This instruction does not cover all parts of the installation in detail, but is supposed to be easy to understand with limited knowledge and experience of Linux.

Download the image, Raspbian Stretch: https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/

Details: The official Raspbian installation instruction can be found here. https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/installing-images/README.md

Download the image installation program ”Etcher” and install the image on the card: https://etcher.io/

Before inserting the SD-card in the Raspberry, enable ssh. Add a file named ”ssh” in the root of the SD-card. https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/remote-access/ssh/

Insert the SD-card and boot the Raspberry. The Raspberry PI will start with DHCP enabled (automatically request an ip-address from your local router). Find the ip-address of the raspberry pi, and logon. Details: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/remote-access/ip-address.md

If you have a monitor and keyboard connected to you Raspberry, you just logon at the prompt after it has started. You can also connect via ssh, without a monitor and keyboard connected. Good tools for SSH on Windows are: Putty or MobaXterm

user: pi

password: raspberry

Change the default password ”raspberry” to something else, the command below change the password to ”newpassword”.

passwd newpassword

Optionally set a static ip address by editing the dhcpcd.conf file. See the example in the file. You can use ”nano” editor. To save and exit the editor, press ctrl-x and answer Y to save:

sudo nano /etc/dhcpcd.conf

Now is a good time to reboot your Raspberry.

sudo reboot

If you can not reconnect on the new static ip address, something is wrong. Try power off/on, or connect a monitor.

The latest 17.12.1 SvxLink release is not available directly in in the Raspbian Stretch release, but in ”testing” (Debian Buster release). To install the latest release, we temporarily add the Buster software repository and install SvxLink.

sudo echo 'deb http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ buster main' >> /tmp/svxlink.list
sudo mv /tmp/svxlink.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
sudo apt-get update

Note: Do NOT upgrade your complete system. We only want the SvxLink applications form the ”buster” release!

Now install the svxlink-server package. The apt-get command will automatically select other packages needed for SvxLink to run.

sudo apt-get -t buster install svxlink-server

Next install the English sounds for SvxLink with the following commands.

cd /usr/share/svxlink/sounds/
sudo wget https://github.com/sm0svx/svxlink-sounds-en_US-heather/releases/download/14.08/svxlink-sounds-en_US-heather-16k-13.12.tar.bz2
sudo tar xvjf svxlink-sounds-en_US-heather-16k-13.12.tar.bz2
sudo ln -s en_US-heather-16k en_US

It is now time to do some basic tests of the SvxLink installation. NO extra USB-sound card is needed, just connect a speaker to the 3.5mm audio output. The Speaker will be our TX. Since the Raspberry does not have a Microphone input, we need to disable the default RX (RX=NONE).

Edit the main SvxLink configuration file:

sudo nano /etc/svxlink/svxlink.conf

In the SimplexLogic section, change the RX to NONE.

[SimplexLogic]
TYPE=Simplex
RX=NONE
TX=Tx1