APRSD - Ham radio APRS-IS Message plugin server

KM6LYW and WB4BOR

APRSD is a Ham radio APRS message command gateway built on python.

What is APRSD

APRSD is a python application for interacting with the APRS network and providing APRS services for HAM radio operators.

APRSD currently has 4 main commands to use.

• server - Connect to APRS and listen/respond to APRS messages
• webchat - web based chat program over APRS
• send-message - Send a message to a callsign via APRS_IS.
• listen - Listen to packets on the APRS-IS Network based on FILTER.

Each of those commands can connect to the APRS-IS network if internet connectivity is available. If internet is not available, then APRS can be configured to talk to a TCP KISS TNC for radio connectivity.

Please read the docs to learn more!

APRSD Overview Diagram

Typical use case

APRSD's typical use case is that of providing an APRS wide service to all HAM radio operators. For example the callsign 'REPEAT' on the APRS network is actually an instance of APRSD that can provide a list of HAM repeaters in the area of the callsign that sent the message.

Ham radio operator using an APRS enabled HAM radio sends a message to check the weather. An APRS message is sent, and then picked up by APRSD. The APRS packet is decoded, and the message is sent through the list of plugins for processing. For example, the WeatherPlugin picks up the message, fetches the weather for the area around the user who sent the request, and then responds with the weather conditions in that area. Also includes a watch list of HAM callsigns to look out for. The watch list can notify you when a HAM callsign in the list is seen and now available to message on the APRS network.

Installation

To install aprsd, use Pip:

pip install aprsd

Example usage

aprsd -h

Help

:

└─> aprsd -h
Usage: aprsd [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
  --version   Show the version and exit.
  -h, --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  check-version    Check this version against the latest in pypi.org.
  completion       Show the shell completion code
  dev              Development type subcommands
  fetch-stats      Fetch stats from a APRSD admin web interface.
  healthcheck      Check the health of the running aprsd server.
  list-extensions  List the built in plugins available to APRSD.
  list-plugins     List the built in plugins available to APRSD.
  listen           Listen to packets on the APRS-IS Network based on FILTER.
  sample-config    Generate a sample Config file from aprsd and all...
  send-message     Send a message to a callsign via APRS_IS.
  server           Start the aprsd server gateway process.
  version          Show the APRSD version.
  webchat          Web based HAM Radio chat program!

Commands

Configuration

This command outputs a sample config yml formatted block that you can edit and use to pass in to aprsd with -c. By default aprsd looks in ~/.config/aprsd/aprsd.yml

aprsd sample-config

└─> aprsd sample-config
...

server

This is the main server command that will listen to APRS-IS servers and look for incomming commands to the callsign configured in the config file

└─[$] > aprsd server --help
    Usage: aprsd server [OPTIONS]

      Start the aprsd server gateway process.

    Options:
      --loglevel [CRITICAL|ERROR|WARNING|INFO|DEBUG]
                                      The log level to use for aprsd.log
                                      [default: INFO]
      -c, --config TEXT               The aprsd config file to use for options.
                                      [default:
                                      /Users/i530566/.config/aprsd/aprsd.yml]
      --quiet                         Don't log to stdout
      -f, --flush                     Flush out all old aged messages on disk.
                                      [default: False]
      -h, --help                      Show this message and exit.

└─> aprsd server
Load config
12/07/2021 03:16:17 PM MainThread      INFO     APRSD is up to date                                                                   server.py:51
12/07/2021 03:16:17 PM MainThread      INFO     APRSD Started version: 2.5.6                                                          server.py:52
12/07/2021 03:16:17 PM MainThread      INFO     Using CONFIG values:                                                                  server.py:55
12/07/2021 03:16:17 PM MainThread      INFO     ham.callsign = WB4BOR                                                                 server.py:60
12/07/2021 03:16:17 PM MainThread      INFO     aprs.login = WB4BOR-12                                                                server.py:60
12/07/2021 03:16:17 PM MainThread      INFO     aprs.password = XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX                                                   server.py:58
12/07/2021 03:16:17 PM MainThread      INFO     aprs.host = noam.aprs2.net                                                            server.py:60
12/07/2021 03:16:17 PM MainThread      INFO     aprs.port = 14580                                                                     server.py:60
12/07/2021 03:16:17 PM MainThread      INFO     aprs.logfile = /tmp/aprsd.log                                                         server.py:60

