Basil, when you use nixtracker mobile, what are you using for a display and is it hardwired to the RPi or not?

tia, David, Ke7rgp 

Hi David,
Short answer:
For a display I use an Android Samsung Galaxy TAB A running a browser.

nixtracker is a fork of Dan Smith's dantracker that used a hard wired
LCD display. nixtracker is a heavily modified dantracker that runs in a
browser so that it can be used over the network. In my truck I run an
RPi in hostap mode & connect my phone or Android pad to the RPi via
WiFi.

It does not use maps. If you want to see what it basically looks
like see Eric Schott's links under n7nix dantracker links here:
https://github.com/n7nix/nixtracker
or a youtube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg-buSHbZVc

/Basil n7nix

David Lowry <huskyrunnr@msn.com> writes:

Awesome!! So is the hostap mode part of NWDR image and how to enable it? That is WiFi without my home router correct/ hotspot is that the correct term?. I tried to do a hotspot switch from other instructions and only partly succeeded. If it is already part of NWDR XX I don’t need to do anything? Thanks Basil.

I haven't tested my hostap scripts in some time & the systemd folks have been
continuously mucking with network underpinnings for a number of years.

I need to verify my WiFi networking scripts that switch between
client & host are doing what they should.

/Basil

Understood. I can plug in a cable. Thanks for helping sort through a bit of confusion.

david

Basil, I will really enjoy this interface in the truck. A quick question, on the CTRL tab, what do I type in the Confirm box?

A more complex question... if it is not a simple answer and you don’t want to answer, I understand.

In my hands, the mail tab gives an error “Unable to communicate with the PLU Websocket server.” I realize this feature may not be supported at this time or I have set up plu and nixtracker in the wrong order for this to work. At this point I have no localhost:8082. Earlier, I had both 8081 and 8082, but still the same error on the mail tab.

David,

Give me a day or 2 on this one ( mail tab gives an error “Unable to
communicate with the PLU Websocket server).

I think that the web server enabled with the standard paclink-unix
install might be interfering with the nixtracker web server.

David Lowry <huskyrunnr@msn.com> writes:

Basil, I will really enjoy this interface in the truck. A quick
question, on the CTRL tab, what do I type in the Confirm box?

So I have been using nixtracker since before the Raspberry Pi when NWDR
made their own CPU cards. At that time it was handy to be able to
'shutdown' & 'reset' the CPU card from the Web interface. I believe the
confirm for each was 'down' and 'reset'. See
nixtracker/webapp/tracker-frontend.js.

Using the DRAWS card on an RPi I can detect when I shut my truck off by
reading the voltage ie. running off 12 V you can just run the 'sensors'
command. See n7nix/tracker/updown_log.sh script. When the voltage is
less than 13V I know my truck is off and the RPi is running on
battery. I have the power for the RPi coming off the Powerwerx ITS-12
https://powerwerx.com/automotive-dc-timer-lvd-battery-guard

so I can do a polite shut down within a couple of minutes after I shut
my truck off.

That was a long winded explanation for why I don't use the CTRL tab any
more.

A more complex question... if it is not a simple answer and you don’t
want to answer, I understand.

In my hands, the mail tab gives an error “Unable to communicate with
the PLU Websocket server.” I realize this feature may not be supported
at this time or I have set up plu and nixtracker in the wrong order
for this to work. At this point I have no localhost:8082. Earlier, I
had both 8081 and 8082, but still the same error on the mail tab.

Let me check on this.

Ahh! I see now how the lvd renders the Ctrl tab obsolete. I didn’t make the connection yesterday. I’ve been shadowing that development since it appeared in the NWDR change log. My son bought me the its-12 for Christmas.

Thanks for all your help. As always, no rush. I really wanted to try plu and nixtracker with a fresh image a third time but that won’t happen until tomorrow. Claws mail and the wl2k commands work.

Correction: I first saw the reference to lvd in the individual commit around November 11, not the nwdr14 announcement or change log.

David Lowry <huskyrunnr@msn.com> writes:

Ahh! I see now how the lvd renders the Ctrl tab obsolete. I didn’t
make the connection yesterday. I’ve been shadowing that development
since it appeared in the NWDR change log. My son bought me the its-12
for Christmas.

The its-12 is nice gift!

The history of my mobile APRS device is like this. I was going to an
APRS event & installed nixtracker on the UDR cpu card (not an Rpi) about
7 or 8 years ago and powered it from the cigarette lighter in the
truck. This was supposed to be a temporary setup that I eventually ran
for about 8 years. Note that the cpu card didn't have any power
protection & was powered off/on with the ignition key. That setup worked
flawlessly for about 8 years ie. same mSD card for that time was never
corrupted.

I did not want to run the same experiment with the RPi and now have the
its-12 powered from the truck battery set for 2 minutes. This allows me
to easily detect a voltage change using a DRAWS hat & beacon one last
time when I leave my truck then do a polite shutdown. I've been running
this setup for about 3 months.

Thanks for all your help. As always, no rush. I really wanted to try
plu and nixtracker with a fresh image a third time but that won’t
happen until tomorrow. Claws mail and the wl2k commands work.

I will do some testing over the next couple of days.
/Basil

David,

I'm still testing but this is what I had to do get things working.

The tracker_install.sh script disables pluweb.service and starts
tracker.service so that is why your previous web connection stopped
working. That is by design.

You should be able to connect to the tracker server in a
browser with: <ip_address>:8081 where ip_address can be localhost if you
are running on the RPi.

