Ham Radio
Data & Packet
Setting up AIOC with Direwolf

The AIOC (All-In-One-Cable) is a compact USB soundcard and PTT interface built into a cable — plug it into your radio’s mic/speaker port and your computer’s USB, and you have everything you need for digital modes with no extra hardware.

It uses a CM108 chip, which means PTT is controlled via the HID interface rather than RTS/DTR on a serial port. This requires a small bit of setup on Linux that trips people up the first time.

What you need

  • AIOC cable
  • Baofeng (or any radio with a K1 speaker/mic connector)
  • Linux system with Direwolf installed

Step 1 — Find the device

When you plug in the AIOC, it registers as both an audio device and a HID device.

Find the audio device:

arecord -l

Look for the AIOC entry and note the card and device numbers — you’ll use them as plughw:CARD,DEVICE in Direwolf.

Find the HID device:

ls /dev/hidraw*

The AIOC will typically appear as /dev/hidraw0 or /dev/hidraw1 if you have other HID devices.

Step 2 — Fix permissions

By default the HID device is only accessible by root. Fix this so Direwolf can control PTT:

sudo chown root:audio /dev/hidraw1
sudo chmod g+rw /dev/hidraw1
sudo adduser $USER audio

Then reboot or fully log out and back in — a simple newgrp won’t be enough for Direwolf to pick it up reliably.

Step 3 — Configure Direwolf

Edit your direwolf.conf and add or update these lines:

ADEVICE plughw:1,0
ARATE 48000
MYCALL DL7EDU
PTT CM108 /dev/hidraw1

Replace plughw:1,0 with the card/device numbers from Step 1, and DL7EDU with your own callsign.

The PTT CM108 directive tells Direwolf to use the HID interface for keying — this is the key difference from a regular serial-port TNC setup.

Step 4 — Test

Start Direwolf:

direwolf

You should see it initialise the audio device and start listening. Tune your radio to 144.800 MHz (APRS in Europe) — if there’s any traffic, you should see packets decoded in the terminal within a few minutes.

References

73 de DL7EDU

NinoTNC Configuration and Settings