A Python library for controlling the Kantronics KAM-XL packet TNC in Terminal Mode -- a clean, Pythonic API instead of hand-typed terminal commands.

from kamxl import KAMXL

kam = KAMXL("COM8")
kam.connect()

kam.set_typed("MONITOR", (True, False))
kam.connect_station("KD5EOC-10", via="RSSTN")

for packet in kam.monitor():
    print(packet.source, "->", packet.destination, ":", packet.payload)

This is not a Winlink client -- it's meant to be the general-purpose layer underneath one (or a BBS, a chat tool, an APRS decoder, ...).

Not yet published to PyPI (see PROJECT.md). For now, install from a local clone:

git clone [email protected]:BoomerET/kamxl_winlink.git
cd kamxl_winlink
pip install -e .

Requires Python 3.8+ and pyserial, which pip install -e . pulls in automatically.

Actively developed and tested against real hardware (Kantronics KAM-XL, firmware 1.24160, over live 1200-baud packet). Not yet on PyPI.

Implemented so far:

• Serial connection management, command/response handling, automatic EH? error detection and ECHO ON handling
• Typed getters/setters for KAM-XL parameters (booleans, integers, strings, multi-port and restricted-choice values)
• AX.25 connected mode: connect_station() (direct and VIA digipeat), send_connected(), read_connected(), disconnect_station()
• Passive monitoring: listen() for raw text, monitor() for structured Packet objects, callback- or generator-style

See PROJECT.md for the full design philosophy, roadmap, and what's coming next (async support, APRS/Winlink/BBS helpers, and more).

• docs/quickstart.md -- connect, read/write parameters, connected mode, monitoring
• docs/api_reference.md -- full method/class reference
• docs/troubleshooting.md -- real hardware quirks and how this library works around them
• docs/daemon.md -- the background daemon: protocol, methods, concurrency model
• docs/rest_api.md -- the REST API: endpoints, auth, live monitoring over Server-Sent Events, the dashboard it serves at GET /, the self-contained web terminal at GET /terminal, the read-only PBBS browser at GET /pbbs, the live APRS station map at GET /map, the Winlink mail check/send pages at GET /winlink, and the Winlink web-service API endpoints (account lookup, gateway listings -- needs $WINLINK_API_KEY, see docs/daemon.md)
• examples/ -- runnable scripts, including two that need no hardware at all

python3 run_tests.py

Runs the offline unit test suite (standard-library unittest, no third-party packages required) against a scripted fake serial connection -- no KAM-XL hardware needed. Files ending in Test.py at the repo root (listenTest.py, connectTest.py, chatTest.py, etc.) are the live hardware test scripts actually used to validate this library against a real KAM-XL over the air.

Never write code because the manual says the KAM-XL behaves a certain way -- write code based on observed behavior from real hardware whenever the two differ. Several bugs were only ever found by testing against a live KAM-XL over the air, not by reading the manual: a stale command prompt leaking into connect/disconnect banners, a VIA digipeat path getting truncated because a marker matched before the rest of the line arrived, and a race between an async link-failure notice and an unrelated command's response.

MIT -- see LICENSE.