[aprssig] X-Track: TNC-X Tracker Daughter Board Now Available

[John Hansen]

X-Track, a TNC-X Daughter Board that allows you to connect an external 
GPS receiver directly to your TNC-X to transmit MIC-E encoded packets, 
is now available.  X-Track connects to your TNC-X by plugging into the 
expansion header.  It uses TNC-X's second serial port for data transfer 
from the GPS.  While X-Track is working, all of the usual functions of 
TNC-X are still available.   As a result, you could, for example, plug 
TNC-X into the USB port on your laptop and run a full blown APRS program 
on it and plug your GPS into the second serial port on TNC-X.  X-Track 
would take care of the position reports while the laptop continued to 
display over the air data and permit you to send and receive APRS 
messages.  You could, in fact, do this on a laptop that has no serial 
ports at all. Because X-Track relies on the underlying TNC-X engine, it 
will hold off transmitting while the frequency is busy.

X-Track can be configured by any standard terminal program... it 
requires no special software.  Thus you could even configure it in the 
field with an older Palm Pilot running something like SimpleTerm.  It is 
not necessary to open the box or reconfigure any jumpers to go from 
configuration to running mode.  The only jumpers on the board are used 
to set the terminal baud rate.  If you are using TNC-X in an HP9VB box, 
it will fit entirely within the case.  Note:  At this point X-Track does 
not do "smart beaconing."

For more information see:

http://www.tnc-x.com/Xtrack.htm

John W2FS

NB: I asked for Stan's approval before posting this.  It is a one time 
notice.