PACKET!

Slowly the packet station revives...

Yesterday the D7 was hooked to the JNOS system and many packets are being received.   Even better - the frequency and baud rate are potentially under computer control.

I've been monitoring NET105 on 20 meters for the past month with the UZ7HO soundcard modem.  It's working well and is exciting to see the substatial traffic from around the country.

Much more to come...

JNOS with a Kenwood D7

Here's notes on work in progress to get a D7 (1200/9600 - VHF/UHF) remotely controlled radio working with the JNOS system.

Yes - I know the buffer is too small, there can be data overruns and the D7, like the D700, has the absurd feature of responding to Control Commands in the middle of a KISS data packet.   These are known issues to be dealt with.

Soon I hope to replace the D7 with an D700 - same functionality but more power and more receive range.

Current Status:

• Monitoring 9600 baud traffic on 440.800 MHz.
• Need to figure out why it's not transmitting - try the other D7?

Step 1 - get the MiniItx Linux box (500 MHz, Ubunty 6.06 on a 1 GB CF) talking to the D7 TNC.

I found the available serial ports by checking in /etc/setserial where I'd hardcoded them years ago.   The PC has one built in port, currently used on a powered off KAM, and a dual serial card in the sole external PCI slot.

Picocom is a good little application.   Smaller and less cranky than minicom.   With a little experimentation I discovered that "C-a" is short for Control-a which is the command attention character.   A C-a C-q is the exit sequence.

Since I don't want any modem initialization - I launch picocom as "picocom --noinit --noreset /dev/ttyS5"
The ttyS5 was just a lucky guess....   (C-a C-u for baud up and C-a C-d for baud rate down.   Not needed as I'm using 9k6 but it's handy to know.)

On to JNOS -

To attach the serial port:  (I'm using 'ax1' as the port name...)

  attach asy ax25 ax1 256 256 9600

Jnos has a great built in simple terminal command:   tip ax1  - to give access to the TNC.  

To Enter KISS mode

  kiss on
  restart

To totally reset the D7 TNC:

  reset

To exit kiss mode:

  * set Num Loc on
  alt 1 9 2  alt 2 5 5  alt 1 9 2

Once the TNC is in kiss mode and semi-mangled packets are showing in the display it's time to terminal the TIP session.   F10 to go back to JNOS command session.  Assuming this is the only session running;  kill 1, to kill the session.   Then 'se 1' to go to the session and simple CR to clear it out.

To monitor traffic on the ax1 port:

  trace ax1 311

F9 to the monitor screen to watch the traffic flow.

Step 3 - Testing remote control of the frequency and mode.


Using notes from my D7 at 9600 on UHF blog posting, I manually moved the TNC from 1200 baud on 144.390 to 9600 baud on 440.800 using keyboard commands.

Connected to the TNC 'tip ax1' and cycled power to reset the TNC out of KISS mode.  (The alt192-255-192- should do that and needs to be tested.)

Once in command mode I entered the following commands - less the comments:

;Control mode on.
TC 1!
;Select packet mode.
TNC 0
;sELECT band B for 9k6
BC 1
;Set the frequency to 440.800.
FQ 00440800000,0
;No shift.
SFT 0
;Select data band as 'B.
DTB 1
;Open the TNC in packet mode. 

TC 0
;Send some TNC commands.
ECHO OFF
HBAUD 9600
AWLEN 8

;;;  BV - I don't know which, if any of these commands are needed
BEACON EVERY 0
MON ON
MCOM ON
CONOK OFF
LTMON 10
LOC E 0

;;;; back to kiss

KISS ON

RESTART

I don't believe it's necessary to exit kiss mode to send these command - more experimentation is needed.

JNOS needs to have the modified Kenwood kiss to prevent accidental Kenwood control codes being picked up from the KISS packets.