Communicate via AX.25, using an AGWPE-compatible TNC (e.g. Direwolf, SoundModem or AGWPE).

This package provides a Windows program converse.exe, which you can use to interact with another station via an AX.25 connection. The program runs in a command line window. You can watch a demonstration video.

To get started:

1. Download the latest version of converse.exe here. It's in the Assets section of each release.
2. Start your TNC (e.g. Direwolf or SoundModem).
3. Open a PowerShell or Command Prompt (CMD) window.
4. cd to the folder that contains converse.exe.
5. Enter the command line:

.\converse.exe <your call sign> <remote call sign> --verbose

To see a summary of the command line options, run .\converse.exe (with no arguments).

Characters from stdin and to stdout are encoded in UTF-8. Characters sent to the remote station and received from the remote station are encoded as specified by the command line option --encoding; the default is UTF-8.

To communicate large amounts of text, you can copy-n-paste to or from your command line window. To copy all the text from a command line window, be sure to select the complete width of the screen buffer.

You can customize converse.exe. For example, see Polling a BBS.

A similar program works on Linux and other platforms that support node.js. To get started:

1. Clone the agwpe-tools repository.
2. Start a shell and cd into your clone.
3. Get node.js version 8.17 or later. Check your current version by running the command node --version. If you don't have this command, install node.js and start a new shell. If you have an old version, you can use nvm to install a new version.
4. Download node modules, by running the command npm install. Ignore messages about finding Python; they're harmless.
5. Start your TNC (e.g. Direwolf).
6. Run the command node ./converse.js <your call sign> <remote call sign> --verbose.

To see a summary of the command line options, run node ./converse.js (with no arguments).

The converse.js software requires node.js version 8.17 or later. It works on Windows 8 and Ubuntu 20, with Direwolf version 1.7 and UZ7HO SoundModem version 1.13. It might work with other versions or on Mac.

The converse.exe program for Windows was built by build.sh, running on node.js version 12.22.12.