Major Features of Xastir

We support many map formats

Xastir supports many formats for online and offline use. Read all about it in Mapping Overview.

We support many different types of TNC hardware and software

Supported Interface Types

AX.25 kernel networking on Linux
Serial-port TNCs such as Kantronics KAM & kpc3, Kenwood TH-D7A/TM-D700A, AEA, TAPR, MFJ, Paccomm, etc.
Pico-Mode for TNCs with GPS port built-in such as Kantronics KPC-3+
Support for HSP adapters is built-in. An HSP adapter lets you connect TNC and GPS to the same serial port. and Paccomm dual-port PicoPacket.
Serial KISS TNCs. Also useable with some Soundcard TNC programs that provide software TNC through your computer's audio ports.
The AGWPE packet engine and clones via its socket interface. This allows you to use the Soundcard TNC interface on Windows, or allows you to connect Linux boxes to Windows-connected TNC's, or with Linux software that emulates the AGWPE protocol (such as direwolf).
TCP/IP TNCs using the Linux socat program (which can create a virtual serial port serving the TCP/IP data).

Weather Alerts

If your country has an agency that produces weather alerts and those alerts are fed into the APRS Internet Service somehow, and your country's agency produces shapefiles data that corresponds to the alert areas, then Xastir can highlight regions under alert with colors and stippling that indicate the severity and type of alert and provide a dialog box to show the details of the alert.

The United States National Weather Service provides such shapefiles, and alerts for the United States are fed into the APRS-IS, so this feature definitely works in the U.S. Other countries used to do more of this but at the moment we don't have scripts to obtain that data.

We support a number of different weather stations

Xastir has direct support for several brands of serial weather stations, and can connect to daemons that provide support for others. You can also register your station with the Citizens Weather Observer Program so that your weather data can be shared beyond the APRS system.

Peet Brothers Ultimeter 2000 (logging mode)
Peet Brothers Ultimeter 2000 (Packet mode)
Peet Brothers U-II
Radio Shack WX-200/Huger WM-918/Oregon Scientific WM-918
Qualimetrics Q-Net
Networked Radio Shack/Huger/Oregon Scientific weather stations using wx200d daemon. WX-200/WM-918/WMR-918/WMR-968.
Networked Dallas/AAG/Texas Weather Instruments One-Wire weather stations using One-Wire Weather (OWW) daemon or other WX program with a port that supplies Arne Henriksen format weather strings.
Davis weather stations, including Vantage Pro, via mysql and the Meteo daemon, through a small daemon in the Davis directory of Xastir's source code.
LaCrosse weather stations, via mysql and the Open2300 package using a small daemon in the LaCrosse directory of Xastir's source code.
WeeWx's wxnow.txt format via a daemon using the wxnowsrv.pl script included with Xastir

We have a number of features designed specifically for use in Search and Rescue

Xastir's developers include several who are or were active search and rescue volunteers, and Xastir has a robust feature set specifically intended for Search and Rescue use. These are shown at Search and Rescue.

We support multiple languages

See xastir -h for the list. Some of these language translations are incomplete or outdated and we welcome contributions. Use the pull request mechanism.