APRS with the Raspberry Pi and the TNC-X board

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1 Motivation
2 The TNC-X board
3 The Radio used
4 Configuration
5 Future Plans
6 Images
7 Links

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:

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>

5 Future Plans

So this project really worked well, and APRX allows transmitting, so that is really a great benefit. I will try to extend this project by the following terms:

build two more of them, provide them to DB0MHB and to DB0KN and create greater coverage
add some telemetry with a temperature and humidity readout. I will need to think about the connection, because I removed the USB socket for space reasons, as you can see on the pictures below.