You will find in the tests/ subdirectory various programs to exercise the Hamlib library. Most of the time, you will have to make sure that the backend for your rig is loaded by passing the model number of your rig by argument. If you don't know the number, listrigs can give it to you, "rigctl --list" will also output something like this: Rig# Mfg Model Vers. 1 Hamlib Dummy 0.1 1506 Winradio WR-3500 0.6 210 Kenwood TS-870S 0.1 311 Icom IC-706MkIIG 0.2 105 Yaesu FT-747GX 0.1 [etc.] In any case, you are encouraged to check for correct initialization by reading the source code, at the begining of the main(). Check also that the program is setup for your rig path strncpy(my_rig->state.rig_path... dumpcaps - Output the caps contents of a rig dumpmem - Dump the memory contents of the rig listrigs - Condensed list of all the models supported by backends rigmatrix - Output the HTML table of supported rigs, with .png files for freqs (Better call 'make rigmatrix.html' which builds the HTML table and additional information in sup-info subdirectory.) testbcd - Simple program to test BCD conversion, takes a number as arg. testfreq - Simple program to test Freq conversion, takes a number as arg. testrig - Sample program calling common API calls, uses rig_probe testtrn - Sample program using event notification (transceive mode) rigctl - Combined tool to execute any call of the API, see man page rigmem - Combined tool to load/save content of rig memory, see man page rotctl - Similar to 'rigctl' but for rotators, see man page