prismtracker

ABOUT

This program aims to be a lightweight, extensible APRS client specifically written to run as a daemon for tracking and telemetry purposes.

It currently supports building APRS compressed position reports with course, speed, optional altitude, and optional timestamps from a running local gpsd instance. It can broadcast APRS packets either through the Linux AX.25 stack by calling out to the `beacon` program or send packets directly to an APRS-IS server. It is designed to run from systemd as a service and be part of a headless installation.

Questions, comments, and patches are welcome. Email elektron@halo.nu

Links

• Official git repo: https://k6fsm.net/prismtracker.git
• Github mirror: https://github.com/ph1l/prismtracker

Installation

via pip

pip3 install prismtracker

from source

git clone https://k6fsm.net/prismtracker.git
cd prismtracker
python3 ./setup.py build
sudo python3 ./setup.py install

Example Usage

prismtracker --call NOCALL-5 --symbol x --beacon --beacon-port ax0 --algorithm smart

Setting up a systemd service

After you test the daemon out from the command line, if you want to make it a system service you can use the config files here to do that. The commands below assume you're running them as root, use `sudo` if you need to escalate your privileges.

Create /etc/systemd/system/prismtracker.service

[Unit]
Description=APRS daemon
Wants=gpsd.service
After=gpsd.service

[Service]
Type=simple
EnvironmentFile=-/etc/default/prismtracker
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/prismtracker $DAEMON_OPTS
User=nobody
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5s

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Create and edit /etc/default/prismtracker

DAEMON_OPTS="--call NOCALL-5 --symbol x --beacon --beacon-port ax0 --algorithm smart"

Setup and start the service

• Reload the systemd service files

# systemctl daemon-reload

• Start the service and check the status

# systemctl start prismtracker.servicea
# systemctl status prismtracker.service

• Enable it for start on boot

# systemctl enable prismtracker.service

Disable and stop the service

# systemctl stop prismtracker.service
# systemctl disable prismtracker.service

See also

ax25systemd

a convenient way to configure your AX.25 network on boot. https://github.com/F4FXL/ax25systemd

Other Refrences

APRS Documentation available here: http://www.aprs.org/