WL-500G as an APRS igate

Last week, 9W2DIE passed his Asus WL-500G to me with the hope that I could convert it as an APRS igate. This router has a single USB port which could take most USB devices connected to it, surely, with the correct firmware and kernel modules loaded. After few days, at last, I managed get it to work.. so what do we need to give this old router a new life?

1. X-WRT/OpenWRT 8.09 or later firmware, 2.4 kernel is good enough (openwrt-brcm-2.4-squashfs.trx)
2. PL2303 USB-Serial converter (Belkin or FTDI should work fine too.. but not CH314 which we need kernel 2.6 for it)
3. Load of patience

Loading the x-wrt/openwrt firmware is a straight forward by following this guide. We need to use tftp though, I've no idea if we could upgrade the stock firmware with the x-wrt one using the web interface, but no harm trying.

After we've successfully uploaded the new firmware, we need to add few extra stuffs to make the USB works. Go to web interface, under System->Packages, add usb-ohci, usb-serial and the correct kernel module for the USB-Serial converter .. since I was using PL2303, so the usb-serial-pl2303 is the right module to be installed. Attaching the USB-Serial converter should load the pl2303 kernel module automatically.

The rest of the setup should be the same as the one found here.

No hardware modification needed for this router, not like the Linksys WRT54G series. Any TNC which supports KISS mode should work just fine. I've tested the Byonic's TinyTrak4 and probably will try Argent Data's OT1+ this weekend (if we've another TT).

As of now, we've successfully converted Linksys WRT54GL and WL-500G for iGate usage. The good thing about using the router is, it can still be your normal wireless router + it can acts as your igate too. Killing two birds with one stone .. and it saves your electricity bill too ..

Nothing much to write but something to share..

Yesterday,  someone named Fred in tracker2 mailing list sent this link to the list .. it is an interview done by  revision3/hak5 online with N4PAT on APRS.

How to build APRS on the cheap - Video

Enjoy!!

New gadgets .. before the year end comes ..

Bought two new gadgets, an iPhone to replace my aging HTC Touch and WZR-HP-300NH draft-N router ... and guess what, both are below my expectation. Before buying the iPhone, I was contemplating on going for HTC Android based phones but after looking at the pros & cons and the packages given by the two telcos (HTC Hero on Celcom & iPhone on Maxis), I went for the iPhone. I guess it will take sometime for me to get used to the iPhone.. been using stylus all these time and now .. I need to use my fingers to enter texts etc. I wonder those who're using the iPhone to browse the net, how on earth could they select a link which close together w/o using stylus. One other thing .. unlucky me, I got the later version of iPhone which come with iBoot 359.3.2 and I couldn't use Pwnage since Apple has fixed the firmware. Grrr.. I could however blackra1n it .. but I'll let it stays virgin for the time being.

The other gadget which is below my expectation is the WZR-HP-300NH router. I was expecting that the HP which stands for High Power could solve my problem getting the signal up to the 3rd floor of the house .. but it just failed. I couldn't see it from my son's PC which could see the WHRG125 it replaces. I should've done my research for buying this .. no 3rd party firmware is available at the moment and none in the working either. Oh well...

First few contacts on 6 Meter ..

Couldn't hold my excitement .. I've tried few times working on 6 meter, most of the time by listening to 50.110 but most of the time, it returned with just load of noise .. nothing much excitement coming from 6 meter band .. so I thought until I call on CQ this afternoon .. did my call at 3:30PM MYT and thanks to the following VK6 stations for the contact:

VK6KXW (Peter) - 55 to 57

VK6ADI (Barrie) - 53 QSB

VK6JJ (John) - 42 and lost you on your last transmission

VK6IA (Andrew) - 53

VK6IQ (Glen) - 55

Thanks all for the contact, you guys really made my day today. Sorry if I missed to wish all of you Merry Christmas & Happy New Year ..

Using Ubuntu Karmic Koala for remote logging

I've few routers running DD-WRT and OpenWRT in my house, one acting as the main router, another one as AP only and the last one running APRS4R package to gate traffics from APRS/RF to APRS-IS and vice-versa. These routers are running on limited memory and I do need to sometime check the log when some of them suddenly stop working, so logging into the router itself is kind of useless (it will be gone when I restart the router) and added to the problem.

Since I've Ubuntu Karmic Koala running on my LHS, this is the best time to use it fully. One thing that I'm not so sure is, how to enable remote logging. I had Debian Lenny running on my Buffalo LinkStation II before and I didn't need to do anything fancy.. it works out of the box.. but it doesn't seem to be with my current LHS. I searched around the net with even more confusion .. but finally, I found a discussion about the logging system on Karmic .. it is no longer using syslogd but rsyslogd now. Yes, that is it .. so, I went to look for a guide on how to enable remote logging via rsyslogd and found this document:

www.ubuntu.com/system/files/CentralLogging-v4-20090901-03.pdf

Remove the comments for UDP/TCP syslog receptions from /etc/rsyslog.conf and rerun the rsyslog and this seems to solve this problem.

New mailing list for APRS users in Malaysia

It seems that the number of APRS users in Malaysia has been increasing steadily of late and as such, having a mailing list to discuss issues and suggestions to make APRS even better assimilated within the amateur radio operators is the best way. Currently, APRS is mainly concentrated in KL, Penang, JB and Kota Kinabalu with some others are coming up with the infra and slowly adapting.

From my past few weeks experience going around Peninsular Malaysia, it seems that the setup in Penang is more toward having one way igate, with JB following suite but I believe there is at least one working digipeater somewhere in Tampoi. Hopefully with this new mailing list, we could share our knowledge locally and discuss what the best to improve the adaptation of APRS among Malaysian radio amateur operators.



For those who're interested, our mailing list is: myaprs @ yahoogroups.com.

What things running on my LHS?

It has been more than three weeks since I built my own headless Linux Home Server out of Intel Atom processor & motherboard running Ubuntu 9.10 server edition. I've been adding new things as I go along, getting more servers running to max out and justify me running it as it is .. a server. So, what've been running now?

1. samba - network storage for all PCs in the house (5 PCs running WinXP & 1 MBP on Snow Leopard)
2. aprs4r - APRS igate/digipeater to pass packets to and from aprs-is (amateur radio)
3. torrentflux b4rt - filesharing stuff
4. cups - sharing a single HL2140 laser printer for the whole house
5. firefly - streaming media files to iTunes media player
6. mediatomb - streaming media files to PS3

I think the LHS is still "under utilised" and thinking of adding more as time goes. For now, it is worth it to replace my old Buffalo LS2 to a full-fledge Linux Home Server.