USB to Serial & APRS

[TMIB]

Apologies if this has been covered already- I did some searching and found a few related topics, but I wasn't real clear on the answer.


I'm planning to buy a Pandora. One of the (many) things I'd like to do with it is hook it up to my Ham radio TTC (http://www.byonics.com/tinytrak4/) as well as my GPS. These are currently working great when I plug them into a Windows machine via a USB to Serial cable (Prolific drivers). Are there similar drivers for Linux I can use on the Pandora? Will I be able to use the existing setup I have? I saw a lot of posts about some kind of add-on external serial port, but nothing that really described what this was or why it would be needed instead of just using the USB port.


Also, how difficult is it to port existing Linux programs to the Pandora? Last time I messed around with Linux was almost a decade ago, so it's not exactly fresh in my memory. I was hoping to use Xastir (http://www.xastir.org/) on the Pandora along with the aforementioned USB to Serial connector to run my APRS rig.


Please be patient with my Linux and Pandora ignorance. My primary use for this is retro gaming, but the form factor and features of this thing would really lend themselves well to my other hobbies.


Thanks,


--TMIB

 

[ckblackm]

There has been some success with the TinyTrak4 under linux... I did a search for linux at the yahoo group for TinyTrak4 (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tinytrak4/)


and got a few hits.... so you might look there.


As far as a USB-serial cable, I've not tried that (although I could.. I've got one around here somewhere... might try hooking it up to my signalink for giggles).


To port programs to the Pandora really depends on if the software is open source and freely available. No source = no port.


HTH,


Christopher.

 

[TMIB]

There has been some success with the TinyTrak4 under linux... I did a search for linux at the yahoo group for TinyTrak4 (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tinytrak4/)


and got a few hits.... so you might look there.


As far as a USB-serial cable, I've not tried that (although I could.. I've got one around here somewhere... might try hooking it up to my signalink for giggles).


To port programs to the Pandora really depends on if the software is open source and freely available. No source = no port.


HTH,


Christopher.

Thanks Christopher. Communication with the TT4 is just serial communication, and so long as you can connect to it, configuring is pretty straightforward. (Even in Windows, much of it is done by telnetting to the port.) What I'm more curious about is whether or not the usb to serial cables will work (and if so, where to find appropriate drivers). If that's going to be a big hurdle, I may look at other options, such as a Bluetooth serial adapter. It seems like USB to Serial is the kind of thing that someone has likely already figured out though, and may even work out of the box.


That's also good news about porting programs- Xastir is open source and thus all of the source code is freely available. Binaries exist for a bunch of different Linux distributions as well.


Could you (or someone else) point me in the right direction to do some reading on what I need to know to compile open source Linux programs for Pandora? This is a bit premature since I haven't even purchased a unit yet, but I'd like to read up on the specifics as much as I can.


It'd be really sweet to be able to get in my Jeep, plug my Pandora into the USB cable running to the TT4 and GPS, fire up Xastir and have it handle heads-up GPS display as well as APRS communication. I have this setup working right now on a Windows machine, but the small form factor on the Pandora means I could easily set it on the dash and use it to show my current position.


Thanks,


--TMIB

 

[panik]

What I'm more curious about is whether or not the usb to serial cables will work (and if so, where to find appropriate drivers). If that's going to be a big hurdle, I may look at other options, such as a Bluetooth serial adapter. It seems like USB to Serial is the kind of thing that someone has likely already figured out though, and may even work out of the box.

In a powered USB 2.0 hub, these FTDI products work without any drivers on the Pandora. I use their USB-TTL cable myself. Communicate with it on /dev/ttyUSB0.


Edit: MarkoeZ demonstrates the FTDI breakoutboard on the Pandora here.

 

[TMIB]

What I'm more curious about is whether or not the usb to serial cables will work (and if so, where to find appropriate drivers). If that's going to be a big hurdle, I may look at other options, such as a Bluetooth serial adapter. It seems like USB to Serial is the kind of thing that someone has likely already figured out though, and may even work out of the box.

