ASatLogger. APRS Satellite Logging and control of D7* radios. ASatLogger is an APRS client designed to log selected packets to disk files, pass satellite packets to the APRS-IS and to control Kenwood D7* radios. ASatLogger can automatically adjust the Tx and RX frequency of D7 and D700 radios for doppler shift, when used in conjuntion with a NOVA DDE compatible server. ASatLogger can accept ASCII (TNC2 display format) or KISS packets from an attached serial port. KISS commands can be sent to the TNC when in KISS mode. NOTE: KISS mode operation is not functional at this time! ASatLogger now supports external IP connections. Connected clients will receive all serial port data and logged packets. In addition, logged on clients can access and control attached TNC or D7/D700. See the end of this document for details. ASatLogger requires Win9x or later, an Internet connection, and a serial port. WinXp or later recommended. NOTICE : When more the one session of ASatLogger is started, a dialog will ask if you want to run an additional ASatLogger session or quit the new session. If multiple sessions are desired, it is recommended that you install additional copies of ASatLogger in seperate directories. This will allow you to maintain seperate settings and logging files. NOTE: Range filter should be used when connecting to aprsca.net:10150 or other participating servers. For example r/41.5/-88.01/250 (use Lat,Lon of your desired location rather than the example provided). NOTE: ASatLogger uses a default APRS-IS packet filter of: filter r/41.56/-88.03/250 p/PCSAT/W3ADO-1/RS0ISS/4XTECH/PACB d/PCSAT*/WA3ADO-1/RS0ISS*/4XTECH*/PACB* Quick Start. UnZip ASatLogger.zip into a convenient directory. A. Run Setup.Exe to install ASatLogger. 1. Start ASatLogger.Exe via Windows Program menu. 2. ASatLogger ships with a file (Lserverlist.txt) that contains a list of APRS Internet servers and port assignments. This file is automatically loaded at run time. 3. Press the "Connect" button at the bottom of the Server Tab window to connect to the "Selected Server" via the Internet. You can enter a new "Selected server" (URL or IP address), "Port", and "Name" whenever ASatLogger is not attempting to connect to a server. Press the "Save" button to save the entered text into the "Server List" (Lserverlist.txt). 4. You can select another server via the "Server list" only when ASatLogger is not connected. You can delete the server displayed in the "Server List" box by pressing the delete key. 5. You can allow remote users to connect using a TELNET like client. On the Server Tab, enter a port number between 23 and 65000. Serial port packets can be relayed to the APRS-IS by checking Relay APRS-IS. Checking "AutoStart" or clicking on the "Start" button will force ASatLogger to listen for client connects. 6. You can activate serial port monitoring by pressing "File, Serial" in the main menu, or by pressing the "Setup port" button on the Serial Tab. The serial port can be opened, and closed on the serial tab, text you type or a file can be sent to the serial port. See the special sat file help by pressing the "Sat Help" button. 7. TNC configuration files can be sent to a TNC connected to a serial port. A configuration file editor can be accessed by pressing "TNC" on the main menu or by pressing "Setup TNC" on the serial port tab. Options. 1. APRS-IS Server Tab. A. Check "Automatically connect to server" on the Server Tab. This will cause ASatLogger to automatically attempt to connect to a server when the server connection is lost, or data is not seen for "Delay" seconds. B. "Delay" is a value between 10 and 60 seconds. The delay timer is reset when connecting to or disconnecting from a server and each time a packet is received. C. "Rotate Server connections". This option will cause ASatLogger to select another server in the server list whenever a server connection is lost, or data is not seen for "Delay" seconds. D. "Display data" controls the display of all received data. E. "Display logged data" will limit the data display to only those packets that have been logeed. F. "Connect" initiates an Internet connection to the currently Selected Server. G. "Disconnect" terminates an existing connection to a server. H. Client TCP/IP connections can be accepted by entering a port number between 23 and 65000 into the "Client Port" edit box. I. Check "AutoStart" to enable the Virtual Access Server to allow client connections. Once a client connects, he will receive all packets received over the serial port and all logged packets. A logged on client will have the ability to send packets to a connected TNC or D7/D700. J. Password protection. Only users who supply a password will have the ability to send commands and data to the serial port. 2. My Station Tab. A. "Logon Call", "Unverified Logon" and "Logon Text" can be used to send a filter string to servers who support the filter construct. If "Unverified Logon" is checked, when ASatLogger connects to a server, it will use the call sign to log on to the server using a password of -1, and it will append the text in "Logon Text" to the end of the