APRS with the Raspberry Pi and the TNC-X board

1 Motivation

After my first series of experiments with APRS and Ardino, but also with APRS and OpenWRT I am now trying out something else:

Using a Raspberry Pi as a APRS gateway. In this case I intend to do it bidirectional.

2 The TNC-X board

• http://tnc-x.com/
• Details on the version for the RPi: http://tnc-x.com/TNCPi.htm
• Schematic Diagram // TNC - Pi Assembly Instructions & Operating Tips : http://tnc-x.com/TNCPi.pdf
• Documentation: http://tnc-x.com/documentation.htm

3 The Radio used

• I am using a IC2E clone.
• Here is the manual: http://www.radiomanual.info/schemi/IC2_user.pdf
• Here is some more insight on the cable type, when connecting a regular TNC (Cable Type 1): http://www.symek.com/d/afskkabel.html

4 Configuration

• Note that it is really important to set jumpers Nr. 3 and Nr. 4. Otherwise you won'r receive anything and you will not be able to transmit either.

• I was downloading the following APRX version:

wget http://ham.zmailer.org/oh2mqk/aprx/aprx_2.08.593-1_armhf.deb

Here's the APRX config:

<verbatim> mycall DB0HSR-1 myloc lat 4859.93N lon 01205.59E <aprsis> passcode 12345 server rotate.aprs2.net </aprsis> <logging> pidfile /var/run/aprx.pid rflog /var/log/aprx/aprx-rf.log aprxlog /var/log/aprx/aprx.log </logging> <interface>

  serial-device /dev/ttyAMA0  19200 8n1    KISS
  callsign     $mycall  # callsign defaults to $mycall
  tx-ok        false    # transmitter enable defaults to false
  #telem-to-is  true # set to 'false' to disable

</interface> <beacon> beaconmode both beacon symbol "I&" $myloc comment "Tx-iGate Raspberry/TNC-X/APRX" </beacon> </verbatim>

5 Images

6 Links

• http://www.nq0m.com/2012/09/03/aprs-i-gatedigi-with-my-new-raspberry-pi/