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Showing posts with the label CBBS BBS

Turning a Local ADS-B Feed Into an Easy to Read Dashboard

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  Have you ever wondered where the plane or helicopter overhead is coming from, where it is going or who operates it? I found myself logging into my SkyAware monitor several times a week to look up that information. The problem was that it only showed what was overhead at that moment and logging in took a minute or two each time. I knew there had to be a better way to see this information quickly and to keep a historical record of all the aircraft traffic I had observed. One of the fun side effects of running a local ADS-B receiver with dump1090-fa on a Pi with an RTL-SDR dongle, is that you end up with a constant stream of aircraft telemetry sitting on your Pi. aircraft.json updates every second or two with hex codes, positions, altitudes, speeds and it's all there waiting to be analyzed and not just sent to Flightaware. Recently, I learned about JetClock which is a slick, commercial desk clock that shows you the aircraft passing overhead with airline, route, photos and all kinds ...

Build a Retro CBBS for Your Shack

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  There is a special kind of magic in a blinking cursor. Before social networks, web forums, Slack, Discord and group chats, there were bulletin board systems. You dialed in, waited for CONNECT, logged in with a handle, read the bulletins, checked your private mail, posted a message and logged off with the unmistakable finality of: NO CARRIER For radio amateurs, that world never really disappeared. Packet BBS systems, club bulletin boards, mailbox nodes, Winlink-style messaging, APRS bulletins, repeater status pages and remote station dashboards all come from the same basic idea: low-bandwidth, text-first, asynchronous communication. That is the spirit behind CBBS_PI — a vintage CBBS-style BBS emulator built in Python for a modern Raspberry Pi, Mac, Linux box or Docker host. It is part nostalgia project and part platform for experimentation. What It Is CBBS_PI is a text-mode bulletin board system that recreates the feel of early BBS systems. It supports local terminal access, Telne...

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