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Getting started
You can download the GUI from https://github.com/steeviebops/hacktv-gui/releases - you just need the latest hacktv-gui.jar file.
To use it, you'll need version 11 or later of the Java runtime environment (JRE) and a copy of hacktv. Please select your operating system below for more details:
You can use your package manager to install the JRE if you don't already have one. While hacktv-gui only requires version 11 of the JRE, the v11 package has been removed from some package managers. Version 17 has been tested, so this should be a drop-in replacement. On Debian-based Linux distros (e.g. Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pop!_OS, Zorin, etc), you can use the commands below to install.
sudo apt update
sudo apt install openjdk-17-jre
For Fedora, the following should work
sudo dnf install java-11-openjdk.x86_64
You'll also need a copy of hacktv. For Debian-based Linux distros, you can install a packaged build of hacktv from apt as follows. At the time of writing (January 2024), the packaged build on apt for Debian is from January 2023, so will not contain any features or fixes added after this date.
sudo apt update
sudo apt install hacktv
For other distros, or if you want the latest features, you may need to compile hacktv from source, see here for instructions.
Note: hacktv-gui, by default, looks in the /usr/local/bin directory for hacktv, which is where it will go if compiled from source. If not found there, it will look in /usr/bin instead; this is where the package manager will install it.
To run hacktv-gui, run either the command below from the directory where hacktv-gui.jar is located:
java -jar hacktv-gui.jar
For Windows, support is more limited. Some features are unavailable, but most of it works just fine.
The easiest way to get hacktv-gui running on Windows is to use the installer, found here: https://github.com/steeviebops/hacktv-gui-installer/releases/latest/. The information below is provided for reference.
You will need to download the JRE from https://adoptium.net/temurin/releases/?os=windows&package=jre&version=17. Installation is simple, download the MSI and double-click it.
Once the JRE is installed, you will need a copy of hacktv. You can download a pre-compiled build from the GUI Settings tab in the GUI application. Alternatively, you can download them from below:
fsphil: https://download.bops.ie/hacktv/fsphil.zip
Captain Jack: https://download.bops.ie/hacktv/captainjack.zip
This Windows build is maintained by myself and the download links (all going well!) are updated automatically within two hours of a new commit becoming available. Once downloaded, save it in a known location, the same folder as the hacktv-gui.jar file is fine.
To run hacktv-gui, just double-click the hacktv-gui.jar file.
This section is incomplete
MacOS is a hybrid of the two above. You can download the JRE from https://adoptium.net/temurin/releases/?os=mac&package=jre&version=17. Unfortunately, hacktv is not available as a binary on MacOS so has to be compiled from source.
To use yt-dlp features such as streaming videos directly from YouTube, a copy of yt-dlp (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/) is required. This can be located either in your system path or placed in the same directory as the hacktv-gui JAR file.
To use hacktv, you will need the at least one of the following devices:
- HackRF One. Supports output on almost any RF channel thanks to its wide range.
- USB VGA adapters based on the Fresco Logic FL2000 chipset. Officially baseband only, but can be experimented with on RF by using the Offset option. Do not connect the output of the FL2000 to an aerial as it is extremely noisy.
- Any SDR device compatible with SoapySDR. Not supported on Windows.
The GUI itself is created in NetBeans with the Ant build environment. If you want to compile it yourself, you can open the project in the NetBeans IDE or run the commands below.
git clone https://github.com/steeviebops/hacktv-gui.git
ant -f hacktv-gui -Dnb.internal.action.name=rebuild clean jar
This should create a hacktv-gui.jar file inside the hacktv-gui/dist directory.