# Pi-Star Information Scraper & Display
This lazily named pair of scripts will allow you to display DStar or DMR
information using PHP.
## About
I got the bright idea that I wanted to display my hotspot status information on
my QRZ page. Like most things ham; it doesn't look nice. It's a no frills php
page that just drops text in a table with basic formatting. I go about as far
as using viewport information to make it look better in various framesizes. It
was designed to be placed in an iFrame.
This script has not seen any updates in months due to working how I wanted it
to and not causing issues. In fact I forgot it was working until going to make
this repository.
## Example
I tried to try to ebed an iFrame in the readme.
But it doesn't work. But you can visit:
https://qth.nq4t.com/hotspots.php
In the meantime I will beat the source code to until the iframe works.
The direct version will be "full-screen". Just remember this was designed for
iframes.
## Usage/Setup
To use this you must meet the following conditions:
```
You must have a web-server running PHP
You must be able to execute local shell scripts
Your web-server must be able to access your hotspot dashboard
-or-
Your server needs SSH to a machine that can talk to dashboards.
```
You will need to load hotspot.sh and edit the hostname information. You will
also need to configure if you're using D-Star or DMR. DMR scrapes the
bm_links.php while Dstar scrapes repeaterinfo.php's "Linked To" box. It
currently looks specifically for D-Star prefixes. If you're using YSF then you
need to modify the script or wait for me to support it.
Place hotspots.php in a document root and edit it to match where you put your
shell script. Simply loading hotspots.php is all you need to do.
It is entirely possible to run this on a web-server outside of your network
with some additional tinkering. One way is make your hotspot dashboard public
and accessible over the internet. If you don't want to do that then it is
possible to execute the shell script remotely:
```
dewdude@pickmy:~# ssh -p [REDACTED] dewdude@qth.nq4t.com 'bash -s < /home/dewdude/pistarscrape/hotspots.sh'
| BM TG: |
#3151 - #8802 - #31514 - #98003
|
```
I told my remote VPS to make an SSH connection to home and execute the script.
It executed, sent output, and terminated the SSH connection. Nothing cares if
you use VPN to scrape dashboards or remote SSH. Just as long as the bash script
can talk to the dashboard and the PHP gets that output from the script. You
could bounce it around numerous VPNs and relays and it'd be fine.
## Testing/Troubleshooting
You can easily test both parts of this script to check that the output is
sane and for debugging purposes. When you run the bash script by itself, you
will get output like this:
```
dewdude@ovh:/media/html/qth-nq4t$ ./hotspot13alpha.sh
| BM TG: |
#3151 - #8802 - #31514 - #98003
|
```
The bash script literally just generates HTML code; but it's still clear that
it's outputting talkgroup numbers. The PHP file, hotspots.php, basically
generates an entire webpage.
```
dewdude@ovh:/media/html/qth-nq4t$ php hotspots.php
NQ4T Hotspot Info
NQ4T Pi-Star Hotspot
Network
Current
Connections:
| BM TG: |
#3151 - #8802 - #31514 - #98003
|
Listed connections
do not mean I have a radio on or am at a radio.
This is especially true
for Brandmeister.
For informational
purposes only.
73 de NQ4T
2022-05-09 @ 05:42:43z
```
As you can see between `` and `` is our script output.
If the bash script doesn't get data or can't connect, it will just hang for a
while and output nothing. If PHP can't execute the script, it will generate an
error in the output.
# History
```
09-MAY-2022 - Initial Commit
```
# License
Pi-Star Information Scraper & Display
Copyright (C) 2022 Jay Moore - nq4tango@gmail.com
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see .