Troubleshooting D-Rats:
Two computers running d-rats can have a NULL modem cable connected between them instead of connecting d-rats to a radio.
If you have only USB to radio cables, that will be harder to rig up but may still possible, but would take wiring up some jacks to cross the data lines depending on what the data port on the radio now looks like.
USB Driver updates on Microsoft Windows can stop USB adapters from working.
Since you report that the you are getting some communications, that indicates it is probably not a USB adapter issue.
Baud-rate, and character size, parity and stop bits should be checked, but I also do not think that is the issue.
Character size should be 8 bits, parity should be none, and stop bits should be one. Baud rate depends on the radio.
You can turn on the "sniff" and "raw" settings for a radio port to get more information about what is being received.
I am still trying to get a flow chart of the d-rats protocols. There appear to be some conditions where communications can just be silently dropped by one d-rats program, causing the remote program to hang.
Having two stations with the same call and ID connected to each other seems to be one of the ways to cause that condition.
While the URL for the map tile server may appear to be correct, there may be issues with the upstream server. There have been some alternate servers that are available that have been mentioned on this list.
Try instead, as it seems to work better.
Or try https//tile.thunderforest.com/cycle which needs you to setup a free account and get an API key.
Also be aware:
* Support for python3 on Microsoft Windows 7 is deprecated as of 2022. At some point in 2022 or later new installations of python3 on Windows 7 will not be available or upgrades may fail.
* Python 3.7 is the lowest version of python now supported.
* Support for python3 on 32 bit Microsoft Windows is already gone.
* Support for python2 is already gone.
* Support for gtk2 which d-rats depends on is gone.
* Support for libxml which d-rats depends on is gone.
* The geopy (address to lat/lon lookup) built into the python2 d-rats is coded for a yahoo service that has been shutdown, and is too old to support the free services that I could find that are still working.
* The format and some URLs for external data for weather, buoys, etc, have changed, and python2 d-rats does not appear to have the fixes.
* D-rats does not care about the SSID (The -x appended to the callsign).
Some types of radio connections restrict it to a single digit number.
* File transfers do not work between all d-rats systems before v0.3.10b2.dev300. There is a bug in the code and protocol that prevents big-endian (Sparc/PowerPC/etc) and X86/arm based systems from interchanging files and forms. Big Endian systems must be at v0.3.10.b2.dev300, my experimental port to interchange files with X86/arm based systems.
The protocol bug has not been fixed, just the big-endian systems are now coded to have the same bug so that they will interoperate with the majority of the d-rats systems out there.
* Map display has been completely re-written for python3, and the plotting of stations should now be accurate at all zoom levels.
The serial connector from Icom for my radio is missing some very strongly recommended optional internal jumpers. Python2 d-rats does not pay attention to the signals or have any way to diagnose that condition. In the future the python3 version will allow testing for that in the radio configuration dialog for radios and TNCs.
If those jumpers were present, d-rats could be enhanced to detect if the serial connector had become disconnected.
73, and good luck.
-John
