I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but here in NWNM D-rats does not work reliably any longer via RF.
We have multiple stations that get intermittent reception/decode.
We have multiple stations that only decode one or two stations out of the group reliably.
We have tried going back to 0.3.3, then 2014, then 0.3.9 and coming forward as a group. No Joy.
Stations have tried a mix of different computers, different radios, different antennas. No Joy
There is a mix of Win 7 and Win10 computers, that does not seem to have any effect at all.
Transmission/reception range is about a 20 mile radius max from the KF5VBE repeater.
Linked operation between the KF5VBE repeater and the KF5VBF repeater to reduce that radius does not help.
Stations show up on the station list, but are not heard.?
Simplex operation has no better success. distance between some stations on simplex may be as little as a mile.
All stations are using an RTS05 orange RT Systems USB cable.
Radios used are ID51, ID5100, ID880, IC2820 with DSTAR add on.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, "Alas poor D-rats, we knew it well!"??

--
AL M
KF5SMH
HH5580

Hello,

I just noticed the Ubuntu folder has 3 subdirectories for Bionic (16.04 LTS), Focal (20.04 LTS), and Jammy (22.04 LTS), respectively.

The description on the Focal folder says it's for 22.04 but should be updated to "20.04 LTS". The descriptions for Bionic and Jammy are accurate (though missing the LTS designator).





Thanks!

-JeffH

The Android app will not show chat text from Drats. The Drats app will show chat text from Android. It comes in Raw Text (highlighted in yellow) and apparently is shown as improperly formatted or incompletely received. You will see the body of the chat clearly within. Likewise you will see all characters for DPRS transmissions. The map program will render GPS data direct from a radio transmitting that data on Keyup. You will see DStar operator locations who are not using DRats so long as they transmit GPS. DRats software also transmits its own location info so you can be located even with your GPS transmission off (a required settig on older radios). Ray Novak is hoping the Android app will be able to print raw text like DRats can so the two systems may be able to have a crude chat, a la PSK31 where you mentally figure out the missing stuff to get the meaning of the message.?

On 1/11/2023 11:38 AM, kevcornwell@... wrote:

Hi David,
I was able to install D-RATS on Linux using the latest from GitHub.
I see that it is not greyed out in Linux, but doesn't seem to save
the setting as you suggested. I'll play around a bit more and see if
I can figure out a fix. If not, I'll create an issue on GitHub.

We definitely need more people to work on fixing issues d-rats and join the ham-radio-software project. All I need is the github username to submit an invite.

To properly get a fix into the source the workflow is to create a issue to get an issue number.

Then create a PR with the fix to the issue and a towncrier compatible NEWS file fragment describing what was fixed.

73,
-John
wb8tyw@...

Hi David,

I was able to install D-RATS on Linux using the latest from GitHub. I see that it is not greyed out in Linux, but doesn't seem to save the setting as you suggested. I'll play around a bit more and see if I can figure out a fix. If not, I'll create an issue on GitHub.

On 1/5/2023 5:15 AM, Michael Mandell wrote:

We'll see, if Icom can get the app updated.

I assume that this is the RS-MS1A-B. I just installed it and have it connected to my IC-91AD through an OTC connection. Have not done anything with it yet, as I need to find some one else locally to test it, or I need to connect to a dummy load for local testing.

I only have one D-Star radio, and I am on the fringe of its range to the club repeater. D-Rats activity on the repeater is now almost non-existent.

I am not very knowledgeable about the formatting of serial data in
D-Rats or in the Icom app, but it has been my understanding for years
that ASCII data can render without formatting.

D-Rats is yyencoded 8 bit binary data that includes UTF-8 in the data payload for chat messages. You should be able to see chat data in the Icom application, but I would be surprised if D-Rats would do anything but show the data in the sniffer log.

Some 8 bit codes on the serial port will cause the radio to go into a mode that will allow programming the radio, others are used for flow control. The yyencoding / yydecoding allows all 8 bit codes to be sent through D-Rats.

D-Rats can "understand" D-PRS, Call sign, etc. straight from a radio.
That format is published in the DStar specs.

Please post a link to how that is done, all I can find are:





What D-Rats sees is the 48 to 1500 byte section of the data packet on page 4 of the second URL.

Nothing in any of the D-Star specifications that I can find covers the contents of the data except that some 8-bit values are not allowed per the above.

The D-Star radios do not expose the rest of the data as far as I can determine.

A radio with a GMSK packet modem such as an MMDVM should be able to send/receive the entire packet. Which implies by using a GMSK modem instead of a D-Star radio, a computer can route packets through a D-Star repeater to any other internet connected D-Star Repeater.

Likewise, raw data from the phone app clearly appears in D-Rats, so
it can render the data without the formatting. As I understand it,
the purpose of "raw text" is so D-Rats can print data it cannot
properly render.

