Portable Digipeater Build with a Pi Zero 2 W

Let's build a portable APRS digipeater using a Pi Zero and Digirig soundcard.
🔹Links mentioned in the video

🔹Commands used in the video
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

sudo apt install -y python3-gps gpsd-tools gpsd-clients gpsd chrony python3-gi-cairo libgps-dev


sudo nano /etc/default/gpsd

sudo systemctl restart gpsd

sudo apt install git

sudo apt-get install -y libasound2-dev cmake libudev-dev

cd direwolf
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
sudo make install
make install-conf

arecord -l

TBEACON DELAY=0:30 EVERY=2:00 VIA=WIDE1-1 SYMBOL="digi" Comment="Portable Pi Digi - no igate"

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Twitter @km4ack

Want your raspberry pi to play nice with your ham radio? Are you into digital modes like FT8, JS8Call, FLDIGI, Winlink, APRS, Digipeaters and others? Each week I put out new content showing you exactly what steps to take to get the latest ham radio software on your raspberry pi. Whether you just want to ragchew or are seriously into emergency preparedness, emcomm, or ARES and want to learn all you can about using the raspberry pi to drive your ham radio, this channel has something for you. Be sure to click the subscribe button and ring the bell before heading off. That way you will get notified of all future videos.
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[MorrWorm]

As a East Tennesseean who’s just starting to get into this. I have to say thanks. Man there is soo much to learn

[MrKholcombe]

I just did this on my own a month or so ago. Had nothing but problems. Now I know what I didn’t get right. Thanks Jason! You rock

[jimlynch]

As usual great vid. Cudos on tossing in a few errors and how to correct them. That's always instructional. Thanks.

[bruceweight]

Could you possibly do a vid on the layout and use of a digipeater. Looks fun but this older ham is a bit lost. Thanks for your work for the ham community.

[matsherwood]

Thanks for the excellent video and links. I have an igate/digi in my main shack using an old windows laptop and direwolf. Looking forward to testing a digi for portable ops out of my truck. Should be a fun build! This will be my first pi project.

[charleneparker]

Would love to see this done using a mobilinkd instead of a digirig. I'm beating my head trying to figure this out. Thanks again for putting this together!

[alexjh]

Great vid. One suggestion - change the direwolf PTT to /dev/serial/by-id/whatever in case the USB serial devices come up in a different order.

[imarunner]

Excellent instructions! I used this to create an igate so a few deviations from your use case but it's working! Thank you... now to find your xastir video.

[averageguysradio]

Great tutorial Jason,
This is definitely going on my project list for certain. Thanks

[KNVA]

Built it. Configured it. Worked the first time. Love it. Thank you. 73, KN4VA

[matsherwood]

Thank you, this build has worked out great! The one thing that would be super helpful is if you could share how to command direwolf to startup automatically when booting the Pi.

[jameshall]

Jason, I successfully got the digipeater running using this build AND I used the crontab and startup script in the tracker video to autostart it ! Dang, this Linux stuff may rub off on me yet ! The thing I found is those little thumb drive size GPS devices don’t seem to work. The cabled puck devices work excellent (same U-blox 7 chip too).

[SpookieNZL]

Hi, Great Video. How do I enable Direwolf to Auto Start after reboot? Whats the Commands? Thanks

[DonzLockz]

Thanks for stepping us through this Jason.
A great tiny option for portability.
Could you add a small 20-50w amp with this setup?

[njrr]

Thanks for another great Pi project video, unfortunately there are no Raspberry Pi's to be had. I'll have to file this away and wait for them to come back into stock.

[christianarnaut]

Outstanding tutorial. Thank you for posting.

[graham]

Hi Jason! Thank you so much for putting this together. Your videos have inspired me to do many ham radio projects. I think this would be an excellent starter project for any ham and I could definitely see use for it anywhere!

That being said, I've decided to do this project as my area lacks digipeater/i-gate connectivity. The nearest digipeater in my area is north of me around 40 or 50 miles away.

I have the Pi Zero W as well as a Baofeng I'm not going to use anymore. I have a homebuilt soundcard interface between the Pi and the Baofeng, however when I key up the radio, it interferes with the USB sound card running from the Pi to the radio, shutting down Direwolf due to soundcard failure and in many cases requiring a reboot. Do you have any tips or tricks for getting past this? Would it make any difference getting my hands on a Digirig?

Thank you and keep up the good work! 👍

[kevinshumaker]

Very interesting, sir. Just ordered the digirig module and cable(s) for the Baofeng HTs. (received a gift card for support of another ham) and look forward to setting it up. Hope to be up and running on a Pi3b+ Sunday evening. Looking to get something for my JT6188mini. -- KD9EFV

[InTheDispersion]

Great tutorial. As an alternative to /dev/serial/by-id/, you can try */dev/serial/by-uuid* for consistent configs despite which id linux assigns across (re)boots.

[JohnMerryman]

Just finished the installation. Excellent instructions, easy to follow. Sound card and GPS are working, just waiting on a Baofeng UV5R as I didn't want to tie up my Yeasu. May be a dumb question, but I assume I'm going to need a better antenna than comes with the Baofeng to be able to connect? Not allowed outside antennas in my neighborhood, but have a JPole in my attic that works fine locally. Should I have an additional dedicated antenna? Thanks,