In a powered USB 2.0 hub, these FTDI products work without any drivers on the Pandora. I use their USB-TTL cable myself. Communicate with it on /dev/ttyUSB0.


Edit: MarkoeZ demonstrates the FTDI breakoutboard on the Pandora here.

Excellent news, thanks. Digging a bit myself, I found that Prolific has Linux drivers for the cables I have. If those don't work, I can fall back on the FTDI cables.


Thanks for the link!

 

[TMIB]

I messed around with this a bit yesterday. It looks like it's recognizing the Prolific USB to serial adaptor just fine. I'm just not sure what to do next...


I still need to figure out what I'm going to do for APRS software, but in the meantime, I thought I'd just hook up the GPS and run modRana. However being the Linux noob that I am, I'm not sure what I need to do in order to enable the GPS.


if I run dmesg from a terminal, it shows the serial adaptor just fine. Here's the relevant output:

Spoiler

[26004.941986] usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using ehci-omap and address 3

[26005.100555] usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice

[26005.127471] hub 1-2:1.0: USB hub found

[26005.131896] hub 1-2:1.0: 4 ports detected

[26005.356964] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=05e3, idProduct=0608

[26005.363739] usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=1, SerialNumber=0

[26005.370971] usb 1-2: Product: USB2.0 Hub

[26005.396789] wlan0: detected beacon loss from AP - sending probe request

[26005.536193] usb 1-2.1: new full speed USB device using ehci-omap and address 4

[26005.667205] usb 1-2.1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice

[26005.690582] usb 1-2.1: New USB device found, idVendor=067b, idProduct=2303

[26005.697601] usb 1-2.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0

[26005.704986] usb 1-2.1: Product: USB-Serial Controller D

[26005.710266] usb 1-2.1: Manufacturer: Prolific Technology Inc. 

[26005.838409] usb 1-2.4: new full speed USB device using ehci-omap and address 5

[26005.951324] No probe response from AP c39c9ebc after 500ms, try 1

[26005.990814] usb 1-2.4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice

[26006.019439] usb 1-2.4: New USB device found, idVendor=067b, idProduct=2303

[26006.026489] usb 1-2.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0

[26006.033874] usb 1-2.4: Product: USB-Serial Controller

[26006.038970] usb 1-2.4: Manufacturer: Prolific Technology Inc.

[26006.323181] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial

[26006.329254] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for generic

[26006.335510] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial_generic

[26006.342102] usbserial: USB Serial Driver core

[26006.449829] No probe response from AP c39c9ebc after 500ms, try 2

[26006.466308] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for pl2303

[26006.472381] pl2303 1-2.1:1.0: pl2303 converter detected

[26006.496765] usb 1-2.1: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB0

[26006.502777] pl2303 1-2.4:1.0: pl2303 converter detected

[26006.511047] usb 1-2.4: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB1

[26006.517150] usbcore: registered new interface driver pl2303

[26006.527954] pl2303: Prolific PL2303 USB to serial adaptor driver

What do I need to do next in order to get it to see the GPS data feeding in from the port?


Thanks,


--TMIB

 

[TMIB]

Ok, I tried doing a gpsd -Nn -D3 /dev/ttyUSB0. that seemed to work for getting data, as I saw the correct information coming through the port (including my correct lat/long)


However launching modRana, it just continued to show the default location in Germany. It also hung whenever it tried to download tiles. I wasn't connected to a network, but didn't expect it to hang, instead I just expected it to show blank tiles. I went back inside and tried to get tiles, but I think it just loaded more of Germany.


I went back out to the Jeep and tried again. This time trying to do the same gpsd -Nn -D3 /dev/ttyUSB0 says it's already running. I tried stopping the GPS (sudo /etc/init.d/gpsd stop as well as just gpsd stop) byt it doesn't seem to make a difference.


So... my new questions are:


1) how do I tell if the GPS is actually running? I assume the original command to run it in the foreground is why I was actively seeing the data.


2) how do I stop it?


3) how do I set it up to start automatically when plugged into the GPS or when I launch modRana?


4) does modRana normally hang like that? I could try TangoGPS, but was hoping to use the voice features in modRana.