Monday, July 23, 2012

Making GPX tracks for APRSIS32

The 2012 Pigman Triathlon long and olympic course race is coming up next month in which I am slated to be a Net Control Station.  We will also be doing an experiment simultaneously where both Net Control locations will have an APRS display infront of them, linked by HSMM-MESH routers, to track the APRS equipped vehicle that will be trailing the last bike rider through the course.

One nice feature of APRSIS32 is that it will import a GPX file and display it on a screen, essentially creating a digital copy of the race map that has APRS posits (positions) in real time.  I have made these GPX files before for a race like this so I thought I'd outline how I make GPX files for importing into APRSIS32.

Software requirements:
  • Google Earth
  • GPSBabel


Step 1:
Open Google Earth, zoom into route start location

Step 2:
Create a "Path" along the race route by clicking points along the route.  You can get as detailed or as simple as you like.  The more detail, the better the map will look.

Here is Google's tutorial on making paths:
http://support.google.com/earth/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1113936

Make sure to change the name of the path to something useful.

Step 3
Save the path as a KML file.

To do this, right click on path name on the left hand pane, Save File As....

or

File > Save > Save File As...

Choose KML format, give it a useful name and save in a spot you'll remember

Step 4:
Convert the KML file to GPX format

I use GPSBabel for this.  It's a popular program that will convert a ton of different formats dealing with GPS data to another format.

http://www.gpsbabel.org/index.html

Step 5:
Import GPX file into APRSIS32

To load a new GPX overlay, go to Configure > Overlays > Import GPX file...



Browse to the location you saved the GPX file to from previous step and play with the color, opacity, width, etc.



Now, is this the only way to create GPX files?  No, it's just the way I prefer and know how to do.  You can do it relatively easily with Google Maps and a tool called GMapToGPX, drive the route with your GPS and export the data or many other ways.


Wednesday, July 11, 2012

VoIP on HSMM-MESH

Since working on a HSMM-MESH™ installation at Mercy Medical Center here in town has been thrown into neutral for the time being, I've been focusing my attention on playing with VoIP over the mesh.

A while ago I acquired a Polycom IP500 phone to play with and it has been interesting to say the least in getting it working.

First off, the phone requires a FTP or TFTP boot server on the network to pull the application software and configuration files at bootup.  After many trial and error sessions I finally got the phone to boot from a TFTP server on my desktop and can make SIP phone calls directly between my computer and the phone, no SIP server required (after finding out that the sip phone address is SPIP@<ip_address>).

The only logical progression is to move the TFTP server from my computer to the HSMM-MESH™ router that the phone is plugged in to so I don't have to have a computer running to get the phone booted.  Of course, nothing is that simple.  Much consternation ensued again until I stumbled onto a forum post advising that apparently there is a bug in the Kamikaze 7.09 OpenWRT firmware that a dependency package for atftpd, libreadline, is not in the 7.09 repository so you have to install it manually from an earlier repository.  Easily done by executing the following command before installing atftpd:
ipkg install http://downloads.openwrt.org/kamikaze/7.06/brcm47xx-2.6/packages/libreadline_5.1-1_mipsel.ipk


The next goal will be to move the Polycom to a separate mesh node and try to make a call over the mesh.


Relevant links:
http://support.polycom.com/PolycomService/support/us/support/voice/soundpoint_ip/soundpoint_ip500.html

https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=8495


ToTD: It would probably be a good idea to start keeping copies of any downloaded packages on a flash drive.  Never know when I'll have to do field work on this project without access to the Internet.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Inaugural post

I figure there are many projects that I'm working on that is of interest to others so I thought I might as well start a place to document and share them.  Bear with me on format and how it evolves, it's likely to change a lot.

73 de KC0ALC