AX.25 with Direwolf

Direwolf / AGWPE

Dire Wolf is a cross-platform soundcard modem for packet radio (AX.25).

The recommended method of connecting Pat with Dire Wolf is through it's AGWPE interface. The ax25+agwpe transport supports both outbound and inbound connections.

Once Pat is configured to use agwpe as it's AX.25 engine, the transport scheme ax25:// can be used to initate connections and enable the inbound P2P listener.

Compatibility

The minimum required version of Direwolf is v1.5, however >= v1.6 is highly recommended.

QtSoundModem is currently not compatible, but upcoming release v0.15.0 will fix this. QtSoundModem is supported as of v0.15.0.

Configuration

Make sure your Pat instance is configured for the ax25 engine agwpe. Other than that the default configuration should be OK for most users. The , "agwpe": {"addr": "localhost:8001", "radio_port": 0} line will need to be added, as the engine is not specified in the initial, default AX.25 configuration json. You will need to specify the IP address and AGW port of your direwolf session here.

{
  "ax25": {
    "engine": "agwpe",
    "beacon": {"every": 3600, "message": "Winlink P2P", "destination": "IDENT"}
  },
  "agwpe": {"addr": "localhost:8000", "radio_port": 0}
}

Configuring Dire Wolf

We won't go into the details here, but as a minimum you'll probably want to set the desired input/output soundcard (ADEVICE) and your callsign (MYCALL).

Please see Dire Wolf's user guide for more details.

Dialing a node

First of all, make sure direwolf is configured and running.

The dialing scheme ax25:/// can be used to initiate a connection once agwpe is configured as the AX.25 engine.

Listing for inbound P2P connections

Run pat --listen ax25 ... or enable permanently through the configuration file:

{
  ...
  "listen": ["ax25"],
  ...
}