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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Hi Matthew,<br>
<br>
It would appear that my little posting has brought all the
wardrobe experimenters out of hiding <grin>. It's great to
see how many are involved and what a great forum this is to make
others aware of some options beyond the desktop computer for some
tasks.<br>
<br>
I did look at the BB as a part of my search and perhaps, if F6BVP
hadn't reported his success with the RPi for fpac and kernel ax25
stuff I might own a BB. <br>
<br>
In all the years I've been using Linux (about 18) I've come to
grasp a little (precious little!) about C++, Perl and now Python
but I'm not a programmer so delving into something that requires
programming skills is not a limb on my tree. I'm happy, and
usually quite comfortable compiling from sources but that's about
my limit. I was about to undertake compiling a kernel for the RPi
when the news came out that a stock kernel with kernel ax25 had
been released. I'm not about to reinvent the wheel, especially on
a computer that takes about 12 hours to compile a kernel - been
there with a P166 and a 2.6 kernel.<br>
<br>
I'm not sure that I need any form of remote control for the Igate
but, hey, somewhere down the track ....... <br>
<br>
I think my solar requirements will be slightly more than yours
because I'll end up with three radios - 25W Tait T555 on 145.175,
Codan 6201 running about 50W on 30m and probably my Icom IC2A as
the rx only satgate. Using old TNC's, initially, will add about
200/250mA per port but I'll worry more about that later. For now
I'll concentrate on getting the ports up and running.<br>
<br>
I bit the bullet a couple of hours ago and now have the RPi
running as an Igate to/from 145.175. This will be a good shake
down test. The RPi and its mates still live in a cardboard box
<grin>. I'm still coming to grips with what the dixprt
traffic monitor screen is telling me but I'll get there.<br>
<br>
For anyone contemplating dixprt, TXD needs to be entered in tens
of milliseconds - 20 = 200mS. The documentation is a tad light on
with detail.<br>
<br>
Ray vk2tv<br>
<br>
On 05/09/12 11:02, Matthew Cook wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAE+2d_0bd_pME2CApLo9Pt4LYeY271QF8OwePZ2AO1P8a1xMmg@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">Hi Ray,<br>
<br>
Looks like you and I are on the same path. I've taken a slightly
different route with a Beaglebone (BB) and turned it into a
remotely reconfigurable aprs digi/igate.<br>
<br>
For a radio/modem I used the T2-301 from argent data (5-8W
output). I've got a Toko 25W FM amplifier in the output TX chain
that I can command on and bypass as required For remote internet
one of the Tel$tra USB modems has worked nicely with the BB USB
socket.<br>
<br>
The key to this sort of project is the kernel and what options it
had enabled, then it's just a question of compiling the tools.
The BB has the full AX25 stack compiled in by default in the
Angstrom distribution. Was a doddle to rebuild the tools. I'm
using aprx for the digi.<br>
<br>
The BB is only enabled when the iGate functionality is required,
otherwise the T2-301 can implement a basic digi on it's own. I'm
currently working on a small arduino system to control the
selection of iGate, APRS digi, amplifier etc. It will reprogram
the T2-301 (turns KISS ON and OFF etc) and turn things on and off
as required, it sort of sits there between the BB and T2-301 and
listens for aprs commands (in KISS) or DTMF commands off the aprs
channel (DTMF is my last resort short of taking a drive). It will
also implement the battery charging and protection mechanisms.
This has been a work in progress for some weeks, will a large
number of weeks of writing code and testing to go before finished.<br>
<br>
I'm aiming to keep the consumption to less than 45mA (average) for
a solar powered Digi and less than 100mA for the full iGate. This
means with a 24AH battery and 65W panel the system should keep
itself alive with a 99.5% uptime, with the digi enabled approx
85-95% with same battery and solar panel. Stick a 80W panel and
up the battery to 36Ah and I cover the BB requirement back up over
95%.<br>
<br>
Look forward to hearing about your experiements and results with
the RPi !<br>
<br>
73's<br>
<br>
Matthew<br>
VK5ZM<br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 1:47 PM, Ray Wells
<span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:vk2tv@exemail.com.au" target="_blank">vk2tv@exemail.com.au</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">All,<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Although I'd looked at the RPi (<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/" target="_blank">http://www.raspberrypi.org/</a>)
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.<br>
<br>
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 <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi"
target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi</a><br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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
- <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/USB-COM232-PLUS4/768-1034-ND/2139296"
target="_blank">http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/USB-COM232-PLUS4/768-1034-ND/2139296</a>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
The RPi reliably boots with both the USB/RS232 adapter and the
wifi dongle connected.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
My goal is to have a solar powered gateway and the RPi has
taken me a lot closer to that goal.<br>
<br>
Ray vk2tv<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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