Topic	Installing Hamclock on Raspberry Pi Zero 2W
Subtopic	Hamclock installation
Equipment Required	Computer + Internet+Raspberry Pi Zero 2w
Costs	SD Card + Raspberry Pi Zero 2W
Document last reviewed and updated (reviewed each year)	19 December 2025 – Updated after recent work on HamClock rebuilds
	



Introduction

With Hamclock we are going to use a script which is from the HamClock site. It is more to save time and you can look at the script if you have problems. In fact if you want to look at the script via your browser, just drop this address onto your address bar of your browser https://www.clearskyinstitute.com/ham/HamClock/install-hc-rpi, and you will see a well documented script, and you will see that it downloads and compiles the latest hamclock on your Pi, the rest of the script is automation, saving you time.

So lets build!

HamClock is very easy to get going with parts available to or in most countries), you just need (the links are to an Australian supplier but if live elsewhere use it as a shopping list)

• Pi Zero 2W – https://core-electronics.com.au/raspberry-pi-zero-2-w-wireless.html
• 16Gb Micro SD Card (anywhere)
• 12.5W Power Supply with Micro-usb end –  https://core-electronics.com.au/official-raspberry-pi-12-5w-micro-usb-power-supply.html (but you can use just a cable USB-A to Micro USB cable (Bunnings have them) and power off a powerboard if you have powerboard with a USB A socket
• Mini HDMI to HDMI Cable – https://core-electronics.com.au/mini-hdmi-to-hdmi-cable.html

Just be aware the power and HDMI connectors are different from a Normal Pi 4 or 5 due to its smaller size.

You are going to need an 8Gb MicroSD Card but better off with a 16Gb or 32Gb card for possible future growth.

Now I am going to save you from a lot of frustration and I do recommend the following (as I have already gone through it). Do not try to install Ham Clock on the lastest Trixie O/S, as there are a lot of changes (Wayland being one of the major changes). It is not that you cannot install it and get it running, but the changes for Waylan and the changes to the Desktop startup, will become frustrating. If this is your first install of Hamclock and your interest is in Hamclock, then avoid the Trixie O/S for the moment. It is also not recommended by the HamClock Developers

We are going use what is labelled as the legacy Pi operating system labelled Raspberry Pi OS (Legacy 32 bit) dated November 2025. I have just checked and confirmed all the Pi hardware selections still have this as a version you can select

Once you have created the Micro-SD Card and correctly added the wireless parameters in Raspberry Pi imager, enabled SSH, and inserted in your Pi, you will not need a keyboard or mouse to complete the install.

We are going to use the Raspberry Pi Imager which you can get for your Operating system from this URL

https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/

Important word of warning. Once you have completed the installation of the Pi Imager software, locate the Icon it has put on your Windows desktop. Right click on the icon and either run as administrator or better still, go to properties, look for the Compatability tab, and select (tick) the “run this program as adminstrator”. This way if you run it again in the future, it will run as administrator, without you having to remember to run as administrator

Build HamClock using the Pi Imager Software

Start up the Pi Image Software and your first screen should look similar to the following (note in this update, I am using Raspberry Pi Image 2.0.0, but earlier versions have the same functionality, just the screens have changed. Just to make life easier, whilst the screenshots have been done with 2.0.0, they have just released an update on the 23rd December 2025, this update is 2.0.3 and appears to have a reasonable number of bug fixes. This can be found at https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-imager/releases. I have done a brief test and it does appear to fix the issue with location selection noted further in this article. I have not tested to see if it corrects the Windows issue (but this could be something with my setup…not sure…have not had time to test)

1. Select you device

2) Select your operating system (note my earlier notes before) – the arrow is pointing to the OS you want.

Remember the developer recommend this, and after many, many builds including testing under Trixie, I do as well.

3) Select your storage device – in other words select your SD memory card (I am using a 32Gb card, but a 16Gb will work well as well. It is recommended that 8Gb not be used. In fact it is getting very hard to find 8Gb cards and even if you do, is the $2 difference worth it??

Do NOT untick the Exclude System Drives. It provides that added protection that you do not select your actual workstation drives (otherwise it will overwrite them if you selected them by mistake)

4) Customisation – Hostname – this is the name that will be seen on the network – hamclock will be fine

5) Customisation – Localisation – You would normally select your Capital City and it will set the Time Zone and Keyboard layout for you. However there is a bug in 2.0.0 selecting many cities, which has been addressed in 2.0.3 (You can download with link noted earlier in this article) This issue is not present in earlier versions of the Pi Imager. You will note the image has not been updated, just how I worked around the minor issue on 2.0.0.

6) Customisation – User – this is going to set the username you will use (when connecting via SSH) as well as device itself, but the device logs in automatically on boot

You can probably leave the username as “pi” but I strongly suggest you set a very strong password

7) Customisation – Wi-Fi – If you have a Pi Zero 2W, you have no choice but to run your device as a wireless device, whereas you do not have to set this if you are using a Pi with a network port. Just remember, at least the Pi Zero 2W will only work with 2.4Ghz Wireless. In almost all cases, you need to add (if it is possible with your Wireless Access Point/Router) an addtional SSID for 2.4Ghz, so that you might have two SSID’s on your wireless device, which might be MyHomeNetwork (for 5Ghz) and MyHomeNetwork_24G (for 2.4Ghz). As there are thousand of routers, access points, it is not within the scope of this document to be able to assist you.

