[OZAPRS] Raspbery Pi (RPi) Gateway

[Ray Wells]

I think I'm now ready to find some permanent enclosure for the hardware 
- RPi, powered USB hub, USB/RS232 device and wifi dongle. The project 
has outgrown the cardboard box :-)

I didn't mention in my original posting that the two USB ports on the 
RPi can only supply 100mA and, thus, some hardware might cause excessive 
loading. The accepted solution is to use a powered hub. In my case I 
have a 7 port hub that came with a 2A switch mode plug pack. I think it 
cost me $20 at Big W about four years ago. To avoid two plug packs I 
power the RPi from the hub and run a separate USB cable for the data. 
The power socket on the RPI is power only, no data.

Ray vk2tv

On 03/09/12 21:59, roxbyplus wrote:
>
> I had it running a while back and seems ok. Like yourself I have yet 
> to add the radio port but I think I will soon. Thanks for reviving my 
> interest.
>
>
>
> Sent from my Telstra Next G device
>
> Ray Wells <vk2tv at exemail.com.au> wrote:
> All,
>
> For somewhere around two years or so I'd been searching for a computer
> with low input energy requirements to use as a gateway machine to
> replace a conventional desktop system. And then I moved location quite
> suddenly which threw my plans into chaos. I'm now in a position to
> reestablish gateway facilities with 2m, 30m and satgate facilities, as
> per my original gateway.
>
> Although I'd looked at the RPi (http://www.raspberrypi.org/) as a
> suitable computer, it was Bernard F6BVP (maintainer of xfbb and fpac)
> reporting that he had compiled a kernel with ax25 support that got me
> really interested. The latest Debian kernel -
> 2012-08-16-wheezy-raspbian.img -has kernel ax25 included.
>
> The RPi is a single board computer using a 700MHz ARM processor. It runs
> from a single 5V supply. The PCB is about the size of a credit card, has
> HDMI and composite video out, audio out, one ethernet port and 2 x USB
> ports. They are available from Element 14 (rebadged Farnell) and RS
> Components for about $38. See the wiki at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi
>
> My original intent was to run soundmodem to provide two 1k2 ports but I
> found soundmodem unstable and unpredictable on both the RPi and my
> desktop environment. In addition, the RPi failed to boot with a Sound
> Blaster Play USB dongle plugged in. The dongle is supposed to work OOTB
> on the RPi. Other users have reported similar boot problems.
>
> Given that I still have a number of MFJ1270B TNCs I decided that a
> hardware approach might be more feasible in the short term. They can
> always be replaced by more efficient newer options (TNCX, TT4, etc) in
> the fullness of time. In order to run hardware TNCs I needed RS232 ports
> so a USB/RS232 adapter was needed. A recommendation from the xastir
> mailing list suggested a 4 port FTDI adaptor from DigiKey, at this
> address -
> http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/USB-COM232-PLUS4/768-1034-ND/2139296 
>
> The unit cost about $76 with freight and arrived in four days from the
> US. I plugged it into the RPi and it worked OOTB. The adapter doesn't
> have a case, but neither does the RPi.
>
> Because the gateway system will be away from the house I needed wifi for
> Internet access - too difficult to get Cat5 to the shed. I bought a
> TP-LINK TL-WN721N USB dongle and it almost worked OOTB. I needed to
> install wicd to be able to configure it but it works a treat. In the end
> I decided to use my Realtek 8189 equivalent wifi modem for the RPi
> because it has an external antenna. It just worked OOTB as well.
>
> The RPi reliably boots with both the USB/RS232 adapter and the wifi
> dongle connected.
>
> The software I had previously used for the gateway machine is xastir.
> It's always done the job and it's stable. The RPi will run headless and
> even though I don't "really" need the graphical display of xastir I was
> intent on giving it a try. Although there is now a deb package for
> xastir (with a current version), I opted to compile xastir on the RPi. I
> had already compiled the kernel ax25 surces for libax25, ax25apps and
> ax25tools.
>
> Although the Raspian distribution is based on Debian Wheezy, not all
> packages are available for the ARM processor - yet. This led to some
> dependency conflicts that I eventually resolved by seeing what libraries
> had been used in the deb package. I finally managed to compile xastir
> with all options except festival sound, which I don't need. When I
> booted xastir it reported being unable to find libax25.so.1, even though
> it exists in /usr/local/lib. For whatever reason, xastir was looking in
> /usr/lib so I created a symlink - problem solved.
>
> Xastir is understandably slow when loading raster maps (but lots faster
> than xastir 1.4 on a P166 machine some years ago!). For my trial I use
> just one map so speed is not an issue. A final installation may have no
> map loaded. Xastir is now running as vk2tv-4 but without radio ports at
> this stage until I assess reliability. I don't expect any issues.
>
> During my enquiries on the xastir mailing list it was suggested that
> xastir is not ideal for a gateway machine (read that previously) and
> that I should try aprx which works in a non-graphical environment. I've
> also compiled a deb package for the ARM processor and it installed just
> fine. aprx has some very flexible configuration options and it reports
> lots of statistics on channel usage, etc, as telemetry beacons. It
> appears worthy of a trial run s that's my next project.
>
> My goal is to have a solar powered gateway and the RPi has taken me a
> lot closer to that goal.
>
> Ray vk2tv
>
>
>
>
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