Configuring YAAC

Once YAAC is started, its graphical user interface (GUI) should appear on your desktop. If you have not previously configured YAAC, you will need to invoke the configuration option to set up YAAC for your environment. YAAC may detect the lack of configuration and automatically ask if you would like to use the configuration wizard. Otherwise, click on the File menu (or press Alt-F on the keyboard, then select the Configure option on the menu (or press F). At this point, you have five options:

• invoking the Configuration Wizard, which will walk you through setting up a basic and standard YAAC setup, or
• directly accessing the configuration parameters, which gives you detailed control over all aspects of YAAC, in a manner organized to keep related data together.
• exporting the current YAAC configuration into a XML file, suitable for sending to the YAAC author to support troubleshooting a problem.
• importing a YAAC configuration exported from another system with appropriate adjustments for this station. Note this option is experimental and may not give the desired results, as it attempts to prevent creating identical duplicate stations that would interfere with each other on the APRS networks.
• perform some traffic analysis on your YAAC station, based on your current configuration and traffic processed since YAAC startup.

The Expert Mode choice will open a dialog with several tabbed panes of configuration options.

• General options, which control the basic operation of YAAC.
• transmit options, which control how YAAC transmits messages to other APRS stations.
• digipeat options, which control how YAAC digipeats messages to other APRS stations.
• Ports, which configure the interfaces between YAAC and the outside world. This includes radio/TNC ports, GPS receivers, weather stations, and Internet connections to APRS-IS servers.
• Beacon data, which specifies what self-position information your computer will announce back to the APRS network.
• Status data, which specifies what self-status information your computer will announce back to the APRS network (in addition to the position beacon).
• Display preferences, such as the font for monospaced message displays, the units for distances and temperatures, etc.
• Behavioral preferences, such as whether YAAC should beep if a message addressed to this station arrives, whether or not to do dead reckoning of moving stations, and whether or not to do vicinity plotting for stations not providing position information.

Additional tabs may appear if you have installed YAAC plugins that are configurable.

If you need to use the same copy of YAAC in several different environments with different configurations, use YAAC's configuration profile feature to set up multiple configuration profiles and select the appropriate one at startup time. Note that the configuration dialog will announce the name of the profile being used (if any).