Naturally make sure that it is your Wireless SSID and password you enter in here

8) Customisation – Remote Access – SSH Authentication

Make sure Enable SSH is turned on and for the moment select Password Authentication. You can learn about Public Key Authentication if you wish.

9) Write Image –Click on Write and go an make a cup of coffee

When it is completed and verified, now add the SD Card to your Pi (naturally with the Pi turned off )

Turn on your Raspberry Pi and it will automatically login on boot

Now, without the Keyboard and Mouse, you probably don’t know the Network IP address so that you can connect to it. There are several ways you could do this

1. If you have access to your router, many routers allow you to list what Local Area devices are connected to your network (as in most cases they pick up their dynamic IP address from this router.
   Every router is different, so you may have to look for it in the Router menus, but typically it is under LAN DHCP addresses, or LAN devices connected.
2. If this does work for you, then I suggest downloading a product to install on your workstation called Advanced IP Scanner (https://www.advanced-ip-scanner.com) or similar software, and perform a scan of your network. Typically it will come up with many IP addresses but the one you are looking for has the IP address with Manufacturer next to it with the name Raspberry PI or it actually has a Name of that you gave as the hostname when you built your PI OS image. Sometimes, you may have let your network sit for a while and perform the scan again.
3. Worst case, you might have to connect up a keyboard and mouse and perform the command sudo ifconfig in a terminal window (but we are trying to avoid using keyboard and mouse)

Once you have the IP address, from your favourite workstation using something like Putty or another SSH application connect via SSH to your Pi.

Use the login and password you set in Pi OS Imager

Installing HAMCLOCK

If you successfully logged into your Pi with SSH

the following command (typed at the Linux CLI) will download the script from the ClearSkyInstitute site

cd (which just returns you to your home directory

curl -O https://www.clearskyinstitute.com/ham/HamClock/install-hc-rpi

The next command will make the script executable

chmod u+x install-hc-rpi (which makes the scripts executable)

Now finally we are going to execute the script

./install-hc-rpi

Enter Y to proceed

Now it ask a series of questions

Now if your screen is showing up as much larger, then you can select the higher resolution, so I select number 2) 1600×960, otherwise all the question answers are what you should use.

However, if I am building for another monitor or different PI hardware, a good starting position is 800×480

Now what we want to do is setup the system for remote access

Go to https://connect.raspberrypi.com and setup an account (no cost) and complete the account verification stage

Once this is done, leave your browser open with that Website logged in (it will save you logging in again when we do the next steps (again via SSH)

sudo apt update
sudo apt install rpi-connect

rpi-connect on
rpi-connect signin

Complete sign in by visiting https://connect.raspberrypi.com/verify/XXXX-XXXX

replacing the XXXX-XXXX with the unique code it gives you.

It will then take you through adding this device into your account

Once it is happy

View all Devices

Select your device – Connect Via Screen Sharing

You should now have remote control of the Pi Desktop

Use the Hamclock ICON on the desktop

Select EXECUTE (not in terminal)

Now your HAMCLOCK should start on the desktop (dont panic this will not stay running like this)

Commence filling out the Setup. You do not need to get everything right first go, we can go back into setup later, however there are two selections we want to get right now, so we can check what it looks like using full screen.

These options are

1) set the Full screen Web

2) and the Full Screen Direct

Both are on Page 5 of the setup screen

When finished – click on DONE

Now it should be full screen on your Monitor

Once this is completed perform

sudo reboot

It should reboot and come up automatically on reboot (if it doesnt, we may have to do one more step)

It might return to the PI Desktop – that’s ok just a small issue to deal with (which we can do via SSH)

copying the hamclock .desktop file to ~/.config/autostart

do this by

sudo cp /home/pi/Desktop/hamclock.desktop ~/.config/autostart

Now perform a sudo reboot (which will reboot the system again) and it should startup full screen automatically

Installing HamClock for different sizes

If you want to try different monitor selections perform the following

open up a terminal screen (via SSH) again

cd (this returns us to the PI – or whatever login name you used – users home directory)

./install-hc-rpi

Yes you will notice that we are running the script again which downloads again, and recompiles, and we could just perform the recompile lines needed, however the script saves making changes to the Hamclock startup commands, and reduces the chances you might have of failing

You are going to give the same answers as we did when we first run the script, however you are going to choose 1600×960 (again you may have a few other choices) instead of 800×480. If you have a few more, then go through each going up one eash time

(note you may have more choices – mine only had the two as I was using an old TV/Monitor)

Once completed issues

sudo reboot again, and hopefully it will be a lot closer to using your full screen (note if it is not quite right, there is a padding option in the Hamclock Configuration Pages – so get it close enough then try the padding change as a final change)

Basic Hamclock configuration

Once you have it displaying a good as possible, we are now going to perform the configuration setup. Now I am not going to go through all of the Hamclock internal configuration, as this is covered by HamClock Guides and there are many specific guides on HamClock internal setup on Websites or Youtube.

