LHS Episode #025: APRS and Xastir
Richard and I have been busy over the last couple of weeks. He spent a day at the Belton Hamfest near Waco, Texas on October 3rd. The weekend before that, I spent a few days in Columbus, Ohio at Ohio Linux Fest. This is our first episode back from those events. I have a few hours of audio I need to sift through, but I managed to get a couple of clips from my interviews and commentary from OLF included in the second segment of this episode of the podcast. Because I had a visit from my parents and my brother and sister-in-law from New Hampshire, I haven't been able to get the podcast out in a timely manner. I suppose after 25 releases, I should probably stop apologizing for being late but I do like it when we release on time. Anyway, enjoy our interviews and Richard's discourse on APRS and Xastir, and stay tuned for a lot of great audio from our live endeavors coming up in future episodes. Thanks for downloading, and have a great couple of weeks.
Contributors:
Paul, from TeenRadioJourney.com, mentions LHS on his blog.
Russ Wenner from The Techie Geek podcast joins us in the chat room.
Kent, VE4KEH, in a post in the forums, says he heard Russ on an episode of Hacker Public Radio, and wonders if an appearance on Linux Outlaws is next. He also asks about a Windows 7 launch party. Our hosts respond.
Kent also posts a comment in a thread about Acer dropping support if you install Linux on one of their computers. Kent asks which manufacturers are Linux friendly? He also wonders why Acer creates two partitions on their laptops.
threethirty from Linux Cranks sent congratulations about LHS getting a mention in an LXer.com article Ohio LinuxFest Report
Matt, KC8BEW, in a comment about Episode 22 asks if Chirp will support radios other than Icom D-Star.
Announcements:
Ken S. made a generous donation to the fund to send Linux in the Ham Shack to Dayton HamVention, 2010.
Look for Richard at the Belton HamEXPO on October 3rd. in Belton, TX. Jerry Taylor, KD0BIK, of The Practical Amateur Radio Podcast will be there, too.
Links and Notes:
Russ talks a bit about being at Ohio Linux Fest. He was in “podcasters row” in the exhibit hall, along with the Northeast Ohio Open Source Society, The Linux Link Tech Show, and the Security Justice podcast. Russ shares some interviews and audio he recorded:
Interview with Matt, KC8BEW.
Russ plans on taking Linux in the Ham Shack to Dayton Hamvention, 2010.
Jim, KB3ORA, stops by the booth.
Questions in the chat room:
Russ Wenner from the Techie Geek Podcast, asks: is ham radio an expensive hobby? Richard opines.
HamTests.net is a good resource. The European site is HamTests.co.uk.
Do you need to learn Morse code? Nope, but it’s even more popular now.
Do you need a high antenna? Not necessarily. Russ discusses. The ARRL has several good books on antennas.
Paul Shirey asks if shared folders on different machines can be combined. Possible, but difficult.
One of the requirements for using APRS under Linux is that you must have the AX.25 packet radio protocol support in the kernel.
To determine if your kernal has AX.25 support, enter this command in a terminal: grep ax25 /proc/kallsyms
If you get a result something like this:
c0510ddc r trans_net_ax25_table c05127a0 r trans_net_ax25_param_table
then AX.25 support is built into the kernel. If you receive nothing, then you’ll need to recompile the kernel with AX.25 support. (Most of the current versions of Ubuntu and Linux Mint have AX.25 support.)
For more information, see the HowTo:AX.25 article on the XASTIR wiki.
Richard describes configuring XASTIR.
Bottom line: it’s not all that hard to set up. Read the wiki. There are how-to articles for many different operating systems.
From the chatroom, someone asks about the throughput of the various data modes in amateur radio.
Music:
“Like This” by STEEP from the album “STEEP”
“Lost” by Trainlight from the album “Now You’re Alone with Ghosts”