BBS Packet Radio PART II

Okay everyone, we are just a few connections and solder blobs away from putting the packet radio node on the air! It's been quite the adventure, so let me tell you all about it!

Originally I felt uneasy...

However I reached out to the BPQ32 forum on groups.io just to try out one last avenue. To my surprise, Mark, N5MDT, offered his help to me via email.

I started the software/computer side of things on a Linux VM. Instead of just going straight for the throat and burning the software on my Pi, I wanted to test out a few things first, like SSHing, telnet-ing, etc. I found most of my original help on TheModernHam's website. This was good, but really only applied to an RF-only node, not an internet connected one. That's what I failed to realize initially and why I faced so much frustration when I couldn't find my node online anywhere.

Anyways, Mark offered his help and assisted me in setting up an AXUDP link. With this in place, I could now send AX.25 packets to and from his node via the internet. Mind you, Mark is in Texas and I'm in Missouri, so yes, this will be internet-linked. However if the internet were to ever go down, my node would still work locally. How local? Well check this map out:

This local. The ENTIRE CITY OF MARYVILLE LOCAL!!! Who knew UHF was just that awesome?

My node features (at the moment) 2 options to connect - a BBS and a Chatroom. The BBS is for posting messages (kind of like a store-and-forward system) and the Chatroom is for keyboard-to-keyboard chats.

Shutdown/Startup

My God this was hard...like 8 hours of my day wasted hard. No matter how much I tried to write scripts or systemd jobs, but nooooooo...my Pi refused. Eventually I found the answer (FYI, use echo to your advantage) and I had a cron job up and running.

My node reboots itself at midnight and noon every day, and it does shutdown safely too. So if the software is in the middle of reading or writing it won't corrupt the SD card. A bit more involved than when I was just running Direwolf, but hey - I've got an actual packet radio node now! As I write this, I can't help but smile ear-to-ear.

Well that's about it...

Stay tuned for an update - we're getting closer!