Monday, July 30, 2012

Raspberry Pi: APRS tracker mash-up

I wanted to test how Raspberry Pi would work as a small web server  so I installed NGINX  and configured it using the instructions in here. 

I also created a small Javascript page that uses  aprs.fi  JSON API  and Nokia Maps API to track  APRS enabled station on a map.  The source code is posted in github  - this is basically just one file 'index.html'  that is copied to /var/www directory on Raspberry PI.   You need to get the APRS.FI API key from  here.

Here is how the page looks like as served by Raspberry Pi  - see W1MRA-C station  near Prudential Center in Boston.  As you can see from the source code this is a very simplistic Javascript mash-up. 


However, Nokia Maps APIs  do provide a rich set of functionality that can be used to extend the capabilities.  The neat thing here  is that even a tiny web server like Raspberry Pi  can provide this rich functionality because all the heavy lifting is done by Nokia on the maps API side and on the browser doing the page rendering.  




Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Raspberry Pi Arrived!

I placed the Raspberry Pi order to RS Components  in early March and this credit card sized  $35  Linux computer finally arrived on Monday.  

I created a new page for Raspberry Pi related projects and experiments. Please check in here.