Digipi notes

Sat, 16 Mar 2024 14:43:55 GMT

So the digipi is an amazing peice of tech for ham radio digital modes.
Below are some of my customizations.

Beaconing using gpsd

By default the digipi beacons using the fixed coordinates you hand entered when you initialized it. However if using it with an icom 705 or other gps source you can have it use those coordinates dynamically.
To so so when in digipeater mode do the following into direwatch.digipeater.conf

Put near the top of the config file a line reading
GPSD localhost
comment out the pbeacon line
below the PBEacon line add a the following lines
# Beacon to RF using gpsd
TBEACON delay=00:05 every=30:00 symbol="house" overlay=R via=WIDE2-1 power=5 height=5 gain=2 comment="KD0YTE local digi using IC705,"

edit the comment and symbol to suit yourself

Maybe you want to take the digipi mobile. In that case you probably waant smart beaconing.

comment out the previous TBEACON lines and add these. I changed the overlay to a car since it will be mobile

1. Beacon to RF using gpsd and smartbeaconing
TBEACON symbol="car" via=WIDE2-1 power=5 height=5 gain=2 comment="KD0YTE local digi using IC705,"
SMARTBEACONING

I like orienting the digipi with power port up.
So in both
/home/pi/digibanner.py
/home/pi/direwatch.py
change the line that says rotation = 180 to rotation = 0
This makes fixes the upside down screen text when in this orientation.
More info to come...