Friday, September 6, 2013

RaspberryPi and DVAP

Finally (and I mean finally - I've had a few sitting in the shack for over 10 months - and haven't done anything with them)...So I had some time and started to tackle RaspberryPi and the DVAP.

First off, thanks to G4KLX (Jonathan Naylor) for the hard part of the software (pcrepeatercontroller and ircddbgateway).  This let's you get on the D-Plus and D-Extra systems.

Secondly, thanks to GW6WTK (Brian Wiegold) for the klxupdate software (if you take the easy route).

You really should try the hard "learning" way to install this stuff....
1.) Download the latest Raspbian image from http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_latest
2.) Sign up to the following Yahoo groups (ircddbgateway and pcrepeatercontroller) and download the latest "Repeater" and "ircddbgateway" software from Johnathan Naylor
3.) sudo apt-get install wx2.8-headers wx-common libwxgtk2.8-0 libwxgtk2.8-dev libwxbase2.8-0 libwxbase2.8-dev portaudio19-dev libportaudio2 build-essential libusb-dev g++ libusb-1.0-0 libusb-1.0.0.dev
4.) Unzip and compile both those pieces of software - warning takes about 6 hours or longer to do on the Raspberry Pi
5.) StartX and execute "/usr/local/bin/ircddbgateway -gui" and "/usr/local/bin/dvapnode -gui"


But if you want the Easy Way....
1.) Go http://www.westerndstar.co.uk
2.) Download - http://www.westerndstar.co.uk/Downloads/DVAP+ircDDB+VNC.rar (and unzip with 7zip)
3.) If you are on Windows, use the http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/files/latest/download to write the image to a 4GB or larger class 10 SD card
4.) Write the image to the card
5.) Insert and reboot the pi, and you're in business (just configure the software with your callsign, etc)
6.) Run klxupdate to make sure the software is up-to-date







Why jump through all these hoops?  Well the XReflectors really are neat, but unfortunately Robin Cutshaw, is too busy playing with Google Glass to fix his software to work those systems - in-fact, he's intentionally made it harder to do with his software and crippled it (unless you use version 1.02 of his DVAPTool software).