4 ms·

MeshTNC is a tool for turning consumer grade LoRa radios into KISS TNC compatib

33 points by todsacerdoti 8mo ago

xantronix 8mo ago
Fuck. Yeah. Bud. I have a userland AX.25 stack I wrote as my pandemic project, and pairing that with MeshTNC will be a dream come true for me. My stack has a few utilities for bridging KISS interfaces together, and exposing APRS-IS as a KISS interface itself, so I can definitely see a lot of cool things coming from this. (If I were feeling extra spicy, I could bind, say, /bin/login to a specific SSID and get a shell into my home machine from across town!)
- iberator 8mo ago
  ax.25 tcp/ip is doable and Battle-tested :) why reinvent tre whell?
  - xantronix 8mo ago
    Curious, which part is reinventing the wheel? If you're referring to the /bin/login hack, imagine instead, it's BBS software. (I had a lot of fun accessing my home computer from across town with a Psion 5mx and a Kenwood TH-D7! No practical value, just a good challenge.) As for the APRS-IS bridge, that would be quite useful for bridging relevant APRS-IS traffic within a given radius to LoRA, and vice-versa. Also, I'm quite aware of IP over AX.25: I generally prefer to avoid that extra overhead for my intended applications. The stack I wrote exposes a BSD sockets-like interface to make it easy to make lots of software able to participate in the AX.25 fun, and even compiles on PowerPC Macintoshes for what it's worth.
- colanderman 8mo ago
  Hah! I was literally about to open up my nascent userland AX.25 stack. Is yours open-source, or would you mind sharing? (My e-mail is in my profile.) I want to get something running on an ESP32-S3. My goal is to turn a Cardputer into a companion TNC console for my Kenwood TH-D74.
  - xantronix 8mo ago
    It is technically! I sent you an email. It's very POSIX-y, unfortunately, but if you were to make some sort of shim for file descriptors (big ask heh) you would be able to use it just fine.
Creamsicle47 8mo ago
Been quite a while since I've seen that word use outside of an LLM context.
- politelemon 8mo ago
  I haven't encountered this term outside of stable diffusion and could probably do with a primer of what this is about.
  - staplung 8mo ago
    LoRa is short for Long Range. It's basically about providing a physical layer for networks over radio using spread spectrum modulation. It's got long range, even for fairly low-power devices, but also low bandwidth. Think IoT stuff. LoRaWAN is a layer above in the network stack (MAC) and runs on top of LoRa. TNC is "terminal node controller". They're kinda sorta like modems for radios. KISS TNC is a particular protocol for communication between a radio and a TNC.
- kwk1 8mo ago
  In the LLM space, it's LoRA, not LoRa. Not great!
- subscribed 8mo ago
  There are two competing hobbyist projects (Meshcore, Meshtastic), but they're so chaotic and random I don't think they have much ahead of them. LoRaWAN will remain but this is different.
anonymousiam 8mo ago
I haven't done any AX.25 (or KISS) for over 30 years. Is it still a thing, or has the packet radio community moved on to something better? Back when I began, there were no turn-key solutions, so you often needed to modify your radio to get something on the air. This was especially true for 9600 baud FSK setups. For a while, there was a community of stations creating an infrastructure similar to the dial-up BBS world, including message forwarding (UUCP). There were even a few Internet gateways for a while. (I ran one of the two that were reachable from my corner of LA.) I imagine they're everywhere today. (Getting married and raising children can quash a lot of hobbies.)
- BobbyTables2 8mo ago
  I also wonder about the state of packet radio. When I had time, I had no money for equipment. Now that I have money and knowledge, no time…
- colanderman 8mo ago
  I am just getting into the packet scene in the Boston area. APRS aside, as far as I've found, there are about a half dozen Winlink nodes in the area and one BBS. And one lovely node in Cambridge (KZ2X-1 [1]) which provides connectivity to a bevy of ancient (though virtualized) OSes. I don't know how much AMPRnet activity there is. There are only 7 allocations in the area (mine included). I'd love to be able to e.g. log in to my home network from a few radio hops away but I don't think there's any infrastructure in place for that (such as Mobile IP). [1] https://kz2x.radio/posts/complex/ https://kz2x.radio/posts/complex/
- wolvoleo 8mo ago
  Here in Europe there's nothing left except APRS which I find boring and incongruous with current developments (I try to avoid sharing my location, not to do it actively). What I miss are the long chats. What we needed was a faster packet but it stopped at 9600 which is no longer useful for anything these days.
  - anonymousiam 8mo ago
    Thank you for the report. I've never had any interest in APRS either. Seems like an Air-tag would be more reliable and less wasteful of spectrum. I once worked a European station from my station in Los Angeles. It was Halloween sometime around 1990, and I was on 10m (HF) packet. I had used a digipeater in Washington D.C. to have a QSO with G0BOO. It was memorable mostly because of the remote station's callsign and the fact that it was Halloween.
colanderman 8mo ago
Nice! I've been looking for such a thing lately. KISSLoraTNC [1] is another implementation: The radio control interfaces differ though. [1] https://github.com/kc1awv/KISSLoRaTNC https://github.com/kc1awv/KISSLoRaTNC