logon string. If "UnVerified Logon" is not checked, and "Logon Call" is empty, or "Validation #" is "-1" then data will not be sent to the server. If "Unverified Logon" is not checked, "Logon Call" contains a Callsign and "Validation #" contains a valid Validation # for that callsign, ASatLogger can send data to APRS Internet servers, including valid APRS data captured from the serial port. "Validation #" is common to all APRS programs and is based on the entered callsign (ignoring any SSID). All APRS programs require a validation number. ASatLogger automatically generates your Validation #. B. Latitude and Longitude is used to enter your current location. The following formats are supported: DD.DDDD (Decimal degrees). DDMM.MM (GPS\NMEA format, Degrees,Minutes,decimal minutes). DD.MM.NN (UiView format, Degrees,Minues, decimal mintues). DD MM' SS" (Degrees, minutes seconds). Spaces required. Enter your latitude. Leading zero is required if your latitude is less than 10 degrees. 0915.23 etc. If North of the equator, enter N in the N/S box or S if south of the equator. Enter your longitude. Leading zero's are required if your longitude is less than 100 degrees. 08815.23, or 00915.23 etc. If West of Greenwich (Western hemisphere) enter W in the E/W box or E if East of Greenwich (Eastern Hemisphere). C. The "Adjust filter to location" button can be used to modify your APRS-IS filter location. Press the button to change your filter location to your recently entered location. D. The "Log in as UNVERIFIED connection" causes ASatLogger to use a validation # of -1, regardless of the value into "Validation #". E. The "Send additonal text with logon" causes ASatLogger to send the text contained in "Additional Logon Text" to the APRS-IS server upon successful connection. This is normally used to send a filter string to server/ports which support filtering. Use of a filter and filtered port is STRONGLY recommended! The following is the recommened filter for current (January 2008) satellite operation. filter r/41.56/-88.03/250 p/PCSAT/W3ADO-1/RS0ISS/4XTECH/PACB d/PCSAT*/WA3ADO-1/RS0ISS*/4XTECH*/PACB* If you are monitoring PCSAT2 (intermittantly active) your filter would be: filter r/41.56/-88.03/250 p/PCSAT/PC2PSK/PC2TLM/PC2XXA/ISSTLM/PC2ISS/PC2RPT/PC2XXB d/PCSAT2*/W3ADO-1 All callsigns should be uppercase. The word "filter" (without the quotes) and all other letters should be lower case. r/41.6/-88.01/250 specifies a location in decimal degrees (DD.DD) for latitude and longitude with a radius of 250 kilometers. This should be changed to your actual location via the Latitude and Longitude entry boxes. The easiest way to modify the filter location is via the "Adjust filter location button". You can also manually adjust the filter, but this may have unexpected results if done improperly. F. The "Beacon Posit to APRS-IS" check box will cause ASatLogger to send your beacon position to the APRS-IS when initially connecting, and every 30 minutes thereafter. It will use the location displayed in the Latitude and Longitude boxes. G. The "Beacon Comment" box allows the entry of text to be included when "Beacon Posit to APRS-IS" is checked. 2. Serial Tab. A. "Send text to serial port". Text typed in this edit box will be sent to the serial port when you hit the enter key or hit the send button. B. "Send". This button will send entered text to the serial port and will append a carriage return and line feed to the transmitted text when in command or converse mode. When in Converse Mode you can enter "^C" without the quotes to force the TNC into command mode. C. The "TNC Mode" radio buttons set the TNC Mode to "CMD", "Converse" or "KISS" mode. See KissHelp for details on KISS mode operation. Also see Serial Port/TNC information at the bottom of this help file. D. The "Log Serial Data" check box when checked logs all serial data to a file. E. The "Log serial Telemetry" check box when checked logs all Telemtry packets received on the serial port to a file. F. The "Gate valid APRS Packets to APRS-IS" check box will cause all valid received serial packets to be gated to the APRS-IS when connected. G. "Send ASCII File to TNC". This button will activate a file dialog that will allow you to send a text file to the serial port. Each line will be sent with a carriage return and line feed appended. There will be a variable delay between suceeding lines to ensure the TNC can execute commands or transmit data without fear of overruning the input buffer. H. "Setup Port". This button will display the serial port setup dialog. Also accessed via "Setup" in the main menu. I. "Open Port". This button opens a serial port according to the settings in the serial port setup dialog. The "light" to the left of the "Open Port" button is red when the port is closed, green when it is open. G. "Close Port". This button closes the currently open serial port, if any is open. The "light" to the right of the "Close Port" button is red when closed and white when opened. It changes between Green and White when incoming data is received. J. Special support for satellites has been included in this ASatLogger version. Press the "Sat Help" button for details on Logging packets captured via a serial port. K. The TNC configuration file editor can be accessed by pressing the "TNC Setup" button. 