[OZAPRS] Digipeaters and iGATE's

[aprs@tonola.com.au]

Hi Owen and others.

I am using the raspberry pi for quite a few ham related things mostly 
with the tnc-pi interface and they are quite reliable if the power 
supply is not erratic.  Like yourself I am using a series of bare board  
dc-dc converters and agree they are noisy but I locked them up in a 
die-cast box with input and output filtering and they work well.  The 
power supplies are 3A and $A6 from an electronics store in Springvale.

One pi and power supply  I have is running as a pi IRLP node and has 
been running non stop for over a year.

Right in front of me at the moment I have a Raspberry B+  running as a 
VPN into the 44 net and shortly, if I get it secure,  there will be a 
rash of FBB, BPQ, JNOS, DX Cluster  and other digital services available 
via radio in my area. The biggest problem I have is radio related not 
pi, in that most of the services are on 2m and the de-sensing between 
services is a nightmare.

I did try one running xastir but it came to a grinding halt whenever a 
map was changed on the display. The poor little pi just couldn't cope.

I have no particular liking of the pi but by using them instead of 
standalone computers I have dropped my power bill by 6-7Kw a day

As a non Linux person it has been a hell of a learning curve however.

Regards Tony VK3API
-----------------------------------------------------
On 10/20/2014 8:07 PM, Owen Duffy wrote:
> Hi Tony and All,
>
> On 20/10/2014 17:51, aprs at tonola.com.au wrote:
>> Hi Liz and others.
>>
>> I have been running a Rpi here with APRX in receive only mode for
>> about 6months and it has not missed a beat other than a short period
>> when the internet went down, even then the R-pi just picked up and
>> carried on when the net came back.
> RPi availability has improved dramatically in the last 6 months or so. I
> have a few of them, and one runs a very simple music player app
> permanently and was inclined to freeze about once a week, but that seems
> to have stopped in recent months.
>
> Raspbian is behind current software on other Linux platforms, and
> certainly until recently I would not have thought of using it for an
> APRS node.
>
> I have been running a range of APRS nodes with considerable success.
>> The pi and radio both run on the shack solar powered 12 volt rail.
>> The tnc is a tnc-pi which plugs directly onto the pi
> This afternoon I was testing a solution for 12V - 5V conversion as the
> COTS devices were all very noisy... ruined the VHF radio altogether.
>
> The device I tested this afternoon is a 5A SM converter for the RC
> world, about $6 and it works a treat:
> https://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__32129__Turnigy_5A_8_26v_SBEC_for_Lipo_AUS_Warehouse_.html
> .
>
> The RPi with TNC-X and WLAN stick drew 0.13A at 12V, 0.11A at 13.8V...
> that is close to constant power input so the conversion efficiency looks
> good (within the limitations of measuring current to 10mA).
>
>> I agree it is much easier on the network running the IGate on receive
>> only
> You mention aprx, you will be aware that it was originally an iGate. I
> evaluated a number of recent version and the digi was severely broken. I
> have done a lot of work on it and fixed the digi bits that I found
> broken, and extended it a little. It has been reliable to the extent
> development allows, it has run for up to a week until I take it down for
> update.
>
> I have made a bunch of changes to assure that it restarts after power
> failure, properly initialising modems that require such, and improved
> security. Looks good.
>
> 73
> Owen
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