To make this work:
# I believe only uid-number module is not installed but checking the
# other required modules doesn't hurt.

sudo npm -g install ctype iniparser websocket connect serve-static finalhandler uid-number

As root edit /etc/tracker/aprs_tracker.ini
In the [station] section mycall = <your_call_sign>
In the [gps] section comment out with a '#' type=serial
In the [gps] section UNcomment (remove '#') type=gpsd

I've made these changes to the install script so you won't have to do
this manually next time & added a tracker-status script to verify a
couple of things.

To get the new scripts:
cd
cd n7nix
git pull
cd config
./bin_refresh.sh

Also when you get the web page to render if the satellite count is zero
then you may have to pull the latest track source to get a small fix I
put in a while back & forgot to check-in. Check the 3rd panel for
'Locked: 0 sats'. I'll walk you through that later if that turns out to
be the case.

/Basil

Basil Gunn <basil@pacabunga.com> writes:

Wonderful Basil. I’ll try this. screen -x Ctrl a 1 in the verify step walked me through all the missing dependencies except that last one, so this will be a new thing to try. Very excited and I’ll let you know either way.

david

Bingo! 

sudo npm -g install uid-number

Just telnetted an email to myself through the tracker.

Thank you again. I am doing so much with this board that I could not otherwise do without you, Anna, Bryan and John.

david, Ke7rgp 

I have 13 satellites.

I have 13 satellites.

Excellent! /Basil

Basil, trivial remark and question:

remark; updown_log.sh, line 8, log_updown.sh -> updown_log.sh I believe.

question; same file, lines 14-18 give the crontab entries. I had to add ‘root’ as user to those lines like the other lines in /etc/crontab in order to get lvd shutdown working. I’ve seen this before when you were teaching us how to use btest.sh and crontab to beacon. Again, no ‘root’ Or any user specified in the crontab lines you wrote. It makes me wonder if I am messing with the wrong crontab file? Pardon my ignorance.

david

remark; updown_log.sh, line 8, log_updown.sh -> updown_log.sh I
believe.

Changed comment to be consistent with actual name of updown_log.sh
script.

question; same file, lines 14-18 give the crontab entries. I had to
add ‘root’ as user to those lines like the other lines in /etc/crontab
in order to get lvd shutdown working. I’ve seen this before when you
were teaching us how to use btest.sh and crontab to beacon. Again, no
‘root’ Or any user specified in the crontab lines you wrote. It makes
me wonder if I am messing with the wrong crontab file? Pardon my
ignorance.

The comment in updown_log.sh has a crontab example which points to the
/home/pi/tmp directory. This is wrong & only used for
development. Changed the example to use the local bin directory
/home/pi/bin and updated bin_refresh.sh script to include the tracker
updown_log.sh script.

See commit here:
https://github.com/nwdigitalradio/n7nix/commit/9d65bb812bb699df3627be01a52abe0ad953c09d

To update:

cd
cd n7nix
git pull
cd config
./bin_refresh.sh

You shouldn't have to be root to run the the updown_log.sh
script. ie. the crontab should be used by default user (pi).
You can test this out by running the beacmin.sh script and verify that
it doesn't return with an error. You are confirming that the 'beacon'
command does not need to be run as root.

cd
cd n7nix/debug
./beacmin.sh

I tested this on my bench & it looks ok. Later on this afternoon I will
pull the mSD card from my truck & verify.

/Basil

I got it now Basil. Thanks. My ignorance of Linux is shining through. Every user including the system gets their own crontab. I was using the system’s crontab.

time to go read about Linux os

got all my wires and coax fished in the truck. Install tomorrow!

i notice in the YouTube you pointed me to, there is no debug panel. Do you toggle that panel on/off or leave it there all the time?

also, one of the rotating beacon messages indicates a digipeating setting?

david

I got it now Basil. Thanks. My ignorance of Linux is shining
through. Every user including the system gets their own crontab. I was
using the system’s crontab.

time to go read about Linux os

I would suggest to learn about Linux have an idea about something that
you want your Linux system to do then google away until you figure it
out.

got all my wires and coax fished in the truck. Install tomorrow!

Terrific!! Send me a pic when it's done.

i notice in the YouTube you pointed me to, there is no debug panel. Do
you toggle that panel on/off or leave it there all the time?

I currently leave it there all the time. I'll have to look into getting
rid of it.

also, one of the rotating beacon messages indicates a digipeating setting?

That's just a filler I think left over from Dan Smith's configuration
from a number of years ago.

You can easily customize your beacons by looking in the
/etc/tracker/aprs_tracker.ini file in the [comments] section
You set up which beacons you want to rotate through then enable them
with the enabled = line
I would change the #4 beacon to something else.
Variables are defined between pairs of $.

enabled = 1,2,3,4
1=Using nixtracker $ver$, gps sats $sats$
2=https://github.com/n7nix/nixtracker
3=Software $ver$
4=Set path to TEMP1-1,WIDE2-1 to digi
5=Test: Number of sats $sats$, version $ver$, date $date$, time $time$, voltage, $voltage$, index $index$, temperature $temp1$, sig qual $digiq$, call sign $mycall$

/Basil

Good afternoon all,

I have Nixtracker running on my pi 3b with draws hat installed. I have two radios connected. UDR0 is attached to a radio on our local packet freq and runs a Winlink Gateway. UDR1 is connected to a radio on our local aprs freq. I am able to see aprs info on the Nixtracker on another machine. However in the Sats window I have Zero sats. the window reports nodata. gpsd is running on the Pi and has a good lock. I read in this forum that there is something that needs to be done to make this work but it appears those instructions were taken offline.

The other question I have is there a way in the MSG tab to select which port on draws the aprs message goes out?

Thanks for all the help!

Rich, KR4PI