[Xastir] revisiting aprsd

[Lee Bengston]

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 5:34 PM, John Ronan <jpronans at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 03/04/12 17:30, Tom Hayward wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 10:21, Mike Swiatkowski, AA9VI<aa9vi at yahoo.com>
>>  wrote:
>>>
>>> Xastir is a very GOOD aprs program but I wish it had the ability to igate
>>> to RF better also. That may be one of its more noticeable deficiencies.  I'd
>>> also like to see the ability to add status text, and PHG data when running a
>>> WX station, similar to UI-View. Finally, it's far from my skillset to know
>>> the inner working of this, but it seems Xastir can be memory intensive at
>>> times.  Is there a way to manage that better?  Maybe I just need to upgrade
>>> from the 1.8 GHz HP desktop with 2 GB ram on Debian 6. My other program
>>> running on there is Echolink using Wine.
>>>
>>>
>>> Great work otherwise!
>>> Mike, AA9VI
>>
>> You mentioned aprsd in the subject, but nowhere in the message. If
>> you're looking for a standalone igate, please look into aprx
>> (http://wiki.ham.fi/Aprx.en). It's a very capable igate with minimal
>> memory footprint. With a Linux AX.25 interface, you can run it
>> simultaneously with Xastir, and exit Xastir when you don't need a GUI.
>>
>> Tom KD7LXL
>
> And aprx is actively supported.

Mike was responding to my post, which included both aprsd and Xastir
related material.  Yes, aprx is a good igate with minimal memory
footprint.  It still doesn't quite do everything that is documented
below, however.  I would like to see at least one Linux application
support 'everything' when it comes to igating.

http://www.aprs-is.net/IGating.aspx
http://www.aprs-is.net/IGateDetails.aspx

aprx has some recent bug fixes in Release 2.03, and there's a patch
that hasn't been implemented yet that's documented in its google
groups based mailing list.  Overall I like aprx.  It shares the TNC
with Xastir and ldsped just fine.  One has to be sure to include a
message filter in the section of the configuration that applies to
transmitting on RF, otherwise it will gate beacons from IS to RF.

Overall I'm just a bit disappointed that I can't find a small,
specialized piece of software for LInux/BSD that provides significant
improvement over Xastir's igating capabilities - other than
JavAPRSigate, which has been discussed on this list before.  It is
true that aprx is still being developed, so perhaps it will eventually
get there.

Regards,
Lee - K5DAT