Category: Amateur Radio

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More TNC Commands

MCON ON : monitor all packets to/from other stations, not just your station

MCOM ON: monitor all packets sent (including ack packets etc)

MONITOR ON: turn on monitoring while not connected

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Kantronics All Mode TNC – useful commands and tips

I’m still learning what the different commands are, but here’s what I’ve worked out so far (some of this might be wrong, if so leave me a comment!)

  • c callsign : connect to callsign
  • c callsign1 via callsign2 : connect via some other station you can hear
  • unproto name via call1, call2, etc : sets the routing list of stations where your want your packets to be sent when in conv mode (?)
  • when you connect (c) direct to another station, you enter conv mode with that station
  • conv: enter conv mode when not directly connected to another station (packets are broadcast to the stations in your unproto string)
  • Ctrl-C : to exit conv mode, and get back to cmd: mode
  • perm : write settings to eprom

Useful commands when connected to someone’s bbs:

  • l : list all messages
  • lm : list messages to me
  • b : list broadcast messages
  • s callsign : send message to callsign
  • r # : read msg #
  • b (bye) : exit
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2014 vs 2013 California QSO Party (CQP) scores for Yolo County

Since having my Amateur Radio license just over a year, I’ve yet to go all out on a contest and work every hour permitted, but I have enjoyed the opportunity to work some contacts for my log. Last year’s California QSO Party I only worked a few QSOs. If I remember back to last year, I did call CQ for 20 mins or so and didn’t get any takers, so did some search and pounce and picked up a handful of contacts:2013 CQP Yolo resultsThis year I worked a couple of hours over Sat and Sun, and got significantly more that my 8 QSOs last year, but nowhere close to K6Y’s score. I’ve submitted my log and will wait for the final scores to be published 🙂 All in all, had a good result this year!

 

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Installing rtl-sdr and dump1090 on a Raspberry Pi to receive ADS-B signals

I’ve gone through these steps a couple of times when I’ve set up a new SD card, and had to go to various places to work out all the steps, so in case this is useful for someone else, here’s the steps (assuming installing on Rasbian):

Making and installing rtl-sdr from source

Instructions: http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr

Pre-req steps, if you don’t already have the following:

sudo apt-get install cmake

#usb driver for the rtl dongle
sudo apt-get install libusb-1.0

Get the source:

git clone git://git.osmocom.org/rtl-sdr.git

Build:

cd rtl-sdr/
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../
make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig

If you get permissions errors like this when using any of the rtl_* commands:

Using device 0: Terratec T Stick PLUS
usb_open error -3
Please fix the device permissions, e.g. by installing the udev rules file rtl-sdr.rules
Failed to open rtlsdr device #0.

Then you should be able to add a line to

/etc/udev/rules.d/rtl-sdr.rules

 to set up correct permissions for your specific card, which you can find by running lsusb, eg for mine:

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0ccd:00d7 TerraTec Electronic GmbH

From this I believe you take the id value and insert it into a new line in rtl-sdr.rules like:

SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0ccd", ATTRS{idProduct}=="00d7", MODE:="0666"

and then restart udev:

sudo service udev restart

… reboot and that should be fixed.  Or you can still run the apps with sudo.

To test, try starting up the rtl_tcp server:

sudo rtl_tcp -a your_ip

and you might see a message about the device already in use by another kernel module:

Found 1 device(s):
  0:  Realtek, RTL2838UHIDIR, SN: 00000001
Using device 0: Terratec T Stick PLUS
Kernel driver is active, or device is claimed by second instance of librtlsdr.
In the first case, please either detach or blacklist the kernel module
(dvb_usb_rtl28xxu), or enable automatic detaching at compile time.
usb_claim_interface error -6
Failed to open rtlsdr device #0.

This is saying dvb_usb_rtl28xxu is already using the device. From instructions here, you can temporarily unload this module:

sudo rmmod dvb_usb_rtl28xxu

or permantly remove it with a blacklist entry in /etc/modprobe.d – add a new file here named something like rtl-sdr.conf, add add one line with the name of the above driver:

blacklist dvb_usb_rtl28xxu

Reboot and now you should be good to go with the rtl_* commands.

 

Making and installing dump1090:

From https://github.com/MalcolmRobb/dump1090

git clone https://github.com/MalcolmRobb/dump1090.git
cd dump1090
make

Run in interactive mode:

./dump1090 --interactive

or net mode to enable the webserver (point a browser at you Pi’s IP address and port 8080):

./dump1090 --net
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