Packet radio: Direwolf and pilinbpq

I’ve been playing around recently with setting up some packet radio software on the Raspberry Pi. The next thing I was interested in getting working was a BPQ32 node with BBS and Chat. G8BPQ’s instructions here are pretty easy to follow. What I got stuck on however was whether BPQ needed or used ax25, and apparently it doesn’t. So from the simplest direwolf and linbpq setup, you start direwolf, configure linbpq to point to Direwolf’s virtual kiss tnc serial port, and off you go.

I played around testing with 2 radios, one with Direwolf, linbpq and a Rigblaster connected to a Yaesu FT-60 HT, and the second, an Icom 880 connected with a Rigblaster Plug and Play to a desktop running Linux Mint, also using Direwolf. There was some random oddness wth connecting from one to the other, maybe because of the radios in close proximity, that turned out I just needed to increase default timeout settings. I set these both to the same in direwolf.conf and bpq32.cfg:

TXDELAY=300

TXTAIL=30

Once I’d added these (based on other suggested settings elsewhere in other people’s BPQ configs), then I was off and running. Looks good!

4 Replies to “Packet radio: Direwolf and pilinbpq”

  1. Thank you Kevin! I’ve been working with Direwolf and dabbling in BPQ but had lots of questions still. You pointing out that you used Direwolf as the KISS port is just what I needed to hear! Helpful also was to hear that BPQ doesn’t need OS level AX25. It seems that there is a growing number of us seeking to “freshen” our non-commercial, non-wired digital communications at this point in time!

  2. Do you mind sharing your bpq32.cfg file. Trying to get bpq talking to direwolf. I’ve ran direwolf for several projects in the past but Im brand new to bpq. Thanks! 73, KM4ACK

    1. This is going back a couple of years so not sure if I still have it, but I’ll take a look at the weekend

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