quikchaos.com

quiktool

quiktool is a keyboard‑driven terminal dashboard. With an RTL-SDR USB receiver, quiktool tunes FM, decodes HD Radio and time signals, and tracks aircraft and ships. Without a receiver, quiktool shows weather, earthquakes, solar activity, moon phase, and planet positions. The source is at gitlab.com/quikchaos-labs/quiktool (opens in new tab), and the status table on the radio page has the current version.

Disclaimer: All software on this site is provided for personal, educational, and non-commercial research use only. These are hobbyist projects - not certified, validated, or approved for any safety-critical, emergency communications, or operational aviation purpose. See Terms of Use.

quiktool Help hub: the eight hubs with their keys, a sidebar with local time, weather, solar activity, moon phase, and planets, and the legal disclaimer (full-size image) Radio hub with no receiver attached: empty station, signal, and RDS fields and an alert that no RTL-SDR device was found (full-size image) Time hub: clock offsets from four NTP servers beside the WWV radio panel and its list of time-signal frequencies (full-size image) Signals hub, ADS-B tab: listening, with no aircraft detected (full-size image) Sky hub, satellite tab: upcoming NOAA and Meteor-M passes with countdown, maximum elevation, and duration (full-size image) Earth hub, weather tab: current conditions at the observer location and a barometric pressure chart (full-size image) Media hub: the WAV recorder, idle (full-size image) Comms hub: VNS site hosting, not yet available in quiktool (full-size image)

Screenshots from October 2026, with the observer set to the geographic center of the contiguous US and no RTL‑SDR receiver attached.

Menu

0:Helpkeyboard shortcuts and feature overview
1:RadioFM/HD + AM/AM-HD combined, RDS, seek, presets, band scan
2:TimeNTP clock comparison + WWV, WWVB, JJY, DCF77, MSF, BPC, and RBU decode
3:SignalsADS-B aircraft tracking, AIS marine vessels, ACARS aviation messaging
4:Skysatellite orbits, sun, moon, ASCII orrery, zodiac, wheel of the year, cycles
5:Earthweather, USGS earthquake alerts, radar, NWR
6:Mediarecorder
7:CommsVNS site hosting (placeholder)

Sidebar, always visible

  • Local time (PST/PDT) + UTC
  • DST countdown
  • Moon phase + illumination
  • Planets above/below horizon
  • Zodiac transitions
  • Upcoming holidays (US, CA, AU, GB)
  • Radio station, signal, and now playing
  • Weather stats (imperial + metric)

Hardware

  • Radio features require an RTL-SDR USB dongle (RTL2832U + R820T/R820T2). ~$30.
  • Weather, earthquake, moon/solar, and time sync work without hardware.