[Xastir] Sharing serial port with Xastir

[Curt Mills]

What I meant to say:

On Mon, Dec 21, 2015 at 1:44 PM, Curt Mills <curt.we7u at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 11:38 PM, Danny <mynixmail at gmail.com> wrote:
>> My APRS setup currently uses /dev/ttyS1 ... I want to rotate the LT messages in
>> the KPC-3 every 30 mins or so ... I have a file that get's updated as the data
>> changes ... this file get's parsed via Bash and in turn the data has to go to
>> /dev/ttyS1 to update the LT 1 (to 4) data ...
>>
>> Currently if I do this for example and open up "Incoming Data" in Xastir:
>> echo "BEACON 0" > /dev/ttyS1 (in a terminal)
>>
>> ... I get the following output in the "Incoming Data" window:
>> 0:TNC-> BEACON 0 (and then whatever packet is being RX'd at the time) ...
>>
>> Also, it takes a while for this "BEACON 0" (or any other) to be displayed in the
>> "Incoming Data" window ... I only have the "TNC Data Only" selected ...
>>
>> So I was wondering how I can work with Xastir in accomplishing this ...
>
> Xastir isn't set up to do such things. Any program talking directly to
> a serial port takes over the port completely, so you can't share it
> among other programs.
>
> If you are doing scripting and want full control of what you send out,
> I'd suggest setting the TNC up as a KISS TNC, then setting up AX.25
> networking in Linux. You can then set up Xastir to talk to the AX.25
> port. This lets you share the port among multiple programs that
> understand AX.25 ports, like "digi_ned", "Xastir", and "beacon". In
> this case the serial port gets turned into a networking port, and many
> programs can share that port simultaneously.
>
> For scripting what goes out once you do that, format some "beacon"
> commands and send them out via scripting and CRON. This gives you LOTS
> of options for what to send out and when, so you're no longer limited
> to the LT1 through LT4 beacons and times.

-- 
Curt, WE7U
http://wetnet.net/~we7u
http://www.sarguydigital.com