 | After seeing no operational iGate in the Victorville, California area, I decided to build another iGate for deployment. I had an extra WRT54GL, and I acquired two Motorola Keynote receiver boards from a friend nearby. He pretuned them to the 144.390 MHz APRS Frequency for me to use for this iGate. After a lot of building and troubleshooting, this was the end result. An operational iGate without external peripherals, besides the antenna. |
 | I salvaged a window clip antenna and attatched the RF Connector onto the case, making this a clean looking iGate. Whats inside can be a mess, but it has to look good on the outside, and function. My previous version, I mounted an audio input jack to the case, and tied in a cheap scanner. This version will not have an external reciever, instead it is all inside the router case. |
 | Here is the rat nest of wire and parts. The Keynote reciever board was double stick taped to the RF case for the WiFi. The TinyTrak4 was left in its case, because of the proximity to the motherboard, and the power supply for the pager board sandwhiched in between. First I configured the TT4 with the Callsign, RXAMP, AMODE, and ABAUD. Callsign: KJ6HVB RXAMP: 9 AMODE: KISS ABAUD: 9600 |
 | Here is the power supply I built for the pager board. LM317T Regulator and Schematic http://www.national.com/mpf/LM/LM317.html#Overview |
 | Keynote Pager Reciever Board. Pin 1 - 1.3 VDC Pin 2 - GND Pin 4 - Audio Out Pin 8 - Battery Saver (Jumper to power with 10k resister to enable receiver) |
 | This is a view of the bottom of the pager board, to show where to solder on the connector for the external antenna. |
 | This is the RS232 to TTL 3.3v converter. I had to modify it, so it wouldn't mess up the TT4. I cut the tracer between pins 7 & 8 of the Serial connector, and also cut the tracer going to pin 6. Pinouts (Components on top) Pin 1: Transmit TTL Pin 2: Receive TTL Pin 3: GND Pin 4: 3.3-5v Serial to 3.3v TTL converter (A232DBH3v): http://www.compsys1.com/workbench/On_top_of_the_Bench/Max233_Adapter/max233_adapter.html |
 | JP2: Pin 1: 3.3V Pin 2: 3.3V Pin 3: Tx (ttyS1) Pin 4: Tx (ttyS0) Pin 5: Rx (ttyS1) Pin 6: Rx (ttyS0) Pin 7: NC Pin 8: NC Pin 9: GND Pin 10: GND |
The end result, an operational RX Only iGate for an area that needs it, that isn't messy.
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KI6PSP (Ed)
With the fine tuning you did, this seems to be working great as a back up unit for the high desert travelers going through Victorville valley area.
ReplyDeleteI like that it's a small compact unit with low energy usage demands.
Nice article!
ReplyDeleteThere seems to be a slight problem though, possibly with the real-time clock of the Linksys box you're using, or the aprx igate software that's relying on it. It's sending out telemetry packets at a high rate of 1 packet per second: http://aprs.fi/?c=raw&limit=&call=KI6PSP-10
Could you please investigate this a bit, maybe together with Matti OH2MQK via the aprx users group (http://groups.google.com/group/aprx-software)? Thanks!
I only have this problem with my home router. This new one I documented here doesn't do it. I will work on upgrading my system, and I will document all of my commands for another blog post.
ReplyDeleteKI6PSP