I have been working with varanny for a while now and I have to say it works great. I'm using a DRA50 board for VARA FM as well as packet. I'm wondering what it would take to include the ability to startup packet session using the same method as varanny starts up and runs VARA FM and HF.
Mike
Mike, thanks for the idea, and glad you're enjoying varanny. While integrating all modem sessions into it seems handy, it was originally designed as a temporary fix for VARA's limitations. The ideal software modem would work without a GUI, run as a service, and be fully controllable via API. Hopefully, one day, some enterprising soul will grace the world of amateur radio with something like that. For packet operations, direwolf already supports DNS-SD so that takes care of zeroconf. It offers the needed command-line flexibility. I'm not convinced varanny would add too much more here. What else would you see being needed?
Tl;dr
For what it’s worth (probably not much), direwolf is probably the gold standard however its command line which sucks lemons. I started my ham computer journey on raspberry pi and Linux. I didn’t learn to become good at Linux, I learned to become better searching google to run Linux. After two years I threw in the towel because I was spending 2x the amount of time trying to get stuff running then actually playing radio. Fun? Yeah. I learned a lot. But in the end I barely played radio. I moved to a new windows tablet and haven’t looked back. You can run direwolf on windows, but who wants to futz with confusing, constructing command line crap? Not me. If the program could call up UZ7HO’s soundmodem and say hello we need you, that would be most awesome.
Then you could rename the program packet nanny and have a complete solution for iPhone to packet with a micro pc in between.
Thanks for reading.
Untested but maybe worth a try. Specify a batch file that fires up
soundmodem and vara fm. Parsing arguments as needed as varanny will
supply them if you configure it in varanny.json.
Not sure if soundmodem takes any arguments but you could swap ini files
within the batch file aswell I guess.
What TNC are you using? I'm looking for a way to use the Mobilinkd
TNC4 with a Surface Go tablet, but haven't been succesful yet.
Beside all that, I think I never had to use more command line crap on
direwolf as `direwolf -p`.
-dominic
I use the surface to 3 and either soundmodem or a Mobilinkd 3. It works just fine. I can try and walk you through setup one night this week if you’d like.
Soundmoden can work but it only runs on windows. Like many, I don't use windows so I use direwolf. It runs on many os systems.
Tim
KM4ESU
Thank you for your offer but a walkthrough should not be needed. But if
you want to share some basic infos about your setup - that would be
much appreciated.
Does the TNC3 setup a soundcard interface on Windows? (I do not get one
with my TNC4 and I'm kind of tired trying to set that thing up again and
again). That's where I thought about the soundmodem as I used this
already with Winlink Express on a Packet Gateway.
I've only paired the TNC4 via Bluetooth (which works fine on the iPhone;
though it stopped working every now and then) and I haven't tried this
on Linux yet - a connect via USB only shows the serial interface but no
sound modems either. I'm probably spoiled a little bit by the Digirig 
-dominic
Hi. I add my stuff like this:
Bluetooth & Devices > Devices
Scroll down to More devices and printer settings
Then when that box opens use Add a device.
This usually works easier than pairing via Bluetooth.
Thanks for sharing, I'll try this out.
Good Morning George and others,
I dont know why but I never got Georges original response to my first querry about adding packet to the nanny program to behave just like Vara does today.
I have a windows laptop that is setup for vara and packet both use the DRA50 board. The packet side uses sound modem UZ7HO.
My original querry was to make radiomail a full remote of my laptop in the shop when I'm on my iphone. After working with varananny I thought that this would be a perfect fit.
If I'm out and about I have an HT and my mobilinkd TNC4
I'm a linux person at heart but I don't like having to run windows programs on linux. I have had zero success with wine over the years as they have made so call improvements. It's name fits. The more people try to run windows program using it the more they wine....
Mike AE4ML