POCSAG/FLEX encoder written in Haskell for fun. Check out https://github.com/unknownloner/pocsag-encoder for a more thoroughly documented implementation of a POCSAG encoder.
First, install the stack build tool. See https://www.haskellstack.org/ for details.
Then, from the project root folder:
stack setup # Downloads/installs the Haskell compiler if needed
stack build # Recursively build the project and all dependencies
Stack will tell you what folder the executable file is located. For example:
Installing executable(s) in /data/pagerenc/.stack-work/install/x86_64-linux/lts-6.10/7.10.3/bin
You may either copy the file from that folder to wherever you want, or run
stack install
to automatically install the executable in $HOME/.local/bin
Execute the program directly from the file installed in the previous step, or run
stack exec pagerenc -- [flags]
to execute it from the project directory.
pagerenc reads a series of commands from STDIN and writes 16-bit PCM output to STDOUT at a sample rate of 22050 Hz.
To make a wav file instead, try something like this (requires ffmpeg):
cat pager_commands | pagerenc | ffmpeg -f s16le -ar 22050 -ac 1 -i - -ar 44100 output.wav
To encode a single message, you could do this
echo 'FLEX:ID:Message' | pagerenc | ffmpeg -f s16le -ar 22050 -ac 1 -i - -ar 44100 output.wav
Each line may contain either a message to be encoded in a specific format, or a delay command to insert noise of an optionally specified duration. Valid formats are POCSAG512, POCSAG1200, POCSAG2400, and FLEX. Messages are in the format of PROTOCOL:ADDRESS:MESSAGE
Here's an example.
FLEX:1:Hello
FLEX:2:World
WAIT
POCSAG512:30:Some pocsag512 message
POCSAG2400:35:Some pocsag2400 message
WAIT 30
POCSAG1200:8:Some pocsag1200 message
multimon-ng will not decode the first FLEX message sent in a batch of FLEX messages. It uses the first message to synchronize the decoder, so it can't decode that message. Any non-FLEX transmission immediately following a FLEX messages ends the FLEX batch. This inclueds WAITs, and POCSAG messages.
When WAIT is not provided any parameters, it will insert a random delay between MINDELAY and MAXDELAY, specifiable with command line flags. The default min and max delay are 1 and 10 seconds respectively.
The --throttle flag will cause pagerenc to output audio data as if it was being decoded in real time from a radio.