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. "

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.

I set Debian up with Cinnamon. Then I installed KDE and tore out Cinnamon, 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

It was easy to build it from sources. I have it running now with the opencyclemap.

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