Current list of built-in plugins

└─> aprsd list-plugins
                                                       🐍 APRSD Built-in Plugins 🐍
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Plugin Name       ┃ Info                                                       ┃ Type         ┃ Plugin Path                             ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ AVWXWeatherPlugin │ AVWX weather of GPS Beacon location                        │ RegexCommand │ aprsd.plugins.weather.AVWXWeatherPlugin │
│ EmailPlugin       │ Send and Receive email                                     │ RegexCommand │ aprsd.plugins.email.EmailPlugin         │
│ FortunePlugin     │ Give me a fortune                                          │ RegexCommand │ aprsd.plugins.fortune.FortunePlugin     │
│ LocationPlugin    │ Where in the world is a CALLSIGN's last GPS beacon?        │ RegexCommand │ aprsd.plugins.location.LocationPlugin   │
│ NotifySeenPlugin  │ Notify me when a CALLSIGN is recently seen on APRS-IS      │ WatchList    │ aprsd.plugins.notify.NotifySeenPlugin   │
│ OWMWeatherPlugin  │ OpenWeatherMap weather of GPS Beacon location              │ RegexCommand │ aprsd.plugins.weather.OWMWeatherPlugin  │
│ PingPlugin        │ reply with a Pong!                                         │ RegexCommand │ aprsd.plugins.ping.PingPlugin           │
│ QueryPlugin       │ APRSD Owner command to query messages in the MsgTrack      │ RegexCommand │ aprsd.plugins.query.QueryPlugin         │
│ TimeOWMPlugin     │ Current time of GPS beacon's timezone. Uses OpenWeatherMap │ RegexCommand │ aprsd.plugins.time.TimeOWMPlugin        │
│ TimePlugin        │ What is the current local time.                            │ RegexCommand │ aprsd.plugins.time.TimePlugin           │
│ USMetarPlugin     │ USA only METAR of GPS Beacon location                      │ RegexCommand │ aprsd.plugins.weather.USMetarPlugin     │
│ USWeatherPlugin   │ Provide USA only weather of GPS Beacon location            │ RegexCommand │ aprsd.plugins.weather.USWeatherPlugin   │
│ VersionPlugin     │ What is the APRSD Version                                  │ RegexCommand │ aprsd.plugins.version.VersionPlugin     │
└───────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────┘


                                                Pypi.org APRSD Installable Plugin Packages

                               Install any of the following plugins with 'pip install '
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Plugin Package Name          ┃ Description                                                        ┃ Version ┃   Released   ┃ Installed? ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ 📂 aprsd-stock-plugin        │ Ham Radio APRSD Plugin for fetching stock quotes                   │  0.1.3  │ Dec 2, 2022  │     No     │
│ 📂 aprsd-sentry-plugin       │ Ham radio APRSD plugin that does....                               │  0.1.2  │ Dec 2, 2022  │     No     │
│ 📂 aprsd-timeopencage-plugin │ APRSD plugin for fetching time based on GPS location               │  0.1.0  │ Dec 2, 2022  │     No     │
│ 📂 aprsd-weewx-plugin        │ HAM Radio APRSD that reports weather from a weewx weather station. │  0.1.4  │ Dec 7, 2021  │    Yes     │
│ 📂 aprsd-repeat-plugins      │ APRSD Plugins for the REPEAT service                               │ 1.0.12  │ Dec 2, 2022  │     No     │
│ 📂 aprsd-telegram-plugin     │ Ham Radio APRS APRSD plugin for Telegram IM service                │  0.1.3  │ Dec 2, 2022  │     No     │
│ 📂 aprsd-twitter-plugin      │ Python APRSD plugin to send tweets                                 │  0.3.0  │ Dec 7, 2021  │     No     │
│ 📂 aprsd-slack-plugin        │ Amateur radio APRS daemon which listens for messages and responds  │  1.0.5  │ Dec 18, 2022 │     No     │
└──────────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴─────────┴──────────────┴────────────┘


