[Xastir] When your only tool is a hammer- using linux to send aprs packets

[Joseph Miller]

Hello de KI7WV
 
Please forgive if this is a duplicate post- I am afraid that the first was submitted before
I became a list member.

I am new to APRS. Have a TNC-X (thanks John!) and Linux Debian setup at a cabin
with iGate and RF. The RF is KI7WV-2, the iGate is SMRHVN. I use wview to
transmit weather observations to cwop (AS801) and post on the web
(www.pocomas.net). The weather observations go out via tcpip and at present I
am sending an aprs beacon ki7wv-2 on 144.390. The beacon is working (I can
findme on findu) and I would like to move on with some custom programming.

I am looking for the easiest tool (hopefully already written) to send a beacon
payload to the aprs system via linux. I would like to send telemetry packets on
station status when operating on emergency power (battery voltage, time on
backup, temperature etc). So, I would do something (probably perl) to pull the
data together and format telemetry, telemetry description, and weather packets
to go out via rf when power is down. Assuming I can rtfm and properly format
the payload for each of these...

what is the simplest tool to get a packet out the RF port?

I have been playing with the "beacon" command but cannot seem to configure it to
have it read by the aprs digi that I am adjacent to.

Another (simpleminded) approach would be to generate a new aprsd.conf file with
a tnc beacon text that is specific to the packet that is to be transmitted, then
start and stop aprsd.

Finally (the approach I am trying to avoid) is through generating another
command line util and seeing if I can get it added to ax25-tools that does what
I seem to want beacon to do- send out a payload of my spec, but with
automatically increasing time intervals between transmissions, and stopping when
the next payload is given.

Sorry for the long post. I have been digging around quite a bit and have not
found anything that looks like it will answer this question.  I realize that XASTIR is quite capable
but I am looking for something that will run on minumal debian hardware such as a NSLU2 or
one of the newer ARM processors such as the SHEEVA plug, so hopefully this is something that
can be done with ax25-tools or -utils.

Maybe I am just not using "beacon" correctly for it to send an APRS packet. I
have my call sign (KI7WV-2) as "Source Callsign" and "APRS>WIDE2-3" as
destination callsign.

Thanks and 73's

Joe KI7WV
jmiller at eyes dot arizona dot edu

 
Joseph M Miller MD MPH
 
Professor and Head, Ophthalmology and Vision Science
Professor of Optical Sciences and Public Health
The University of Arizona
655 North Alvernon Way Suite 108
Tucson Arizona 85711
v 520-321-3677 f 520-321-3665