33 points by todsacerdoti 8mo ago

Fuck. Yeah. Bud. I have a userland AX.25 stack I wrote as my pandemic project, and pairing that with MeshTNC will be a dream come true for me. My stack has a few utilities for bridging KISS interfaces together, and exposing APRS-IS as a KISS interface itself, so I can definitely see a lot of cool things coming from this. (If I were feeling extra spicy, I could bind, say, /bin/login to a specific SSID and get a shell into my home machine from across town!)

iberator 8mo ago
ax.25 tcp/ip is doable and Battle-tested :) why reinvent tre whell?
- xantronix 8mo ago
  Curious, which part is reinventing the wheel? If you're referring to the /bin/login hack, imagine instead, it's BBS software. (I had a lot of fun accessing my home computer from across town with a Psion 5mx and a Kenwood TH-D7! No practical value, just a good challenge.) As for the APRS-IS bridge, that would be quite useful for bridging relevant APRS-IS traffic within a given radius to LoRA, and vice-versa. Also, I'm quite aware of IP over AX.25: I generally prefer to avoid that extra overhead for my intended applications. The stack I wrote exposes a BSD sockets-like interface to make it easy to make lots of software able to participate in the AX.25 fun, and even compiles on PowerPC Macintoshes for what it's worth.
colanderman 8mo ago
Hah! I was literally about to open up my nascent userland AX.25 stack. Is yours open-source, or would you mind sharing? (My e-mail is in my profile.) I want to get something running on an ESP32-S3. My goal is to turn a Cardputer into a companion TNC console for my Kenwood TH-D74.
- xantronix 8mo ago
  It is technically! I sent you an email. It's very POSIX-y, unfortunately, but if you were to make some sort of shim for file descriptors (big ask heh) you would be able to use it just fine.

Creamsicle47 8mo ago

Been quite a while since I've seen that word use outside of an LLM context.

politelemon 8mo ago
I haven't encountered this term outside of stable diffusion and could probably do with a primer of what this is about.
- staplung 8mo ago
  LoRa is short for Long Range. It's basically about providing a physical layer for networks over radio using spread spectrum modulation. It's got long range, even for fairly low-power devices, but also low bandwidth. Think IoT stuff. LoRaWAN is a layer above in the network stack (MAC) and runs on top of LoRa. TNC is "terminal node controller". They're kinda sorta like modems for radios. KISS TNC is a particular protocol for communication between a radio and a TNC.
kwk1 8mo ago
In the LLM space, it's LoRA, not LoRa. Not great!
subscribed 8mo ago
There are two competing hobbyist projects (Meshcore, Meshtastic), but they're so chaotic and random I don't think they have much ahead of them. LoRaWAN will remain but this is different.

anonymousiam 8mo ago

I haven't done any AX.25 (or KISS) for over 30 years. Is it still a thing, or has the packet radio community moved on to something better? Back when I began, there were no turn-key solutions, so you often needed to modify your radio to get something on the air. This was especially true for 9600 baud FSK setups. For a while, there was a community of stations creating an infrastructure similar to the dial-up BBS world, including message forwarding (UUCP). There were even a few Internet gateways for a while. (I ran one of the two that were reachable from my corner of LA.) I imagine they're everywhere today. (Getting married and raising children can quash a lot of hobbies.)

BobbyTables2 8mo ago
I also wonder about the state of packet radio. When I had time, I had no money for equipment. Now that I have money and knowledge, no time…
colanderman 8mo ago
I am just getting into the packet scene in the Boston area. APRS aside, as far as I've found, there are about a half dozen Winlink nodes in the area and one BBS. And one lovely node in Cambridge (KZ2X-1 [1]) which provides connectivity to a bevy of ancient (though virtualized) OSes. I don't know how much AMPRnet activity there is. There are only 7 allocations in the area (mine included). I'd love to be able to e.g. log in to my home network from a few radio hops away but I don't think there's any infrastructure in place for that (such as Mobile IP). [1] https://kz2x.radio/posts/complex/ https://kz2x.radio/posts/complex/
wolvoleo 8mo ago
Here in Europe there's nothing left except APRS which I find boring and incongruous with current developments (I try to avoid sharing my location, not to do it actively). What I miss are the long chats. What we needed was a faster packet but it stopped at 9600 which is no longer useful for anything these days.
- anonymousiam 8mo ago
  Thank you for the report. I've never had any interest in APRS either. Seems like an Air-tag would be more reliable and less wasteful of spectrum. I once worked a European station from my station in Los Angeles. It was Halloween sometime around 1990, and I was on 10m (HF) packet. I had used a digipeater in Washington D.C. to have a QSO with G0BOO. It was memorable mostly because of the remote station's callsign and the fact that it was Halloween.

colanderman 8mo ago

Nice! I've been looking for such a thing lately. KISSLoraTNC [1] is another implementation: The radio control interfaces differ though. [1] https://github.com/kc1awv/KISSLoRaTNC https://github.com/kc1awv/KISSLoRaTNC