[Xastir] Re: XASTIR SERVER AND COM PORTS FOR MULTIPLE COMPUTERS

[Alex Carver]

--- vic <ke4lkq at doramefa.us> wrote:

> It would be nice if Xastir would provide whatever
> data you wanted via the "server port" supplied. 
> However one would have to chose between multiple
> sets of data collected and it would have to be
> specified.

Under a Unix environment, you can sometimes pull some
very clever trickery to accomplish this.  In one case
that I've tried (though not entirely successfully as
I've still got some details to work out), using a
combination of socat and tee I was able to read (but
not write) data from a serial port and distribute it
to a couple other locations.  The closest thing I've
seen to distributing a serial port to multiple
computers was a program called ser2net but it seems
development has stalled on that.


> Here is how I do it for the weather between 4
> different programsused on 3 dirrent computers I use
> simultaniously.
> 
> Install TCPCOM on the computer used for the direct
> input from the WX station.
> Configure a TCP server port and number in TCPCOM for
> serving the serial input from the WX station
> Install TCPCOM on each of the other computers.
> Configure a virtual serial com port on each of the
> client computers pointed at the server.
> Attach the end user program to the virtual com port
> on each of the client computers.
> TCPCOM is not cheap but 100% reliable and will serve
> and collect everything you can throw at it with zero
> failures.

Unless TCPCOM is using something proprietary on the
network connection, you can use socat on the Unix side
of things to make the transition from network socket
to virtual serial port (since it should be pointed out
that TCPCOM is a Windows program and won't work on a
Unix/Linux system).

I'm probably going to sit down one day this year and
see if I can come up with a program equivalent to
TCPCOM/GPSGate/etc. for a Unix/Linux system.  The main
thing it has to do is just coordinate data transfer
between systems.  Since one typically wants only one
system to ever have the ability to talk to a serial
device (as opposed to listening to it), I was thinking
of having an out-of-band signal (control port) that
would allow a connected machine to take command of the
serial device.  Any other connections would be listen only.


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