Are you stating that you sent text messages from the RS-MS1A application and it showed up in the D-RATS chat window?

D-Rats uses some 8 bit binary codes in a specific format and some ASCII codes for the Callsigns, the rest is UTF-8, which is a superset of ASCII. It needs those specific binary codes in order to determine what to do with incoming data.

It is totally unknown to me if those binary codes are in any D-Star text or if they were something unique to D-Rats. Likewise, I do not know if the I-Com RS-MS1A-B application is using a similar frame.

While there are a number of extra characters (apparently artifacts
of framing and formatting) to guts of the message are very visible.

Is this in D-Rats chat window, or the Android application window?

I can find no documentation on how the RS-MS1A encodes pictures data as opposed to plain text messages. It can not just send them as binary because some 8 bit values can not be sent. And there are multiple ways to encode a picture.

73,
-John

Hello all,

D-Rats progress is current waiting for feedback on the new pre-release packaging system.

Without the new version being used, there is no point it me making any updates to it.

The only feed back that I have is that for Microsoft Windows is that it is too hard for people to learn with out specifics of what is too hard.

And I have explained why making the Microsoft Windows install simpler is both currently not practical for me to do, and even if it is done it will take a lot of work to keep it up to date with security patches of the third-party libraries D-Rats depends on.

So I am going to be looking at some related projects:

Attempting to create serial and USB cables to for my IC-91AD that properly support the DSR signal.

Attempting to connect and hopefully vampire power a serial to bluetooth module to the IC-91AD, which may allow it to connect to one of the Icom Android applications.

Connecting a MMDVM module to the IC-207H to see if I can connect that to d-rats and get useful data. The challenge there is that I have found no documentation for the module, just told to plug it into a Raspberry Pi and run one of the existing programs.

The MMDVM module is a GSM/Multimode? modem that communicates with a Raspberry Pi via a serial UART and some status data lines. With a logic level to RS-232 level adapter or USB serial module, it should be able to be used with any computer. If this works, then this module is would be all that is needed for non-D-Star radios to use D-Rats to existing D-Rats Radios.

The IC-207 I got used came with a 6-pin mini-din connector to 9 pin D connector. No markings on the connector and no documentation for it.

73,
-John
wb8tyw

We'll see, if Icom can get the app updated. I am not very knowledgeable about the formatting of serial data in D-Rats or in the Icom app, but it has been my understanding for years that ASCII data can render without formatting. D-Rats can "understand" D-PRS, Call sign, etc. straight from a radio. That format is published in the DStar specs. Likewise, raw data from the phone app clearly appears in D-Rats, so it can render the data without the formatting. As I understand it, the purpose of "raw text" is so D-Rats can print data it cannot properly render. While there are a number of extra characters (apparently artifacts of framing and formatting) to guts of the message are very visible. This is the intention. A user could possible visually decode enough to understand the message. There is no error correction in chat anyway.?

We're just doing RF over the repeater without ratflector. It still does nothing??

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Hello Kevin,

I just posted the following reply to your Direwolf post but I thought I'd put it here as well to see what the D-Rats developers think:

--
I saw your similar post for help on the D-rats list but a key detail in that post but not on your Direwolf post was the screen capture showing you are trying to use the AGWPE interface.? In that email, you say the "digipeater" path is grey'ed out.? On Linux with the newest BETA code, the field is not grey'ed out but after filling everything out, clicking on APPLY and then re-editing the new entry, the digipeater field is empty.? The same thing happens for the AGW username and password fields.? I then checked this on an old machine with an old version of the Python2 based D-rats and the username, password, and digipeater fields ARE grey'ed out there.? As a side test, I played around with manually editing the ~/.d-rats-ev/d-rats.config to explicitly enter a digipeater but nothing worked.? I also tried configuring a D-Rats profile with the "TNC" profile and that DOES seem to save the digipeater field there but I didn't test it to see if things work like one would expect.

So it seems that the current version of D-Rats Beta does not support digipeaters or user credentials on an AGWPE connection types.? I *can* confirm that D-Rats DOES initialize an AGW connection and transmit D-rats ping packets via AGW though the packets do NOT seem to be AX.25 formatted.? In the Direwolf log, I see an outgoing entry looking like:
--
[0L] (Not AX.25)<0xc2><0x86><0xc2><0xa2>@@@<0xc2><0xa6><0xc2><0xa4><0xc2><0x86>@@@`<0xc2><0xa4><0xc2><0x8a><0xc2><0x98><0xc2><0x82><0xc2><0xb2>@a><0xf0>[SOB]"=@=@<0x01><0x01>p0=@<0x0c>KI6ZHD~~CQCQCQ~~Ping Request[EOB]
--

There is a field in D-Rat's "TNC" connection type named "AX.25: enabled" which I would assume would ALWAYS be enabled for an AGWPE-type connection but maybe that's either not true, this is a bug, etc.? Not sure.
--

--David
KI6ZHD

On 12/30/2022 3:53 AM, Michael Mandell wrote:

[Edited Message Follows]

If any of your operators have bluetooth or that Icom data cable,
there is a phone app that does chat and picture transfer (slick). We
have found through our constant experimentation that the phone app
text can appear as "raw text" (improperly decoded text in yellow
highlight) and is perfectly readable in D-Rats. Returning chat to the
phone app does not work----yet.

