Soft Multiplexer for Linux

[pcmm]

Originally Posted by marinux

Thanks for the e-x-e-l-l-e-n-t OpenCPN. Now we have a powerfull tool to navigate with Linux. For that OS, I have no found a multiplexer as VSPE on Windows. So I have wrote a script SoCat based with the same fonctionnalities (merge and split datas, serial, USB, BT,TCP).
You can download it (GPL) at Muplex - OSD_Depth.
There is also OSD_Depth, display sounder on OSD, less interesting since Dasboard plugin, except for small screens.
Suggestion: a TCP/IP input datas for OpenCPN. GPSD is nice but a little restrictive for no GPS NMEA datas.
Thanks again.
Frank French Guiana

Did you try Kplex? its a linux (raspberry pi) multiplexer exactly for this!

[marinux]

Naturally pcmm,
But when I wrote Muplex, in 2010, there was neither kPlex nor implementation of TCP network in OpenCPN.

[marinux]

Bonjour Jean,

Hello,

I use Kplex on Rasberry to convert NMEA flow from 2 * RS 232 and send it
on WiFi. But some NMEA sentence from NMEA seatalk must to be convert for
openCpn.

Your software are better to do that, can we have an Rasberry PI3 version?

Thanks in advance for your answer.

Best regards.

As Muplex is a Linux bash script, it can be used on X86 or ARM as it, without conversion. See the documentation for required depends, alvailable for both architecture.
Any conversion is made by Muplex, so NMEA sentences are "brute" transmitted. Use NMEA plugin converter if you need to adapt your sentences.

[marinux]

Hi all,

There was a missing file in the package to display muplex in the menu.
Muplex is now repackaged.

[marinux]

> Hello,
>
> I start to test muplex on raspberry pi.
> My need is to multiplex nmea data from various source to one virtual serial
> (that's working) and also to a usb to serial device plugg on the py
> (ttyUSB).
>
> Is there a way to output to usb to serial device (ttyUSBx) ?
>
> Regards
>
> Emmanuel

Interesting question...
Try modifying the muplex.sh code as it:
Here are the lines concerned:

# create virtual ports and transfering
   create_vports() {
      socat -u UDP4-DATAGRAM:${mcast_net}:${bind_addr},bind=:${bind_net},reuseaddr,ip-add-membership=${mcast_addr}:127.0.0.1 \
         PTY,link=/dev/ttyPS${1},b${spd_out},"${params_port}",group=dialout,mode=666 &
   }

### remplace /dev/ttyPS par /dev/ttyUSB ###

[manu84]

is this mean that it's not possible to have an output to USB serial and virtual port at same time?

Emmanuel

[marinux]

Emmanuel,

In first, try it and give the result. You can also use the control port as in config for virtual output (/dev/ttyPS11) or vice et versa

## port number for control terminal in Muplex-GUI, leave blank if unused
term_port=11

To have virtual output + hardware output by easy way in config file, it need a Muplex rewrite/addon, I think put it on todo list.

[manu84]

Thanks a lot for your fast support!
I will try all of that.

Emmanuel.

[jram]

I'm pretty sure you can write this in Node-Red in a few minutes. I lack the resources to test at the moment but I've had a system taking NMEA (through one of my 4 Pi serial ports) since last year - runs flawlessly.

The visual nature of node-red makes it easy to map data from one port to many including serial, network etc.