3. Log Incoming packets Tab. A. "Log all packets containing". This check box will cause ASatLogger to log any packet that contains text in the "Log Text" combo box to disk. The file name will be similar to the entered text, with the exception of certain characters that will be removed. B. "Log Text in Packet". Any packet that contains text entered into this combo box will be saved to disk if "Log all packets containing" is checked. After entering new text and hitting the enter key or exiting the combo box, a dialog will appear and ask you to confirm that you want to add the text to the log text list. The characters * < > : $ ' ` } { / \ . , ! @ ? % leading and trailing spaces are honored, but these char are removed from the file name created by the "Log Text" feature. Some characters are not legal in Windows file names and may cause a file name created with these characters to fail. If all characters are removed by ASatLogger the file will be named LYYYYMMDD.txt. ANDE* will log all packets that contain ANDE to a file named LYYYYMMDDANDE.txt. If ANDE is also placed in the "Log Text" list then it will also log packets with ANDE* to LYYYYMMDDANDE.txt. This will cause duplicate file entries if both ANDE* and ANDE are in the "Log Text" list. "Log Text in packet" entries are saved to a file named Lloglist.txt. C. The "Log Directory" box allows you to specify a logging directory. Press the ... button to the right to access a dialog permitting you to select a directory. The default directory is the ASatLogger directory. D. The "Include in Log" radio buttons allow you to specify if a time stamp is included in the log file and the type of time stamp. Options are None, UTC time, and local time. E. The "Log raw Kiss Packets" when checked will log all KISS packets to a file. Menu Selections: File, "Log all incoming data" will cause ASatLogger to log all packets to a disk file named LYYYYMMDDAll.txt. This file can become quite large, but will only include packets received on YYYYMMDD. File, "View logged data" will display a window that will permit you to view, filter, and print logged data. See "View logged data" help for more information. File, "Log Errors" will log all APRS packets that contain errors to disk. File, "Set Font" will permit you to select a different font for the data display window, and the view file window. File, "Disconnect" will cause your current APRS-IS server connection to be terminated. File, "Exit" will close ASatLogger. "Serial" will display the Serial port setup dialog. "TNC" will display the configuration file editor. "About" will display the ASatLogger About box. "Help" will display this help text. Additional info. "View logged data" window (View file): The "Text file" list will display files in your ASatLogger directory that have .txt or .log filename extensions. You can view a file by selecting it from the list. See the help screen in the "View logged data" Window for details. The serial port setup and status dialog will display all currently installed serial ports in 2 seperate list boxes. The left hand box contains serial ports that are currently in use or not available. The right hand box contains serial ports available for use. The Refresh button will query the registry to refresh the "In use" and available list boxes". When an open serial port is closed, the port will move from the "In use" list to the "Available" list. The "Current" edit box shows the currently selected comport. An available comport can be selected by double clicking on an "Available" comport in the list box. You can also enter COM1 etc manually. You can select how to terminate lines sent to or received from the serial port. The choices are to terminate with a carriage return only, a carriage return and line feed or KISS formatted packets. The KISS feature allows the decoding of data frames only. Virtual Server / Client Connection info. ASatLogger can be configured to accept TCP or Telnet like connections from clients. For example, you can use HyperTerminal to connect to ASatLogger and see all packets from the serial port as well as any logged packets. Your ASatLogger session will display your computer's IP address in the bottom right corner of the display when you are connected to an APRS-IS server or have client connections. Other applications on the ASatLogger computer can connect using either the IP address, or "localhost" without the quotes. Generally, the IP address shown will be a "private" or "non-routable" IP address. Other computers on an attached LAN can connect using the displayed IP address as long as they are on the same subnet or have a similar IP address. Very often, your IP address may be assigned dynamically by an Internet Router. This may cause problems since the ASatLogger computer may receive a different IP address each time it connects to the router. It is better to assign an IP address manually, to ensure other users can access the ASatLogger session