CATS Mobile Transceiver Software

This is the firmware for the CATS mobile transceiver. The hardware source is available here: https://gitlab.scd31.com/cats/mobile-transceiver

Getting Started

The transceiver is configurable over USB. It shows up as a serial device, and can be configured with your software of choice. I hear Windows people like putty. I'm on Linux, so I use screen: screen /dev/ttyACM0 9600. Note that the configured baud rate is irrelevant as it will be ignored by the driver. It's a virtual serial port, and therefore has no baud rate.

Once connected, press enter a few times and you'll be presented with a > prompt. This prompt is used to enter commands to configure the device. help will show the available commands. As a summary, get is used to show the current settings. set is used to change settings. save is used to persist them.

On a fresh board, you'll probably want to configure your callsign and ssid:

set callsign YOURCALL
set ssid 123

You may also want to add a comment:

set comment Hello World!

Don't forget to enable transmitting and save your settings:

set enable_transmit true
save

Remove USB and press the reset button on the board. The green light should come on solid. The red light will come on momentarily whenever the board transmits.

LEDs

The board contains a red and green LED which are used to convey system status to the user.

Black Hole

The board provides a black_hole setting. This setting disables the transmitter - but not the digipeater - when within a certain distance of the specified coordinates. The intended purpose of this is to prevent transmitting exact home coordinates.

The black hole can be configured with set black_hole lat lon radius_meters. For example, set black_hole 12.34 56.78 750. The black hole can be reset with set black_hole none. Don't forget to save!

Note that you probably don't want to center your black hole exactly on your house. It may be possible to work out its position based on when exactly you stop transmitting. Instead, you should configure the black hole to overlap with your house, without being centered.

Compiling and flashing firmware

At the moment, updating the board's firmware requires manually compiling the new firmware and flashing it to the board. The setup for this isn't too bad and requires no specialized hardware.

Environment setup

First, install Rustup: https://rustup.rs

You will also need git. After these are installed, restart your terminal, or open a new one. Then run these commands:

git clone https://gitlab.scd31.com/cats/mobile-transceiver-software
cd mobile-transceiver-software
git pull # make sure we're up to date
rustup target add thumbv7em-none-eabihf # add our board architecture, if needed
cargo install flip-link # needed for building
cargo install cargo-dfu # needed for flashing

Board setup

1. Connect the board to your computer via USB
2. Hold down the flash button
3. Press the reset button
4. Release the flash button

The red LED will come on, then go off. If it stays on, it means your computer isn't communicating with the board for some reason. Check your cable!

Finally, you're ready to compile and flash. This is a single command:

cargo dfu --release

This could take a few minutes, especially on an older system. Once the command completes, the board will reboot automatically. Congratulations - your firmware is now up to date!