[aprssig] The new D710 and Smart Beaconing?

[Keith VE7GDH]

Bob WB4APR wrote...

> They introduced the concept at the TAPR Digitial Communications
> Conference last September and handed out questionares for
> everyone to list their most important features.  I believe there
> may also have been a web site? Anyway, the solicitation of
> comments was well published here and elsewhere.

My recollection was that a few people commented about it here and on other 
APRS related lists and that it was that it was shown at DCC with short 
notice. I also seem to recall at least one comment after the fact about a 
non-disclosure agreement. If you were there, you probably heard more 
than "we" did, but there were virtually no actual facts about the upcoming 
D710 presented an any APRS-related lists that I'm on, and the only thing 
about a website that I can recall was one that showed a few pictures and 
absolutely no technical details whatsoever. 

> >Smart Beaconing

> I would like to see a good definition of settings...

I snipped the rest because your comments had nothing whatsoever to do with 
SmartBeaconing. My first exposure to SmartBeaconing was while programming my 
first TinyTrak 3. I have found the concept to be elegant and have enabled it 
in every one of the half a dozen or so TT3s that I have and in an equal 
number of OpenTrackers of various flavours. They all do SmartBeaconing. The 
HamHUD II also does SmartBeaconing. If you do a search for "SmartBeaconing" 
you will find many explanations of it. The "from the horse's mouth" version 
is at www.hamhud.net/hh2/smartbeacon.html. It isn't exactly new. It has been 
around for nearly 9 years. The concept is brilliant. Not everyone will 
understand the math. Most of it goes over my head, but I know how to enter 
some reasonable settings. I would have expected that you would have been one 
of the few people that could look at the algorithm's and actually understood 
them. Perhaps I was wrong there.

If you want to look at the documentation for the most commonly used devices 
that use SmartBeaconing, look at the TT3 www.byonics.com and the OT 
www.n1vg.net where the documentation is freely downloadable. By looking at 
the configuration programs or views of them in the PDF manuals, it is easy 
to understand the concept without having to understand the math.

I'm not saying that it can't be misconfigured. Heck... all kinds of things 
are used improperly every day... e.g. cars, rope, planes, guns, explosives, 
ladders, etc. and some of them even kill people instead of "just" cluttering 
up the airwaves. If the person programming a SmartBeaconing device isn't 
smart enough to know to enter reasonable settings, all they have to do is 
ask... e.g. on the APRS SIG, the TT3 list, the OT list, and of course the 
HamHUD list. If you observe someone beaconing every 20 seconds on the 
highway, or every 10 seconds in a mall parking lot, do your best to contact 
them to assist in correcting the settings. Don't bash SmartBeaconing just 
because you don't use it or because you assume that every mis-configured 
device out there is misconfigured just beacause it is capable of 
SmartBeaconing. Read the readily-available literature and learn how 
SmartBeaconing works. The better you understand the concept, the better you 
will be able to actually help someone set it up properly instead of just 
putting it down.

Like a lot of people, I'll watch with interest to see what the D710 is 
capable of doing when it is actually released. I'll hold off bashing it 
until I see what Kenwood has come up with, but I'm not expecting it to be 
earth shattering. For now, I'll put my money on the HamHUD II and the 
upcoming HamHUD V. Until the radio manufacturer's actually start listing to 
hams, we aren't going to get much more than "just radios" from them.

73 es cul - Keith VE7GDH
--
"SmartBeaconing whenever I get a chance!"