Category: Amateur Radio

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Raspberry Pi Winlink client over 2m VHF using Pat/wlk2-go + Direwolf + ax25 (not working yet)

Some rough notes on getting this combination working. This is my first attempt in getting the Pat / wlk2-go Winlink client working on a Raspberry Pi. I’m using:

  • Direwolf as a packet soundcard modem
  • ax25 as the connection between the Pat Winlink client and Direwolf
  • a Rigblaster Advantage, as a USB soundcard interface between the Raspberry Pi and a 2m transceiver (an Icom ID-880H)

I already have Direwolf and ax25 networking configured from using my Pi as a Packet radio client (search for my previous blog posts on Direwolf and you’ll find my notes for installing and configuring). Following the instructions in the Pat wiki here, I added a new ax25 interface as a new line to the end of my /etc/ax25/axports files:

wl2k KK6DCT 0 255 7 2m winlink

The wl2k alias for the new port I think is the default that Pat looks for to connect.

Note: I already have Direwolf configured with a 1200 port for VHF packet so I reused this as my first test, but if you configure a 300 port for HF and then connect the Rigblaster to an HF radio, I think the setup will be much the same (I haven’t tried this yet, but this will be my next test).

Next I installed golang on the pi with:

sudo apt-get install golang

and then installed Pat with:

go get github.com/la5nta/pat

go get failed initially with $GOPATH not set. So I created go-workspace in my home dir, and then did

export GOPATH="$HOME/goworkspace"

and added this export to my .bashrc so it will be set next time I log on too.

Now the go get started downloading to goworkspace, but it seemed to hang before it completed. Alternatively, you can download a prebuild .deb file from the Pat github releases page and install with (I used this approach instead):

sudo dpkg -i pat_0.1.5_linux_armhf.deb

pat configure – opens an editor for the config file. I added my callsign in mycall, my winlink password.

To add an alias in the configuration for a connection via ax25, I added a connection to KG6SJT-10, which is my closes Winlink gateway on 2m:

“connect_aliases”: {
“KG6SJT-10”: “ax25:///KG6SJT-10”,
“telnet”: “telnet://{mycall}:CMSTelnet@server.winlink.org:8772/wl2k”
}

pat http – starts the web interface

From the web gui at localhost:8080 you can select the Connect menu item, select the alias added in the config above, but this blew up Pat when I tried it. Time to log a ticket:

2016/09/07 00:20:53 Connecting to KG6SJT-10 (ax25)…
fatal error: unexpected signal during runtime execution
[signal 0xb code=0x1 addr=0x0 pc=0x76f3d774]

runtime stack:
runtime.throw(0x5d0948, 0x2a)
/opt/go/src/runtime/panic.go:547 +0x78
runtime.sigpanic()
/opt/go/src/runtime/sigpanic_unix.go:12 +0x44