That is expected.

D-rats send data y-encoded. This replaces specific 8 bit patterns with two 8 bit patterns. That is just the first layer of the onion.

The data also exists in set of "frames". Each frame has has the information needed for d-rats to determine what to do with the packet.
I have been attempting to document the frames based on the source code.

The other unknown part is what the actual protocol is for acknowledging the frames and how errors are handled.

I have seen cases were d-rats will just drop a packet into a bit-bucket with out notifying the sender, and this generally causes some type of hang in the sender, sometimes requiring a restart of d-rats to clear it.

The phone app has no "raw text" mode. Ray Novak at Icom put in request to have this added---we'll see what happens. Apparently the phone app and D-Rats format text differently so it doesn't render
the same on those platforms.

That is still not going to work for two way communication with D-rats.

The app will need to understand at least some of the d-rats frames and protocols.

73,
-John
wb8tyw

On 12/30/2022 3:53 AM, Michael Mandell wrote:

[Edited Message Follows]
We use the newer version of D-Rats but not the Python 3 beta ---yet.
That one has a convoluted installation and we have enoiugh trouble
teaching the FM/HT types digital stuff already.

Is this the more recent instructions that I have posted and are at , but have received absolutely no feedback on?



Or is this one of the older betas?

The first blocking issue in simplifying things is that the official python 3 GTK package from Pypi needed for Microsoft Windows does not build on Microsoft Windows in native mode because it is incompatible with the current free edition of Microsoft Visual C++. I just do not have the time to debug this blocking issue, or see what other dragons show up once we get past that version. All searches on the wild wild web for this issue pretty much are resolved by the user switching to using msys2 for GTK packages.

Some people are using Anaconda or ActiveState python distributions as there are free, but only for "Non Commercial Use". Because of that restriction, I will not be installing or testing either of those products.

ActiveState has many limitations on just using the free version, such as having only one active program using it at a time.

The Anaconda Python license would allow redistributing it, but I will not be testing using it to build a single install package on Microsoft Windows. Someone (not me) can try building a single package to see if it works and uploading it. It should mainly be dependent of if Anaconda provides the working GTK packages.

In theory, the msys2 install that I have documented could be packaged into a single package for installation. I have not had the time to test that, and do not plan to be testing doing that.

Creating a single package is a problem as would need to be recreated if any security patches are needed for any component that is not in the d-rats repository. That is a large number of components to monitor and follow alerts on.

Once the msys2 environment is setup, it is really simple to keep d-rats up to date. And it is relatively easy to just run the update script to keep the msys2 packages up to data.

73,
-John
wb8tyw

Hello all,

I'm using Dire Wolf with D-RATS via AGWPE, which has been working well for direct contact, but I we would like to use a digipeater. I'm unable to set the Digi Path in D-RATS itself, so the digipeater is ignoring the packets. I see the option for Digi Path, but it is greyed out. What needs to be done to make the setting become available?



Thanks!

Kevin - KG4EHH

Our group in Eastern PA practices digital "emcomm" weekly. Mostly D-Rats, as that is, by far, the best all-around emcomm program I've found. It has become a little flaky in some areas due to what you read here? about the the version of Python it uses being depricated. It still works, however.?

One thing we have absolutely positively seen is that this program is MUCH faster, much more reliable in simplex. It works over a repeater in "chat" just fine. In any of the handshaking modes it can be slow. It can be interrupted by repeater activity (will attempt to complete a message several times before giving up) and concurrent voice traffic slows it down (although voice/data are different channels, I suspect it is the data that transmits with every key-up that trips up D-Rats when someone else keys up).?
I use several D-Star radios with D-Rats, including the 880H (a fantastic choice, as it is one of the last to have all the data ports on the back).?

We use the newer version of D-Rats but not the Python 3 beta ---yet. That one has a convoluted installation and we have enoiugh trouble teaching the FM/HT types digital stuff already.?
If any of your operators have bluetooth or that Icom data cable, there is a phone app that does chat and picture transfer (slick). We have found through our constant experimentation that the phone app text can appear as "raw text" (improperly decoded text in yellow highlight) and is perfectly readable in D-Rats. Returning chat to the phone app does not work----yet. The phone app has no "raw text" mode. Ray Novak at Icom put in a request to have this added---we'll see what happens. Apparently the phone app and D-Rats format text differently so it doesn't render the same on those platforms.?

