Packet and APRS are Kenwood D700 radios. We use these radios because they contain TNC devices within the radio. This reduces any interference and simplifies the build out.
VARA is a Yaesu FT-8800 connected through a DRA-36.
All services are running on a server providing virtual machines.
Packet Radio and APRS are connected to a the virtual machine via USB mapped into the virtual machine. Since these devices are USB 1.1 serial devices, latency incurred because of the virtual USB mapping is negligible.
VARA is connected via a dedicated PCI device, this is PCI mapped to a windows virtual machine. By mapping PCI devices directly to VMs, removes any latency in passing USB from host to vm which is required for VARA.
LinBPQ is configured to accept multiple ports, for RF side:
By connecting all 3 devices to LinBPQ, this allows us to route any traffic from each RF source to any LinBPQ application.
APRS provides access to the APRS gateway, additionally, VE3LSR also provides emergency broadcasts outbound via APRS bulletins.
Packet and VARA provides access to
While we attempted to use VARA on Linux using multiple different methods, we found this to be unreliable, and decided to use a Windows VM instead.