There are are several different ways to start twiddling the ether with packet radio, depending on how you are set up and operating.

For our purposes here, we'll assume you have a node set up, that you built using the FARPN tutorial. If you haven't done that, you can still transmit some packets by getting your radio set up to work with Direwolf and QTtermTCP. You can then use the information there, or some of the guides that are linked to in our Introduction to Packet Radio, to start transmitting.

Moving on though, assuming you did set up a node, one of the easiest ways to start transmitting is to set up a beacon!

We'll do this through the web interface you configured in your telnet port section of ~/.config/linbpq/bpq32.cfg The most important bit of info from that file is the HTTPPORT you defined - most likely 8008 if you followed our guides.

If you are accessing your node from the Pi you installed it on, just fire up the web browser and go to:

localhost:8008 (where 8008 is the HTTPPORT defined in your config)

If you are accessing it from another computer on the same network, and you entered the correct LOCALNET you can open up your browser, and enter the IP address of the Pi, followed by the port, like so:

192.168.1.100:8008 (where the IP address is the address of your node, and 8008 is the HTTPPORT defined in your config)

In the Node Menu, choose ports, then click the “Beacons” link next to the port connected to your radio:

You'll then be at the screen where you can set up a beacon!

The fields here are self descriptive (mostly):

Send Interval (Minutes) : How often your beacon will be transmitted

To : Should say BEACON - this is what will appear as the “destination” in your transmitted packet (i.e. what comes after the > in the transmitted text)

Path : Use this if you want to set digipeaters etc. to hop through. You'll probably just want to leave it blank

Send From File : You can place a .txt file in ~/.config/linbpq (if you followed our setup guides) and the beacon will get its text from there.

Text : Alternatively, you can type the text of your beacon directly in this box.

Save it when you're done! If you want to transmit right away just press the test button! If you want to “see” that you transmitted, you can open up QTtermTCP or Paracon first, and in your monitor window you should see your transmitted Beacon text.

You can have a little fun with this! Because you can use a text file for your beacon text, you can write some scripts, python, do some node red stuff, or whatever floats your boat, to periodically change this text file so that instead of static text, your beacon also includes some information. Lots of people put local weather information, but you can have some fun with it - members of FARPN have been known to put things like bird spotting details, or the data from environmental sensors in their chicken coop, as part of their Beacons

There are a bunch of other ways to also “Send Packets” that you'll end up doing if you continue on with some of our other guides located in our So Now What? section.