I'm using a Pi 2 running Raspbian Jessie, along with Direwolf, a Singalink and a Baofeng UV-5R. I maintain a 1200 baud packet RMS Gateway at our our local Office of Emergency Management. Here's the steps I took, with great thanks to Andrew's Memory Blog who was doing something similar.
- Connect the radio to the Pi. In my case, I had a spare Signalink which I used. I built an audio cord from half of an old Baofeng earpiece and some Cat5 cable.
- Update your Pi with: 'sudo apt-get update' and then 'sudo apt-get upgrade'
- Download and build Direwolf. Instructions for doing so on a Pi are here. These instructions are for an iGate, but the basics of getting direwolf on the Pi come straight from the software author and as great.
- Configure Direwolf with your callsign and sound card. The file to edit is direwolf.conf, found in the installation directory. VERY IMPORTANT: This tripped me up even AFTER reading this. Be sure to avoid the “# ADEVICE – plughw:1,0” line. It looks a lot like the correct “ADEVICE plughw:1,0” line, but takes input from stdin instead of the sound card. Uncomment the one WITHOUT the dash in the middle of it.
- Install AX25. Next: sudo apt-get install ax25-tools ax25-apps libax25-dev libncurses5-dev
- Edit /etc/ax25/axports and set one line to: radio mycall 1200 255 2 VHF
- Make sure all the other lines in axports have # in front of them (it doesn’t like blank lines).
- Run “direwolf -p” to get the KISS port. It will show up as something like /dev/pts/2. Once it’s running, move to another terminal window
- Next: 'sudo kissattach /dev/pts/2 radio 44.56.4.120'. You should receive a notice saying something like the AX0 device is ready. (A little explination: Any address in the 44.0.0.0 range will work. Also, /dev/pts/2 can change with each running of direwolf. You can either use the setting direwolf reports OR use the symlink direwolf creates each time which is /tmp/kisstnc)
- Make sure everything is connected, your radio is on, the volume is turn up and you are on the right frequency.
- Call the local gateway. 'axcall radio -s <YOUR CALLSIGN> <GATEWAY'S CALLSIGN>'. As an example, I used: 'axcall radio -s w5cwt w5cwt-10' It should respond with "Trying..." Watch your direwolf window and you should be able to follow the traffic there. Once it gets a connected reply from the gateway, the axcall program will go into "Talk" mode with a split screen. When you type commands, they will appear in the bottom and the response will appear at the top.
- Once you get a CMS prompt, enter LM (or another legal command) and you will be prompted for a password. The details of the password exchange are here.
- After your password is accepted, it will respond with "Hello <CALLSIGN>". Now you can issue any of the keyboard access commands.
- After your session, quit direwolf with <CTRL>-C. Also use 'sudo killall kissattach' to reset the AX25 port. Rebooting also works.
Took me FOREVER to find these, so here's a list of Keyboard Access Commands:
- LM - List all messages
- RM - Read all messages for me.
- KM - Kill (delete) all messages for me.
- R XXXXXXXXX -Read content of message ID XXXXXXXXX (all caps)
- K XXXXXXXXX - Kill message number XXXXXXXXX.
- SP <DESTINATION> - Send a message. Can be a callsign within Winlink or a full email address. It will then prompt you for the Subject and Text. To end, use /EX on a blank line.
- H - Help, Displays help information.
- B - Bye, logs out of the system.
