SKCC Sked Page IRC bridge

This is a Python script which allows you to use the SKCC Sked page with any IRC client.

The SKCC Sked Page is a web based application that allows members of the Straight Key Century Club to coordinate on-air contacts. Since I always have an IRC client running anyway (which allows easy access from both PCs and mobiles), I decided to write a small bridge which translates the messages from the Sked Page into IRC and vice versa.

Usage

First create a configuration file called ~/.config/skcc-irc/config.json that contains at least the following to configure your callsign and SKCC Sked Page password.

{
  "mycall": "your_callsign",
  "mypw": "your_skcc_sked_password"
}

Then launch the SKCC IRC bridge and an IRC server with the launch script skcc.sh. It creates a GNU screen session called "SKCC" with two sub-screens for the two programs.

As soon as you have done this, you can use your favourite IRC client (e.g. irssi) to connect to irc://localhost:6655/skcc. Use your own callsign as your nick name.

Once connected, you'll find all users logged in on the SKCC page, including your own callsign (prefixed with an underscore, e.g. _DJ5CW) plus one user called skcc.

Apart from normal chatting, you can use the following commands (all commands are prefixed with an exclamation mark):

• !lookup <call> - Retrieve SKCC user information for the given callsign

• !status <text> - Update your status to

• !ready - Reinitialize the chat. This will print the chat history into the channel

• !back - If you were absent, this will put you back into the list of active users

• !away - Remove yourself from the list of active users

• !active - Reset the idle timer for the chat (this is automatically done on any other command, too)

• !logout - Log out from the chat (but you can keep reading new messages)

• !login <password> - Log in again with the given password

A screenshot (with irssi as the client) is shown below.

Limitations

Currently the following functions are not implemented yet:

• Deleting your own messages

• Updates of messages sent by other users

• Personal messages

Requirements

The following is required to run the SKCC IRC bridge.

• Python 3.x

• A running Redis server

• A running IRC server

On a freshly installed Ubuntu 22.04 machine, the dependencies can be satisfied like this:

sudo apt-get install redis python3-redis python3-websocket python3-pip
python3 -m pip install miniircd

Architecture

The script skcc-irc.py launches two main threads:

• main_ws: Websocket client that connects to the SKCC chat server and translates the messages to a local Redis pub/sub server.

• main_irc: Subscribes to the messages on Redis and launches a IRC connection to a local server for every user on the Sked page. Messages from the IRC channel are received and sent back to the Websocket via Redis.