[Xastir] Newbee question re: Garmin Rino / Cygwin / Xastir and SAR

[Tom Russo]

On Tue, Jun 26, 2007 at 09:53:19AM -0700, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <archer at eskimo.com> flavor, containing:
> On Mon, 25 Jun 2007, Jim Tolbert wrote:
> 
> >  From a laptop at a ground search incident command, I would like to
> > track, and plot the tracks of, up to 20 GPS units on ground searchers.
> > It seems from what I have read that the Garmin Rino units with Xastir &
> > GPSman will do this.
> >
> > I have downloaded Cygwin & Xastir and can successfully run Xastir on my
> > Windows XP laptop.  I am NOT a programmer and have done this only by
> > following a recipe in the help files.
> 
> I wouldn't suggest running Xastir under Cygwin for SAR purposes.
> I'd suggest either switching to Linux as the base OS (highest
> reliability), or else go with VMWare Player running Linux/Xastir
> inside it.  I'm not sure whether the GPSMan stuff will work under
> either system though.  I've only used GPSMan under Linux.

Since it's just Tcl/Tk, GPSMan works well enough for Rino, I think -- Isn't 
Wes using it that way?

GPSManshp (for GPS track downloads) does not work on Cygwin.  It is a 
shared library, and that isn't working.

Xastir under vmware is Xastir under linux, so yes, GPSman works there.

I agree with Curt's other points.  I wouldn't waste your money on Rinos --- go
with real APRS units instead for range and full functionality.  If you have 
cash to burn, Kenwood D7A's are the tool of choice as out-of-the-box capable.  
If you have energy and skill enough to build ruggedized packages for trackers, 
then you can get away cheaper than the Rino, but I've found that it takes some 
planning to get a reliable tracker built with the minimum number of dongles 
and wires to get busted on a SAR mission.

Tracker2 is still only in beta, so while I'd love to dive into trying that,
it's not at the stage where I'd be comfortable deploying them just yet.
The NM SAR Support team has built some trackers out of TinyTrackII's (they're
old) and some small Icom handhelds, and I've built one with a TTII  in the
AA battery pack of an ADI AT-201 that works pretty well.  As soon as Tracker2
is in production I'll probably rebuild that one with a T2 instead.

-- 
Tom Russo, New Mexico State Police SAR field coordinator SAR 502, New Mexico 
Search and Rescue Support Team, Cibola SAR and Albuquerque Mountain Rescue 
Council.

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236 AHTB#1 http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
"And, isn't sanity really just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean all you get is
 one trick, rational thinking, but when you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh,
 oooh, the sky is the limit!"  --- The Tick