[aprssig] OpenTracker KISS support

[Scott Miller]

Thought I'd make this announcement here as well, since I know several people 
have asked about something like this in the past.  I suspect this is mostly 
going to be of interest to Basic Stamp and PIC experimenters, but if you can 
think of any other applications, let me know.

I've just released a new firmware image for the OpenTracker hardware that 
turns it into a very basic, dumb KISS sender.  It's basically half a KISS 
TNC with a very small (160 byte) buffer.  Not very useful for general 
packet, but it should work fine for embedded telemetry devices and such.

Once the new firmware is loaded, you can send it KISS frames as 4800 baud. 
It uses very simple XON/XOFF flow control, and will send an XOFF as soon as 
it gets a packet queued.  It'll wait for the channel to become available, 
send the packet at 1200 baud, and send an XON to the host.  It also supports 
the KISS commands to set TX delay and to exit (which in this case calls the 
bootloader and resets.)  Only channel 0 is supported.

If you load this firmware on an OpenTracker (using the otwincfg.exe program) 
you can always switch back to the standard tracker firmware later.  If 
there's any interest in this for embedded applications, I might make up a 
mini-kit, with just the processor, crystal, and capacitors for the 
oscillator circuit.  Everything else you'd need to put it into your own 
circuit is readily available at Radio Shack.

If you're interested, email me or check out the OpenTracker Yahoo group for 
more information.

Scott, N1VG
http://n1vg.net/opentracker