Installing BPQ on the Raspberry Pi and TNC-Pi or Beaglebone Black and TNC-Black

Willem A. Schreüder AC0KQ

The purpose of this HOWTO is to describe how to install BPQ on a Linux Single Board Computer (SBC) such as the Raspberry Pi or Beaglebone Black.

BPQ is a very sophisticated NET/ROM compatible packet switch written by John Wiseman G8BPQ. BPQ can be configured to be a sophisticated Packet BBS, a WinLink2000 RMS gateway, an APRS iGate, or any combination of these.

One of the hurdles to setting up BPQ is that the configuration file can be rather difficult to set up. To ease this, this HOWTO uses a program named bpq-config which makes it easy to create the initial configuration. While bpq-config is primarily intended to create the initial configuration file which you can then modify, it is actually capable of creating a fairly sophisticated configuration file using a menu-driven interface.

Much more detail about BPQ are provided at G8BPQ Home Page

At this time bpq-config only supports the Raspberry Pi and Beagle Bone Black with John Hansen's TNC-Pi and TNC-Black. This is because these are fairly predictable environments. However, with little modification bpq-config can also be used with other systems.

If you have any corrections or comments about this HOWTO or bpq-config, please email me. I get lots of junk mail, so add BPQ to the subject line to get it by my spam filters.

Authorization

If you want to use BPQ as an RMS gateway to WinLink, you need to obtain authorization from the WinLink folks. See this link on how to do that.

To send APRS position reports to the APRS-IS via the APRS Tier 2 Network a password is required. However, bpq-config contains a function to generate that password for you, so no additional authorization is required.

Computer Hardware

The Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone Black are available from numerous sources. The price for a Raspberry Pi 2 or 3 is $35 from mail order vendors such as MCM Electronics.

The Raspberry Pi B or B+ is sufficiently fast to run BPQ, so you can use that if you happen to have one. The TNC-Pi works with all of these models.

The Raspberry Pi has the advantage of a very active user community, which makes it the best supported device. The disadvantage of the Raspberry Pi is that it has only one serial port, so if you want to use more than one TNC you need to use the I2C bus to address the TNCs, which requires a bit more work.

The Beaglebone Black is has a street price around $50. It has the advantage of a more mechanically stable mounting arrangement and four serial ports which makes multiple TNC easy to mount and use.

The disadvantage of the Beagle Bone black is that it is not as well supported as the Raspberry Pi so getting it configured is a bit more work.

TNC Hardware

  • The TNC-Pi is available at Coastal Chipworks either built or as a kit. Get the kit, it is easy to build and lots of fun. The instructions are almost as good as the old Heathkit manuals.
  • For most locations you need some sort of enclosure. I use the Bud Industries Pi Sandwitch which allows the Raspberry Pi and TNC Pi pair to be mounted.
  • The rPi runs on 5V, so for a 12V system you need a converter to supply 5V at 1A continuously. The 7805 style regulators generate a lot of heat at that current so I use the Murata 78SRH-5/2-C instead, which will work for input voltages from 8-32V DC. I use a right angle Micro USB cable which I cut to wire for power. If the cable uses standard color codes, white and red are data which you can ignore, red and black are positive and negative.
  • The rPi needs an SD card to store the software. The Model B uses a standard size SD, the Model B+ uses the Micro SD format. A high speed and reliable card is critical, so getting a 16GB Class 10 card is recommended. The bigger card should last longer since the wear is spread over a larger space. Get a spare since the cards do wear out eventually.

    Configuring the OS

    Raspbian switch to systemd starting with jessie (Debian 8). These instructions will work only with this latest version of Raspbian. For older versions see these instructions.

    Install and configure BPQ

    Using BPQ

  • Log in using your BPQ user name and password set for the Telnet user.