PiPat

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I was looking forward to using PiGate on my TNC-Pi rig as a Winlink client, but the pre-built disk images don't work with my hardware (Raspberry Pi 3B+). The integrator/maintainer of PiGate, Mark Griffith KD0QYN, told me that building a new image is getting harder because Raspbian has moved to PHP7, and SquirrelMail is incompatible and is not likely to be updated.

Instead, I set about setting up something similar with Pat and setting up the Pi in WiFi AP mode. There are only a couple of Winlink RMSs on VHF in my area, and none that I can reach from my house on my current equipment, so I've been driving to a nearby hill with good line-of-sight. I can power the Pi with a USB battery, connect my phone or laptop to the WiFi AP, and go to town with the Pat web application! I call it PiPat.

Comments

  1. TSmedes, K8TCSSeptember 16, 2019 at 2:38 PM

    Hi followed your instructions on setting up Pat on the PI and they are brilliant. Thanks for those, I do have a question on setting the PI as an access point, I can get the pi AP to show up but I am unable to get a client to connect to it, I followed the instructions from the github link and it seems to be working except the client side connection. You mentioned you had to do some fiddling to get it working, curious what you had to correct?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. XyloSeptember 16, 2019 at 6:13 PM

      Asking hard questions :)

      As the doc mentions, I followed https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/a/100196/106849, but found a couple of things needed to be changed. Unfortunately, I don't remember all of the gyrations I went through.

      From inspection, the difference appears to be the 0th step: which systemctl services to mask. On my system, networking is masked, but dhcpcd is not.

      All of the files and scripts in steps 1-4 seem to have the same content as the SE post. The only big difference is that step 1 calls for a file called wpa_supplicant-wlan0.conf, where I used /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf.

      Hope that helps!

      Delete
  2. TSmedes, K8TCSSeptember 17, 2019 at 2:34 PM

    Thanks for the quick response, and yes that does help, one additional question just to make sure I am apples to apples, what version of Raspbian are you running?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. XyloSeptember 17, 2019 at 2:42 PM

      It was a recent Buster build, not sure I could pin it down more than that.

      Delete
    2. TSmedes, K8TCSSeptember 18, 2019 at 12:24 PM

      I hate to keep bothering you, using Pat on the PI is working perfect, but I am still struggling with the WiFi access point part. Did you shutdown the NetworkManager.service and just run the network.service?

      Delete
    3. XyloSeptember 18, 2019 at 3:43 PM

      No worries! I made a fresh install to make sure I could replicate my steps, and tried using the GitHub version, which was a success (and much less work than last time). I tried to streamline it as much as possible in the doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dJY5iXwyYGQgYm9Cp68SarbZO_Nobx-BP2fhIsRSx08/preview#heading=h.u1ql4fi7sssb. Take a look!

      Delete
    4. TSmedes, K8TCSSeptember 18, 2019 at 7:21 PM

      I started from scratch as well again this eveni g and now have a working AP and a portable Pat station. Thanks for all of your help

      Delete
    5. XyloSeptember 18, 2019 at 8:23 PM

      Glad it's working!

      Delete
  3. TSmedes, K8TCSSeptember 17, 2019 at 3:18 PM

    Nope, that is perfect. again thanks for your help and the great write up, it has been very helpful!

    ReplyDelete

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