I have to say getting Direwolf downloaded and compiled was pretty simple. Following the User Guides online to set it up as Digipeater was pretty straight forward. I had two setups.
The first was the tracker. One UV-5R connected to a Mobilinkd TNC and then via Bluetooth to my Android phone using APRSDroid. This was a pretty simple setup.
The second was the Digipeater. A UV-5R connected to my Laptop with a BTECH-APRS-V01 cable. Again a pretty simple setup for testing.
So once I had those setup, I ran Direwolf from the CLI and it started no problem. But it wasn't transmitting to the radio. After a few moments, I released I forgot to put the digi's radio in VOX mode since I don't have a PTT interface. Once I got that fixed and restarted Direwolf. I noticed the digi's packet on APRSDroid. So success there.
The next test was the one that had me stumped. Fromm APRSDroid, I would send a packet out. The digi's radio indicated that it was receiving something, but the packet was not decoded. The only thing I think of is it was an audio setting. Going through the guides I had talked about use alsamixer to set the audio levels. I tried that with as many configurations that I could think of to set. Still no go. So I set everything aside and went work.
While working, I started thinking about what could be wrong here. Finally, I wondered , hey technically my Linux Distro uses pulseAudio. I wonder if that's the culprit. A quick Google search and I come across a PDF document for Direwolf. In it, it clearly states that with pulseAudio, you should use pavucontrol to set the audio. I was like, ok it's worth a try. So after fiddling with the mic settings, there I go back to testing Direwolf.
Much to my surprise, I fire up Direwolf and have APRSDroid send a beacon. Direwolf's output shows the packet. On APRS.fi, it shows that that packet was IGATEd to the APRS-IS servers. Which means I had a success.
Now that I know that Direwolf was pretty easy to configure, I can try to plan out what my APRS Digi will really look like. One thing for sure, I think I want to use a Raspberry Pi for this project. I'll keep all of you posted with progress.