable of. If I had more time I'd go much deeper into the ham radio related data points and the SDR integration that is also a key feature. Perhaps another review is in store for the future.
Overall, Helioclock is one of if not the best situational awareness display available. While not free, it really is a steal at $40 if you have an old PC or Raspberry Pi laying around. A fully purpose-built appliance for individual and multiple displays starts at $369 at the time of this writing. I highly recommend picking one up!
This year, Fire Prevention Week will be from Sunday October 4th through Saturday October 10th. In Ontario we will be using special event call sign VE3FIRE, operating as a Wild Card station, and in the US there will be stations using the call signs N0F through N9F along with KF2IRE, another Wild Card station. All twelve stations are working to highlight fire safety regarding the charging of lithium-ion batteries during Fire Prevention Week.
This event is not a contest. As we make contact with hams worldwide, this is more of a public service event where we will be giving tips to our contacts about the possible hazards inherent in overcharging lithium-ion batteries and tips on how to use and charge these batteries safely.
While this event is not a contest, a downloadable printed certificate will be available for those who work ten or more of the twelve stations. More about getting the certificate is available on the hamfire.com information site and QSL information is available on the VE3FIRE QRZ page.
Activate All RI aims to get all 61 of Rhode Island POTA parks on the air September 11–13. Think of it as a POTA take on a state QSO party: get a bunch of us out operating and give everyone else a weekend of Rhode Island parks to chase. Activating every park in a state over one weekend is one of those things we can actually tackle because we’re so tiny. Might as well put that to good use!
We start at 0600 EDT Friday September 11th and end 1800 EDT September 13th.
For hunters, it’s a chance to fill in missing parks toward Worked All RI, or just chase a few of us from home or park-to-park. The website has an activation schedule, live RI spots, and a tool that lets hunters import their POTA hunted-parks history and get a schedule for just the parks they still need.
Launch at 1218 UTC from southwest corner of track around football field. Had good visual of the ascent for nearly ten minutes.
Burst at 88000 feet at 1319 UTC (average ascent speed of 1440 ft/min). Occurred over the southwest corner of Greenfield, IN.
At 62000 feet at 1323 UTC a catastrophic event occurred during post-burst chaos. The APRS unit remained attached to the parachute, but one of the swivel connectors opened and the remaining string was cut by the carbon fiber tube released the 900 MHZ command pod, DominoEX, geiger counters, video cameras, and photometers. With no chute, these boxes landed in a field southwest of Knightstown and northwest of Carthage, IN. Impact occurred at 1334 UTC and the flight data recorder indicated a speed of about 48 miles/hour 200 feet above the ground. Maximum descent speeds in the free fall reached 120 miles/hour.
With the reduced load, the parachute and APRS unit landed east of Richmond, IN at 1410 UTC in a soybean field about 2.5 miles east of the Indiana-Ohio state line between US 35 and I-70.
I will examine the video for additional details on the separation event. This initial analysis comes from flight data and analysis of the payload strings.
Thanks again for your support, Howard
P.S. - I know that Bill Brown would appreciate any feedback from those that attempted to receive the Domino EX signal.
BASE 34 Flight March 12, 2009
Written by Administrator
Monday, 16 March 2009 11:53
BASE 34 was successfully completed today.
Launch: 13:52 UTC from DePauw Burst: 15:20 UTC at 103,800 feet Landing: 16:12 UTC between Potsdam and Laura, Ohio (39deg 58.78 min North, 84 deg 24.77 min West)
We had a visual sighting on the descent for the last two minutes. Smooth landing in the top of four trees about 60 feet above the ground. Retrieval was accomplished with the EZ Hang slingshot system using the tennis ball as the projectile. (Only took 4 attempts, with the first two being miserable failures due to operator error by me.)
The StratoStar system sent all the flight data to the mobile tracking station in real time.
The BASE 32 flight was a success. Launch at 16:20 UTC from DePauw campus (39.64 North, 86.86 West) by a rookie crew in 20 mph winds. Average ascent rate of 1470 feet/min. Burst at 17:18 UTC 85,000 feet. Landing at 18:02 UTC at 39.774 degrees North and 85.055 degrees West longitude. Flight heading 84 degrees from launch to landing. Great circle distance 97 miles.
Recovery made by Justin Munger, W1IX.
Excellent realtime flight data from student experiments.
Details to follow on the website: www.depauw.edu/acad/physics/base
BASE 33 is still on schedule for Saturday 17 January.
The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is the national association for amateur radio, connecting hams around the U.S. with news, information and resources.
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