LoRa APRS on TTGO T-Beam – adding support for multiple beacon configurations

I’ve recently contributed to the open source LoRa APRS Tracker project by creating a pull request for adding support of switching APRS callsign / beacon message / symbol by holding the middle button on the TTGO T-Beam.

The original idea came from my fellow clubmate and friend OM7AMA. He wanted to have an ability to switch between pedestrian and car, or when going portable on a SOTA activation, to have ability so select different beacon message after activating the summit.

I created an issue on Github for this improvement, which had some positive feedback, so I decided to implement it.

Just for reference, I’m adding pinout of TTGO T-Beam, which you can buy from usual sources.

You can add as many beacon configs in your tracker.json file, as you want.

Since the “beacons” config property is now a JSON array, it is easy to just add more config items separated by comma.

Here is an example with 2 callsigns and different beacon messages:

I’ve also moved the “button_tx” config to separate submenu in config file called “button”. Here you can find items “tx” – which enables manual transmit after short middle button press and “alt_message” – which enables the middle button long press to switch between profiles.

You can see a short example, how am I switching between 2 profiles in this video:

If you have any other idea for improving this project, please let me know.

I made this contribution without any profit, but if you like my work, you can buy me a coffee.