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48 lines
2.0 KiB
Markdown
48 lines
2.0 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Configuring an APRS receiver with an RTL-SDR and Direwolf"
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tags: ["aprs", "amateur radio", "direwolf"]
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date: "2021-12-16"
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featuredimagepreview: "/aprs.jpg"
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---
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What is APRS? Automatic Packet Reporting System! Essentially a VHF radio sending out GPS location pings in the 2M ham band which can be seen at [aprs.fi](https://aprs.fi/). If you take a look at that link you will often see radiosondes and their reported data, weather stations as well as bunch of amateur operators transmitting data all over the world. Fascinating stuff.
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I recently got my hands on an RTL-SDR v3 which claims much better accuracy and performance over previous models. Figured I'd give it a go receiving APRS and see what I could get. I did a bit of research and tested a few different packages but ended up settling with [Direwolf](https://github.com/wb2osz/direwolf). For those interested, I'm running this on an Ubuntu 20.04 LXC container with USB passthrough for the SDR itself.
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Here is a run through of installing/configuring an APRS feeder with an SDR and Direwolf.
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```shell
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# Install required packages
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apt-get install rtl-sdr direwolf
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```
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My `sdr.conf` file for reference with callsign and location blanked out.
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```shell
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ACHANNELS 1
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ADEVICE null null
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CHANNEL 0
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MYCALL <CALLSIGN>-10
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IGSERVER aunz.aprs2.net
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IGLOGIN <CALLSIGN> 23018
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MODEM 1200
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AGWPORT 8000
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KISSPORT 8001
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PBEACON sendto=IG delay=0:30 every=10:00 symbol="/-" lat=-12.3456 long=12.3456 alt=in_meter comment="RTLSDR"
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```
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This is my `run.sh` script I currently launch in `screen` until I can get around to setting up a systemd service.
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It simply gets the output from the APRS frequency and pipes it into direwolf launched with our above `sdr.conf` config.
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```shell
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#!/bin/bash
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# -f 144.575M Tunes to 144.575 Mhz
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# -g 20.7 is the gain value, rtl_test to view available options
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rtl_fm -f 144.575M -s 22050 -g 20.7 | direwolf -c /root/sdr.conf -r 22050 -D 1 -B 1200 -
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```
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If you set up the LONG/LAT coords properly, you should be able to view your home station on [aprs.fi](https://aprs.fi/)! |