goroutine 53 [syscall, locked to thread]:
runtime.cgocall(0x457ff0, 0x10c6b7e4, 0x0)
/opt/go/src/runtime/cgocall.go:123 +0x11c fp=0x10c6b7c4 sp=0x10c6b7ac
github.com/la5nta/pat/vendor/github.com/la5nta/wl2k-go/transport/ax25._Cfunc_ax25_aton_entry(0x0, 0x10ed00b0, 0x0)
??:0 +0x38 fp=0x10c6b7e0 sp=0x10c6b7c4
github.com/la5nta/pat/vendor/github.com/la5nta/wl2k-go/transport/ax25.(*ax25Addr).setPort(0x10ed00a0, 0x10b5a250, 0x4, 0x0, 0x0)
/home/martinhpedersen/go/src/github.com/la5nta/pat/vendor/github.com/la5nta/wl2k-go/transport/ax25/ax25_linux.go:361 +0x64 fp=0x10c6b7f0 sp=0x10c6b7e0
github.com/la5nta/pat/vendor/github.com/la5nta/wl2k-go/transport/ax25.DialAX25Timeout(0x10b5a250, 0x4, 0x10b5a158, 0x6, 0x10d107cd, 0x9, 0x7a358200, 0xa, 0xcb8e4, 0x0, …)
/home/martinhpedersen/go/src/github.com/la5nta/pat/vendor/github.com/la5nta/wl2k-go/transport/ax25/ax25_linux.go:136 +0x16c fp=0x10c6b984 sp=0x10c6b7f0
github.com/la5nta/pat/vendor/github.com/la5nta/wl2k-go/transport/ax25.Dialer.DialURL(0x7a358200, 0xa, 0x10d108d0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)
/home/martinhpedersen/go/src/github.com/la5nta/pat/vendor/github.com/la5nta/wl2k-go/transport/ax25/ax25.go:114 +0x278 fp=0x10c6ba8c sp=0x10c6b984
github.com/la5nta/pat/vendor/github.com/la5nta/wl2k-go/transport/ax25.(*Dialer).DialURL(0x7c39f8, 0x10d108d0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)
<autogenerated>:1 +0xb8 fp=0x10c6baac sp=0x10c6ba8c
github.com/la5nta/pat/vendor/github.com/la5nta/wl2k-go/transport.DialURL(0x10d108d0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)
/home/martinhpedersen/go/src/github.com/la5nta/pat/vendor/github.com/la5nta/wl2k-go/transport/dial.go:29 +0xbc fp=0x10c6bad4 sp=0x10c6baac
main.Connect(0x10d107c5, 0x11, 0x0)
/home/martinhpedersen/go/src/github.com/la5nta/pat/connect.go:108 +0x7b4 fp=0x10c6bc5c sp=0x10c6bad4
main.ConnectHandler(0x76457918, 0x10c1b200, 0x10bf8230)
/home/martinhpedersen/go/src/github.com/la5nta/pat/http.go:357 +0x68 fp=0x10c6bca8 sp=0x10c6bc5c
net/http.HandlerFunc.ServeHTTP(0x6208b4, 0x76457918, 0x10c1b200, 0x10bf8230)
/opt/go/src/net/http/server.go:1618 +0x34 fp=0x10c6bcb8 sp=0x10c6bca8
github.com/la5nta/pat/vendor/github.com/gorilla/mux.(*Router).ServeHTTP(0x10a114a0, 0x76457918, 0x10c1b200, 0x10bf8230)
/home/martinhpedersen/go/src/github.com/la5nta/pat/vendor/github.com/gorilla/mux/mux.go:107 +0x250 fp=0x10c6bd44 sp=0x10c6bcb8
net/http.(*ServeMux).ServeHTTP(0x10a0ea80, 0x76457918, 0x10c1b200, 0x10bf8230)
/opt/go/src/net/http/server.go:1910 +0x164 fp=0x10c6bd70 sp=0x10c6bd44
net/http.serverHandler.ServeHTTP(0x10a75680, 0x76457918, 0x10c1b200, 0x10bf8230)
/opt/go/src/net/http/server.go:2081 +0x190 fp=0x10c6bda0 sp=0x10c6bd70
net/http.(*conn).serve(0x10b841c0)
/opt/go/src/net/http/server.go:1472 +0xee4 fp=0x10c6bfcc sp=0x10c6bda0
runtime.goexit()
/opt/go/src/runtime/asm_arm.s:990 +0x4 fp=0x10c6bfcc sp=0x10c6bfcc
created by net/http.(*Server).Serve
/opt/go/src/net/http/server.go:2137 +0x3bc

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Windows 10 Anniversary Update – not as smooth as it could have been

There’s been a lot of stories in the news the past few days since the Windows 10 Anniversary Update went live of people running into issues with unexpected hangs and blue screen crashes after the update (for example). Even the update itself does not seem to be as smooth as it could have been.

On my HP desktop, I went through the first few reboots during the upgrade and then got stuck at a gray screen with the rotating progress balls. There was some disk activity every couple of seconds so I left it running, checking back on it every hour or so, but it stayed at this point for a whole day. Thinking it had just hung, I rebooted it and got a ‘Recovering your installation’ message, and then it seemed to pick up again at the “Working on Updates” progress screen. After about another 15mins and sitting at 91% complete, there’s a ton of disk activity so I’ll leave it running and check back on it later today.

If you’ve run into other issues during the upgrade, there’s a list of commonly seen issues so far in this article that might be useful.

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Tuning Direwolf packet parameters for use with HT radios

Direwolf has a  number of tuneable properties – by default after installing and configuring the basics, your callsign etc, it normally ‘just works’. I’ve been experimenting setting up Direwolf and PiLinBPQ as a BBS on a Raspberry Pi, and using axcall or LinPac on another Pi with Direwolf to call into the BBS. I have a Rigblaster and Yaesu FT60 HT on one Pi, and a SignaLink and Wouxun HT on the other radio.

The problem I ran into was that either Pi seems to work ok to call into a Packet node nearby, but calling from one Pi to the other was pretty unreliable in terms of not decoding packets, and the number of retries before a packet would get received and decoded. I tried a number of options, and feedback in the Yahoo Groups Direwolf group give me some suggestions to try. The tuning parameters are all covered in the excellent Direwolf docs.

Possible problems with using HTs for packet could include a combination of these factors:

  • Receive audio too loud into Direwolf (aim for around 50)
  • Receive audio not loud enough – adjust soundcard volume (Rigblaster/Signalink) and alsamixer levels
  • The radio doesn’t transition quick enough between transmit and receive (can be fixed by adding DWAIT)
  • Latency from the soundcard audio either in receive or transmit – can be fixed by adding TXDELAY for delay at the start of the transmission, and/or TXTAIL for a delay at the end

The settings I finally wound up with on both Pis that worked for me are:

DWAIT 20

TXDELAY 60

TXTAIL 60

 

 

 

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