Xastir

http://www.xastir.org/ -- "Xastir provides mapping, tracking, messaging, weather, weather alerts, and Search & Rescue features over radio or internet and runs on a variety of platforms. Xastir is an open source software project maintained by Developers and Contributors from all over the globe, provided free under the GNU General Public License. From its early beginnings, Xastir has evolved into a very robust client with a rich feature set that rivals other APRS clients."

Xastir mapping and user interface should be called "dis-astir". I don't know enough about APRS yet to make any critical judgement.

I have only tried it with an online OSM map but it's so slow compared to QGIS that it's painful. The controls add to the problem - I don't have a way to jump back to previous view. I can't jump to an arbitrary location. There are no bookmarks. The controls that exist are arranged badly and have funny buttons.

The motif ui looks like it was designed quickly in 1985 and not updated since.

On my Mac

The recommended way to run Xastir on a Mac is in a virtual machine. Okay, I can do that. But I am going to try it in a Debian 7 machine under Parallels instead of downloading their complete VMWare Fusion machine. While waiting for it to download I will look up what map data I need.

Install Debian with KDE; I tried Cinnamon then had to backtrack, so that Coherence would work.

I followed the instructions to build Xastir from source, which I found here: http://xastir.org/index.php/HowTo:Debian_Squeeze

Changes:

• lesstif2-dev no longer exists. Install libmotif-dev instead
• Instead of libdb4.8-dev use libdb-dev
• Instead of proj use proj-bin and proj-data and libproj-dev
• Add graphicsmagick-libmagick-dev-compat to get ImageMagick to work
• I used my own instructions for Building GDAL on Linux.

After finding the missing bits it was easy to build it from sources. I have it running now with the opencyclemap on both my Mac and my Debian server.

On my Debian server

The Mac is great especially in a car, but what about at home? The radio is upstairs and the Mac is on my lap. I need to hook the radio to my Debian server Bellman when here at home.

With a GPS receiver

I installed gpsd and then did

Interface->Add->Network GPS and accepted the defaults (localhost). Then I did "Start All" and sure enough my position jumped from the coast of Africa (0 0) to my house. Joy.

With the TNC in a Kenwood TM-D710A

Had to use RS232 output of UBlox -- TTL signal level too low.

GPS    Kenwood
DB9    2.5mm stereo

3      Tip    white   GPS IN
2      Ring   red     GPS OUT
5      Sleeve bare    GND

Baud rate is 9600

Maps

Maps load slowly over the Internet (what are they doing in there), but they work okay. I am using the OSM Cycle map because it has contours.

I need to preload maps for Sonoma county since I will be offline when on station for the Gran Fondo on Saturday.

Festival

To get text-to-speech working, Festival has to be running in daemon mode before you start xastir.

festival -server &

You have to set xastir to use it, see File->Configure->Speech