hamclock-next¶
Maintained SDL2 rewrite of HamClock — grey line, propagation, DX cluster
- Version recorded: 1.6
- Categories:
dashboards,propagation - Upstream: https://github.com/k4drw/hamclock-next
- Supersedes:
esphamclock
What it does¶
Displays a live world map with the grey line, solar and geomagnetic indices, satellite passes, DX cluster spots and band-condition predictions, either full-screen on a dedicated display or in a window.
Why you would want it¶
It is the at-a-glance station dashboard for deciding which band to work, and it is one of two maintained continuations of HamClock, whose author became a Silent Key in January 2026. The other is openhamclock, which has the larger community and is the default (Q-006) — but it is a Node web application served to a browser, and this one is an ordinary desktop program with no Node and no web server involved. Pick this one for the original's look, or for a machine you would rather not run a server on.
Before it will work¶
A working network connection and a reachable data backend. Set your latitude, longitude and callsign on first run.
How it installs¶
- source (cmake) from https://github.com/k4drw/hamclock-next/archive/refs/tags/v1.6.tar.gz
- build dependencies:
patch,libsdl2-dev,libsdl2-ttf-dev,libsdl2-image-dev,libcurl4-openssl-dev,libsqlite3-dev,cmake,build-essential
Binaries this produces:
hamclock-next
Known problems¶
Widely reported in mid-2026 to have stopped working after the original author's death. Tested 2026-08-25: hamclock.com is up and serving version 4.27. The host that is gone is clearskyinstitute.com. This manifest defaults to the Open HamClock Backend, a community-run alternative, and the endpoint is a configurable field rather than a string compiled into a launcher script — so switching backends is a one-line change, not a rebuild.
Keeping it current¶
- probe: github release (
k4drw/hamclock-next) - strategy: rebuild