Slow speed data is fine for everything text, we've found. If you have files like word or excel (change them to .txt and .csv to shrink a ton and come out fine in Word and Excel on the other end) or a picture then high-speed data can be useful. If someone has the Kenwood D-Star HT, that ONLY does high speed data.?
I recommend in your radio setting for everyone to check the boxes for "raw data" and "sniffer". Raw data shows stuff not decoded properly and you can often get the gist of a chat message despite that. It also shows the "DPRS" GPS data if somebody left that "on" so you'lll see what's happening. "Sniffer" should be mandatory for emcomm. This is at the bottom of the screen and shows network activity. You can see if someone is trying to send a message to another station, and others should stay off the air until that completes. You get a pretty fair indication of progress and completion on that line. The data is silent, so you need this "busy" indication.?

We have an advance repeater stack and also a ratflector and mail server. If you have access to your repeater this is something to consider long-term----makes life much easier. D-Rats is built for message relay. Sending over a wide area is OK so long as there is a viable chain of stations and everybody can hear at least one other station. Will take longer due to relay, but it works.?

Stick with D-Star data. Yeah, you can do AX25 on D-Rats and there are funky things to play with but after a couple years of doing this constantly you need to get your people very good on basics and D-Rats does everything. It can do all WinLink can do (minus the fancy forms), all VarAC FM can do (much better for emcomm and unless you have great RF station to station VarAC is not faster). With practice on the mapping area, it is much, much better than APRS.?

Most of the time if D-Rats throws an error message you can just dismiss it and proceed. Something it just won't send a message for some reason. I think that usually is a chain of events involving prior activity on your computer and availabilty of the other station. Re-starting D-Rats usually gets the message to send and takes a few seconds.?

Despite being a simplex program, D-Rats works on a repeater. We are still working on making it work better as in some cases it goes right through and others it fails or takes forever. I'm almost positive this is a settings thing on a user basis. A work in progress.?
Many ham programs claim they are good for emcomm. We try them all. As a ham, it's ideal to know how to use everything out there as you may wind up stuck with different equipment or another variable. Many lose track of what I view as fundamentals for emcomm:?
1. it's for the local region. You are not calling in to NORAD to report your status. You're coordinating in your county (are they counties in Canada?)

2. Emcomm is still primarily tactical, and FM voice is the primary mode for that (DV voice same deal, but no everyone will have D-Star). Everything does not have to be (and will not be) digitized and on paper. Our function with D-Rats and all it can do (or any other digital mode) is supplemental to tactical voice. Push comes to shove you can use the almost-lost skill of transmitting a message by voice. In fact, I advocate this. Good practice and the stupendously cumbersome nature of this convinces some of the value of digital message transmission.?

Take this from somebody who tests this all the time. I'm not an expert, just a very experienced user.?
Mike Mandell KC3BLF

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Disable one drive backup

On 12/23/2022 1:43 PM, Austin wrote:

Hello,
Like many people I am having an issue getting D-RATS to run on my
Windows 10 Laptop with One Drive.

As has been posted here a few times, python2 is end of life, and most the libraries and components that d-rats 0.3.9 uses, are also EOL.

The only version any work is being done on is "0.3.10 beta6 dev287" or later.

You need to installation instructions at .

/g/d-rats/files/D-Rats/D-RATS%20pre-release is the latest pip installable tarball, and earlier in the download directory tree is the lzhuf package for windows.

73,
-John
wb8tyw

Hello,

Like many people I am having an issue getting D-RATS to run on my Windows 10 Laptop with One Drive. I have followed the steps that I have seen online and nothing has helped. I will past the debug log below. Here is the troubleshooting that I have completed so far:
Uninstall and re-install D-RATS.
Manually create the D-RATS Shared folder on my desktop
Uninstall, delete the D-RATS EV folder, and reinstall.
Uninstall, make sure the D-RATS Shared folder has been created, and reinstall.

Nothing I have done has helped. Here is the debug log:

On 12/22/2022 1:58 PM, Frank Roginski W4FRR wrote:

Where is the latest version of D-Rats for Linux?
It seems to not be where all the old posts point to.
I just want to put it on my Raspberry Pi and play radio.
Thanks in advance for any help.

Most current is 0.3.10 beta6 dev287.

At /g/d-rats/files/D-Rats/D-RATS%20pre-release. Older versions are not getting updates.



However, I do not know of anything in the new version that would address the problems that you are seeing.

No bug fixes or maintenance is being done on the python2 version of D-Rats.

If you need winlink connections, for Raspberry Pi, you will have to download the source and build it for the Raspberry Pi.

73,
-John

Where is the latest version of D-Rats for Linux?
It seems to not be where all the old posts point to.
I just want to put it on my Raspberry Pi and play radio.
Thanks in advance for any help.