[Xastir] Xastir without X-Windows?

[Drew]

Excellent! We're still just trying to get something done, (ie in the air 
and retrieved) although now we've got a drop-dead date of Labor Day 
weekend. (The people funding us decided it was time for some results) 
Maybe our first step was a little too ambitious.

~Drew

Troy Campbell wrote:

>Drew, 
> 
>This isn't really to answer whether or not Xastir will work in this 
>application. 
> 
>It's more along the lines of making contact with another balloonatic. 
> 
>I've started a group to do launch a balloon this August.  The blog for it is 
>www.capnspace.org. 
> 
>Our initial goal is to just get something up.  In that regard, we ar not 
>using a computer of any sort, but as this is a project to eventually launch 
>4-8 per year, we hope the flight controller will become more and more 
>sophisticated. 
> 
>I also initially was going to go the same route as you with a linux SBC.  I 
>figured that if I could get Perl on it, I can make it do _anything_ (pretty 
>close anyway). 
> 
>We're still going to do that but as the whole project is for aerospace 
>science education, we're going to do it in discreet steps. 
> 
>Having said all that,  my thoughts were to use perl to listen to the GPS and 
>any of the sensors (temp, voltage, etc), build a suitable message and then 
>send it to a TinyTrak3.  As a TinyTrack3 is a one-way solution, if I wanted 
>back to the balloon, I was going to use a Kantronics KPC3+ or a PicoPacket. 
> 
>Using the AX.25 stack doesn't appeal to me so much any more as most modems 
>manage the packets on their own just fine and putting it in the Linux kernel 
>is really only useful for handling modems that don't have their own AX.25 
>stack (a "bit banger" modem) or modems that operate in KISS mode.   
> 
>Using xastir for this would, by and large, be a waste of effort.  It's 
>speciality is really more _Display_ as opposed to communication. 
> 
>I'm going with Linux because I'm a Linux bigot.  A Basic Stamp 2 and some 
>extra serial hardware would be adequate.  BUT with an SBC with Linux/Perl, 
>the sky's the limit (pun intended). 
> 
>Troy Campbell, Major, USAFAux (Civil Air Patrol) 
>DC/C Charles R. Long Comp Squadron 
> 
>On Tue, 15 Jun 2004 07:27:59 -0700, 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 
>>_______________________________________________ 
>>Xastir mailing list 
>>Xastir at xastir.org 
>>https://krypton.hscs.virginia.edu/mailman/listinfo/xastir 
>>    
>>
> 
> 
> 
>Troy M. Campbell   
>EPIC Alliance, Inc.   
>17501 West 98th Street   
>Pillar #25-33   
>Lenexa, KS 66219   
>troymc at epicalliance.com   
>Phone: 913-227-0660   
>Fax: 913-227-0661   
>  
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