[Xastir] Xastir without X-Windows?

[J. Lance Cotton]

Xastir won't work without X, and I would consider it a bit hefty for this job.

One way to do what you're talking about is to set up the computer to use 
Linux's Kernel AX.25 connection to the TNC and then run aprsd locally. You 
can then write perl scripts that connect to ports on aprsd and can pass 
packets out to the TNC and listen to what's coming in.

It ought not be too hard to write or find some perl code to parse a GPS 
sentence into the APRS position format, or even the APRS compressed position 
report.

You can connect many various perl scripts to aprsd for various tasks, like 
listening for a special APRS message packet for balloon cutdown, etc.

Of course, this would require quite a bit of development, but I bet much of 
it has already been done.

But Xastir is probably not the best way to get GPS sentences to an APRS TNC 
on a headless box...

-Lance KJ5O

Drew wrote:

> Greetings to everyone on the list! I am currently involved in a project 
> using both aprs and packet radio, and am finding the learning curve to 
> be rather steep but I'm realling hoping someone here can help me out. 
> Here's the situation....
> 
> I'm running linux (Bering) on a small single-board computer. (Soekris 
> Engineering net4511) This computer has no video/keyboard, all i/o is via 
> a serial console or remote terminal. The idea is to send this little guy 
> to 80K-100K feet using a large weather balloon. Communication with the 
> balloon will be via packet radio and the balloon will report its 
> position using APRS.
> 
> Or at least that's the idea. The computer has several serial ports, into 
> which are plugged a gps receiver and a tnc. After I get AX.25 
> installed/configured then what? I believe I need some sort of APRS 
> "server" to listen to the gps and transmit the occasional APRS packet. 
> In reading the xastir documentation it looks like I'd configure two 
> interfaces, an AX.25 interface and a serial gps interface. Xastir then 
> listens to the gps and transmits via the ax.25 interface. But how do I 
> do all of this without X-Windows? The documentation says xastir requires 
> x-windows. This makes sense for the tracking/mapping functionality, but 
> what about the basic "server" (listen to gps, transmit aprs) 
> functionality? Can Xastir do this? Am I even looking in the right 
> direction? Any information regarding any of this would be so hopefull, 
> I've spent hours scouring the web and am more confused than when I 
> started. MANY MANY thanks to anyone that has a chance to reply to this.
> 
> ~Drew
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> Xastir at xastir.org
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-- 
J. Lance Cotton, KJ5O
http://map.findu.com/kj5o-14
joe at lightningflash.net