Direwrite

E-ink display for Direwolf APRS decoding on Raspberry Pi Zero

Configured to show UTC timestamp, sending station, heard station, symbol, levels, lat/lon, and any comment available.

Requirements

Hardware

Designed for Pi Zero W and Papirus 2" E-ink display. My station uses a Baofeng UV-5R with BTech APRS-K2 cable, feeding the Pi via a Sabrent USB sound card. It's currently configured as an RX-only iGate due to poor performance issues with the UV-5R vox and TX.

Software

All code references to gktnc should be replaced with your home directory. All scrips and instructions assume this repo is cloned into your home directory.

Direwolf TNC set up for APRS - See https://k5eok.org/2021/01/19/aprs-digipeater-igate-with-direwolf-entry-level/ for a good guide. You must configure daily logging with LOGDIR /home/gktnc/direwolf-logs (where gktnc is replaced with your home directory) in your direwolf.conf file.
Papirus with Python 3 API - See https://github.com/PiSupply/PaPiRus

#TMUX
sudo apt install tmux

#PANDAS
pip3 install pandas

#OPTIONAL - if get Python error "Importing the numpy c-extensions failed."
sudo apt-get install libatlas-base-dev

Enable execution permissions of scripts

chmod u+x /home/gktnc/Direwrite/direwrite.sh chmod u+x /home/gktnc/Direwrite/kill_dw.sh

Run manually

Run manually with direwolf -t 0 & python3 /home/gktnc/Direwrite/direwrite.py or with sh /home/gktnc/Direwrite/direwrite.sh

May need to kill Direwolf after running manually with ps -ef | grep direwolf | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill or with sh /home/gktnc/Direwrite/kill_dw.sh

Set to run automatically on boot

Edit user cron with crontab -e. Add the following entry, updating the script directory as needed: @reboot sleep 30 && /usr/bin/tmux new-session -d -s direwolf /home/gktnc/Direwrite/direwrite.sh

Use tmux attach -t direwolf to view session.

Note: To shutdown the Pi gracefully and preserve the SD card, you should SSH in and perform a manual sudo shutdown -h now