AE6RT Beacon
User Guide
Beacon is a cross-platform Java™ application, meaning it can run unmodified and without recompilation on Mac OS X™ , Linux™ , Solaris™ , and Microsoft Windows™ . To run this cross-platform application, you will need a Java Runtime Environment (JRE). Get a Java Runtime Environment if you have not yet installed one. Typically, you will want the "JRE 5.0" (or later) link there.
Beacon is a Java application that uses Java Web Start™ to download and launch the application. Java Web Start is installed on your machine as a result of installing a Java Runtime Environment, per above. Mac OS X users do not need to install either the Java Runtime Environment or Java Web Start --- both are already installed on recent versions of OS X. Linux users may or may not need to install a JRE - one may already be installed therein. Solaris users will likely not have to manually install a JRE. Microsoft Windows users will most likely need to install a JRE if one is not already installed.
By clicking here (and bookmarking!), you will initiate the download and execution of the program. For those of you who are interested, here is the Java Web Start JNLP text file that drives the download and execution.
The first time you download and install Beacon using Web Start, Web Start will present you with a few dialogs requesting your assent to install various components of Beacon. Some of these dialogs use ominous certificate language. See the FAQ regarding these.
In the meantime, here are the three dialogs you will see when installing Beacon for the first time. If you agree to run the software, then click "Always" when prompted to accept the certificates. Depending on which operating system you are running and the corresponding version of Web Start you are using therein, these installation dialogs will have slightly different visual appearance, but they will be the same in basic function and purpose. On some versions of Java Web Start, instead of "Always" to accept the certificate, you will see "Start". On others, "Install".
Figure 1: Web Start dialog to accept signature of Mark S. Petrovic
Figure 2: Web Start dialog to accept signature of JXTA Platform Signer
Figure 3: Web Start dialog to accept signature of Legion of the Bouncy Castle signer
The first time you run Beacon you must configure it with two pieces of information: your callsign and your QTH. Figure 4 shows the configuration dialog. Enter your callsign, select your QTH, and click Save. If you click Cancel before Beacon is configured, Beacon will exit.
Figure 4: Beacon configuration dialog
Beacon will keep a rolling log of its activities, whose contents are largely unintelligble to users, but useful for debugging and verifying the platform is running. The log file is kept in $HOME/Beacon/beaconlog.txt, where $HOME is your home directory.
The log file has two levels, Low and High. Low level provides a moderate level of runtime information, and High provides full-on debugging. The level is retained across runtime instances of Beacon.
If you "tail" the logfile during runtime, you may notice at some time that it seems to stop producing data. The most likely cause of this is the logfile rolling over. Beacon will append to the logfile up to a logfile size of 1MB. It then moves the logfile to $HOME/Beacon/beaconlog.txt.1, and starts over appending to $HOME/Beacon/beaconlog.txt. Beacon will keep up to 2 rolling archives of the logfile. If you tail the log and it seems to stop producing data, kill the tail and start it again.
At any time while Beacon is running, you can bring the configuration dialog back up using keyboard shortcut Alt-P or with the pointer with Edit/Preferences from the main menu.
The Beacon runtime configuration files are kept in $HOME/Beacon/. Please do not edit or move them.
The Beacon main window in Figure 5 shows band opening events, called band opening advertisements, published by you and other users. The main window also contains an input panel for publishing band opening advertisements, with details acquired through your radio contacts. In Figure 5, the value in the "local QTH" column is relative to the publisher, in this case AE6RT.
When you make a contact whose details you wish to publish, first select the band from the Band selector. Then select the radio mode with the Mode selector, the remote QTH that mostly closely approxmates the location of your contact with the Remote QTH selector, and click Publish. This makes the contact event available to other Beacon users in their band opening table.
There is no way to "unpublish" or delete an advertisement once it is published. The advertisement disappears from the network when it expires, about an hour after it is published.
Rows in the band opening table may be sorted by clicking on the name of the column to sort.
Band opening advertisements are available on the network for about an hour, then expire. You can clear the band opening panel of expired advertisements by clicking Clear Table in the main window, followed by Update Table. You can click Update Table to search the Beacon network for new advertisements at any time, without having previously clicked Clear Table. Every 5min, the network is also automatically queried for new band opening advertisements.
At the bottom of the Beacon main window is a display of the current notion of UTC time. A correct value depends on the machine on which Beacon is run being set to the correct local time and timezone. Quit Beacon using File/Exit from the main menu.
Figure 5: Beacon main window showing band openings for various bands
Beacon implements simple online user to user chat. Users currently online are visible through the Beacon CommCenter window, which is opened using Window/CommCenter or keyboard shortcut Alt-C. An example of the contents of the CommCenter window.
Figure 6: Beacon CommCenter window, showing user WN0OWP online.
Chat with users online by double clicking the user's callsign in the Online table.
Every time you start Beacon using Java Web Start, Web Start will check for new version of Beacon. You do not have to manually update the application. When I publish a new version to my web site at http://www.petrovic.org/Beacon, Java Web Start will sense this and retrieve the new version.
Copyright 2005 Mark S. Petrovic
mark at petrovic dot org
Last modified: Tue Oct 18 05:15:07 PDT 2005