However I will give you a couple of pointers. You may find the page numbers may have changed or the options are greater than what is shown on these pages. This is due to the constant development and updates made by the HamClock Developers, so this is why the HamClock guide on the HamClock website are probably your goto’s if you want to know more.

When the main setup screen appears click in the middle of the screen to start Setup on Page 1

• Update the call sign to your own
• Update the Latitude and Longitude (in Decimal) – surely you have a document or page by now that has all of your Long/Lat Grid settings in the various formats – Hamclock setup will update the grid correctly
• If you have a GPS connected , you can have it use this for your setings – but if you are stationary, entering the settings correctly above, will be fine and you generally do not want to use IP Geolocate using your ISP’s IP address which is probably the least accurate.
• Leave Wifi as No (even if you have wifi setup on the PI which we setup via the Pi Imager)

NOW DON’T CLICK DONE – the PAGE 1 up the top is a button, click on the less than sign to go backwards or the greater than sign to go to the next page

On Page 3, there is one option you can select which is

On Page 4,

Under the Map Centre lng (no this is not language – but Longitude of your location for centering of the map
this will be e.g. 153E

on Page 5,

Date Order : Day Mon Year – the correct way for Australia 🙂
Week Starts : Monday – the correct day for Australia along with the majority of other countries
Units : Metric – The correct standard for Australia and the the rest you can leave as default except for the last line
Full Scrn : Yes (this is important if you want Hamclock to take over the screen

Finally, you can page through and look at other pages, but it will finally come back round to page 1, where if you are finished for the moment, you can SELECT DONE

Even using the defaults and the changes that I have recommended….it is mostly completed

If this is all working, you are complete.

Final Recommendations

Postscript

Now one thing I have recently noted on Windows 10 workstations (one clean, one heavily used and both of these have been used before with no issues for years) and using Raspberry Pi imager, that I was I had multiple issues with writing SD Cards (using the Raspberry PI imager and other popular ones such as Balena Etcher, Rufus). They would fail writing or verification, or they completed, but the Pi would not boot up. Originally thought I had a bad batch of SD Cards, but I tested also with Sandisk, Verbatim and a few other brands. It appears that recent updates to Windows 10 have impacted the reliability of writing SD cards. I confirmed this by using a Linux Workstation with Raspberry Pi Image and ALL cards worked reliably). I need to look at this closer, but have not had the time. Just a heads up.

Further update (on Windows SD Card writing issue – 25th December 2025)

Having a little bit of time whilst Christmas dinner was cooking.

I was doing another project, which required writing a custom img to an SD Card. I tried it in a more controlled environment which included

1. Windows 10 PC
2. Linux PC (Debian Trixie)
3. Same Reader/Writer being used on the Windows PC and the Linux PC (unplugged and moved across to the Linux PC
4. Same SD Card or well know brand of 32Gb in size
5. Same version of Raspberry Pi Imager being used on both the Windows PC and the Linux PC (version 1.9.6)

• Test 1 : Windows 10 : Writing and verifying using Raspberry Pi Imager (running as administrator) – Failed to verify
• Test 2 : Windows 10 : tried some changes to security including changes relating to the Pi Imager App – tried again – failed to verify
• Test 3 : Using Rufus, performed a byte read write test – came back with 4 corruption errors no hard read/write errors
• Test 4 : Linux PC : the same Pi imager version, same image, same writer hardware – image correctly written and verified

Intermediate conclusion (as more work needed on this issue)
I have a suspicion that a Windows process (or another app) is causing a read issue. The fact that this works on a Linux PC, with exactly the same software is pointing to this fact, and the fact the errors are not hard errors, just corruption (e.g. differences between what is written and what is read from the card). The card written by the Linux PC worked perfectly well in the Raspberry Pi with no issues.

Finally one more important note and the fact that it happened to me, shows it can happen to anyone.

Backup your SD Card with ImageUSB https://www.osforensics.com/tools/write-usb-images.html once you have a working system. Working in IT for 40+ years, I always have backups or rollback plans. Twice now I broken my rule and did some experimentation without a backup (sure I had all the instructions and it was a good way to test those instructions), but it was time consuming doing it all over again and there are opportunities for mistakes.

The reason why I like ImageUSB is that the interface is simple, it verifies after the backup, good visual clues (e.g. you can select the top of the tree of the USB drive, making sure that you if your key contains multiple partitions, so you can be sure you have the whole SD card backed up.

Naturally this software runs on Windows only, but I am sure that there are similar products for Linux and Mac (and after the issues with Windows, I recommend that you build a Linux workstation)

So what you will have is a complete working image on your workstation that you can write back to a SD Card, should you have a failure in changes you make, or if your SD Card fails, or your SD Card Corrupts.