Heya Digirig community! I recently released a new APRS client called Direbox and would love your help with feedback and beta testing.
Direbox is an open-source, messaging-first app intended to bring APRS up to the UI and ease of use standard offered by modern apps like Discord and Telegram:
It’s designed to run on a Raspberry Pi and float an access point to connect to via desktop or mobile, similar to how something like DigiPi or Meshtastic work. It’s also designed to auto-configure and detect Digirig Mobile, Lite, and generic USB soundcards by default, as well as control most of the key settings of direwolf.conf from the UI directly.
The goal is to make APRS as plug 'n play as possible using any radio and also make hotswapping rigs seamless.
The project is super young so I’m looking for help from fellow APRS nerds to help with beta testing as well as feedback for what APRS users are looking for. The .img file and hardware is a paid product on the site but I’d really like to give it away for free here to anyone willing to help tell me why it sucks and how to make it suck less
If you have a spare Pi 3, 4, or Zero 2W, a Digirig, and a radio, your help would be amazing. If you have a working knowledge of Linux, Python, and VueJS, your help would be invaluable! Please reply here if you’d like access to the image file and repository so I can send them to you.
Thanks for posting. Direbox is open source but the .img file is a product for sale? I do not see any link to a code repository on the website. There is an image annotation project on github called direbox.
git clone -b production --single-branch https://federalfarmer:glpat-jnTxFCyVEVfVy2CSx_5p@gitlab.com/federalfarmer/aprschat.git
Let me know if you want me to send you a copy of the .img as well.
The source code is licensed under GPLv2 but is currently “free as in freedom,” not “free as in beer,” a-la DigiPi which is open source software but paywalls images.
It’s solely this way right now to keep contributors to a small group of beta testers - the repo will be “free as in beer” in the very near future but I’d really like to iron out the project and keep the feedback loop very tight for the first couple months.
Forgive me if I phrased my post poorly, I’m definitely not looking for anyone here to pay to see the source code or use the software! It’s all “free as in beer” to anyone who asks in this thread
I recently released a new APRS client called Direbox and would love your help with feedback and beta testing.
