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aprs2influxdb

This program interfaces ham radio APRS-IS servers and saves packet data into an influxdb database. aprs2influxdb handles the connection, parsing, and saving of data into an influxdb database from APRS-IS using line protocol formatted strings. Periodically, a status message is also sent to the APRS-IS server in order to maintain the connection with the APRS-IS server by preventing a timeout.

Supported APRS Packet Formats:

• uncompressed
• mic-e
• object
• compressed
• status
• wx
• beacon
• bulletin
• message

Non-ASCII characters in APRS packets are replaced!

Getting started

aprs2influxdb installs using pip can can be installed in editable mode with the source code or from PyPI.

Prerequisites

You must install and configure an influxdb database. Here is their open source project documentation on GitHub.

Installing

It is highly recommended to install aprs2influxdb in a virtual environment using virtualenv. This helps smooth out installation on Windows and Linux. The executable may not be found and return a "ImportError: 'module' object has no attribute..." indicating that the installed scripts cannot find the installed files. Virtualenv fixes all this. It's not necessary to install in a discrete virtual environment, as long as it is separate from the python installation.

PyPI

pip install aprs2influxdb

Source Code

If you are just installing with source code then navigate to the source directory and run:

pip install .

if you are installing in editable mode for development then navigate to the source directory and run:

pip install -e .

Running aprs2influxdb

The program defaults use standard influxdb login information as well as example APRS-IS login information. If you properly installed influxdb you will need to specify your own database information. Additionally, you will need an amateur radio license with which you may login to APRS-IS with your callsign.

Command Line Options

• --help show this help message and exit
• --dbhost DBHOST set influxdb host (default = localhost)
• --dbport DBPORT set influxdb port (default = 8086)
• --dbuser DBUSER set influxdb user (default = root)
• --dbpassword DBPASSWORD set influxdb password (default = root)
• --dbname DBNAME set influxdb database name (default = mydb)
• --callsign CALLSIGN set APRS-IS login callsign (default = nocall)
• --port PORT set APRS-IS port (default = 10152)
• --interval INTERVAL set APRS-IS heartbeat interval in minutes (default = 15)
• --debug Set logging level to DEBUG (default = False)

Example

Starting aprs2influxdb assuming an influxdb server is running and has a "mydb" database configured is simple. Please note that APRS-IS ignores logins from "nocall" so you will connect but likely see nothing if you do not specify your amateur radio callsign.

aprs2influxdb --dbuser influxuser --dbpassword password123 --dbname mydb --callsign nocall

The above command uses default values for the options not specified. APRS-IS port 10152 is the full stream while other ports exist this is the most useful. aprslib defaults to rotate.aprs.net to pick an APRS core server. Please see APRS-IS Servers for more information.

To exit aprs2influxdb use cntl+c on git bash for Windows and cntl+z followed by kill <pid> for the PID used by aprs2influxdb on Linux.

Running the tests

Unit testing will be implemented in a future pull request

Deployment

This has been tested on a Debian 9 (Stretch) server as well as locally with Windows 7 during development.

Authors

• Bryce Salmi - Initial work - KB1LQC

See also the list of contributors who participated in this project.

Acknowledgments

• @PhirePhly for answering my APRS questions!
• @hessu for also answering my APRS and aprsc questions as well as providing the awesome aprs.fi website.