                                  🐍 APRSD Installed 3rd party Plugins 🐍
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Package Name       ┃ Plugin Name     ┃ Version ┃ Type         ┃ Plugin Path                              ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ aprsd-weewx-plugin │ WeewxMQTTPlugin │   1.0   │ RegexCommand │ aprsd_weewx_plugin.weewx.WeewxMQTTPlugin │
└────────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────┴──────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────┘

send-message

This command is typically used for development to send another aprsd instance test messages

└─[$] > aprsd send-message -h
Usage: aprsd send-message [OPTIONS] TOCALLSIGN COMMAND...

  Send a message to a callsign via APRS_IS.

Options:
  --loglevel [CRITICAL|ERROR|WARNING|INFO|DEBUG]
                                  The log level to use for aprsd.log
                                  [default: INFO]
  -c, --config TEXT               The aprsd config file to use for options.
                                  [default:
                                  /Users/i530566/.config/aprsd/aprsd.yml]
  --quiet                         Don't log to stdout
  --aprs-login TEXT               What callsign to send the message from.
                                  [env var: APRS_LOGIN]
  --aprs-password TEXT            the APRS-IS password for APRS_LOGIN  [env
                                  var: APRS_PASSWORD]
  -n, --no-ack                    Don't wait for an ack, just sent it to APRS-
                                  IS and bail.  [default: False]
  -w, --wait-response             Wait for a response to the message?
                                  [default: False]
  --raw TEXT                      Send a raw message.  Implies --no-ack
  -h, --help                      Show this message and exit.

SEND EMAIL (radio to smtp server)

Received message______________
Raw         : KM6XXX>APY400,WIDE1-1,qAO,KM6XXX-1::KM6XXX-9 :-user@host.com test new shortcuts global, radio to pc{29
From        : KM6XXX
Message     : -user@host.com test new shortcuts global, radio to pc
Msg number  : 29

Sending Email_________________
To          : user@host.com
Subject     : KM6XXX
Body        : test new shortcuts global, radio to pc

Sending ack __________________ Tx(3)
Raw         : KM6XXX-9>APRS::KM6XXX   :ack29
To          : KM6XXX
Ack number  : 29

RECEIVE EMAIL (imap server to radio)

Sending message_______________ 6(Tx3)
Raw         : KM6XXX-9>APRS::KM6XXX   :-somebody@gmail.com email from internet to radio{6
To          : KM6XXX
Message     : -somebody@gmail.com email from internet to radio

Received message______________
Raw         : KM6XXX>APY400,WIDE1-1,qAO,KM6XXX-1::KM6XXX-9 :ack6
From        : KM6XXX
Message     : ack6
Msg number  : 0

LOCATION

Received Message _______________
Raw         : KM6XXX-6>APRS,TCPIP*,qAC,T2CAEAST::KM6XXX-14:location{2
From        : KM6XXX-6
Message     : location
Msg number  : 2
Received Message _______________ Complete

Sending Message _______________
Raw         : KM6XXX-14>APRS::KM6XXX-6 :KM6XXX-6: 8 Miles E Auburn CA 0' 0,-120.93584 1873.7h ago{2
To          : KM6XXX-6
Message     : KM6XXX-6: 8 Miles E Auburn CA 0' 0,-120.93584 1873.7h ago
Msg number  : 2
Sending Message _______________ Complete

Sending ack _______________
Raw         : KM6XXX-14>APRS::KM6XXX-6 :ack2
To          : KM6XXX-6
Ack         : 2
Sending ack _______________ Complete

AND... ping, fortune, time.....

Web Admin Interface

To start the web admin interface, You have to install gunicorn in your virtualenv that already has aprsd installed.

source