on the LAN. This "Static" IP address must be on the same IP block as the router's local IP address. Very often Routers assign the first dynamic IP address of: 192.168.1.100 . The router or gateway is usually assigned as: 192.168.1.1 . In this case you could use the Windows Network connections dialog to change your local area connection settings manually to use a static IP address of 192.168.1.99, with a gateway of 192.168.1.1 , a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 and DNS 192.168.1.1 Hardware Firewalls can present problems for users from outside your LAN who wish to connect to your ASatLogger session since they are designed to block access unless specifically configured to allow access to a particular IP address and port number. The usual way to allow outside users to access is to use "Port Forwarding". Your ASatLogger session should be running on a computer with a static IP address. Set "Port Forwarding" to the ASatLogger computers static IP address and the port number you selected on the ASatLogger Server tab. ASatLogger uses TCP protocol only, which you may have to select on the "Port Forwarding" screen of your router/firewall. Users very often must contact a "System Administrator" to make changes to Firewall settings. Very often the administrator will NOT agree to open a port for your use, or allow connection requests to a particular port/IP address to be honored. Windows Firewall, if active, will prompt you to allow access or "unblock" the first time ASatLogger is run. Serial Port/TNC access and control: ASatLogger can allow connected users to access and control an attached TNC or D7/D700 using a simple telnet application such as HyperTerminal. Only users who have successfully logged on are provided write access to the Serial port. The default password is "LOGON:" (without the quotes) followed by a callsign. Any user who sends LOGON:MYCALL will have write access to the serial port. You can change the password only by editing the ASatLogger.INI file found in your ASatLogger application directory. The password is case sensitive, and should consist of at least 6 letters and / or numbers. Open ASatLogger.INI with Notepad and look for the following near the end of the [USER] section: WORD=LOGON: Just change everything after WORD= to a password of your choice. You MUST terminate the password with ":" without the quotes or ASatLogger will add it for you. For example, to change the password to MyuSerS: Change the line to look like this: WORD=MyuSerS: and save to result to disk. If the password is less than 6 characters then ASatLogger will set it back to the default of LOGON: If the password is not terminated with a colon, ASatLogger will add the colon! Virtual Serial Port: There are several products which allow a user to connect to a remote serial port as if it were a local serial device. These products provide a virtual serial port on the local machine. Applications can select the VSP as a local com port (ComN etc). The VSP is configured to communicate with a URL or IP address and port number. http://www.hw-group.com/products/hw_vsp/index_en.html has a free VSP which works quite well with ASatLogger. Very easy to setup and use. Whenever I find useful freely downloadable products from a business entity I always try to consider purchasing other products from them if the need arises. We need to support the businesses who provide us with freeware products! It is possible for DOS applications to connect to ASatLogger using the hw-group VSP. I used CrossTalk (ancient DOS application) set to COM4 to connect to an ASatLogger session on another computer on my LAN. See HWGroupVSP.Txt included with the ASatLogger distribution set for setup details. TNC control: The Serial tab contains radio buttons which control the TNC mode. The modes are CMD, CONV, and KISS. Sending "^C^C^C" without the quotes or Chr(3) (control C) will force the TNC into command mode when not operating in KISS mode. Similarly, sending "CONV" or "CONVERSE" without the quotes will force the TNC into Converse mode. When in KISS mode, packets are still sent in TNC2 display mode by the client, but they will be converted by ASatLogger to KISS format. Similarly, any packets received from the TNC will be converted to TNC2 display format for logging and relay to the connected users. ASatLogger will send advisory packets to connected users whenever the MODE changes. NOTICES: ASatLogger is a limited use freeware applicaton and is licensed for non-commercial use only. Contact the author at william.diaz@comcast.net or 815-838-1194 for commercial uses or redistribution as a commercial product. This application is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. Use of ASatLogger freeware may not be suitable in all cases. William Diaz is not responsible for losses or damages caused caused by use or redistribution of this freeware products. APRS is a trademark of Bob Bruninga WB4APR ASatLogger Copyright (c) 2007-2008, William Diaz KC9XG Contact info: Bill Diaz, 815-838-1194 william.diaz@comcast.net More info: http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/astars.html