[aprssig] SSID Standardization (final understanding)

Robert Bruninga bruninga at usna.edu
Thu Jun 10 16:28:48 EDT 2010


Ah HA!  I think I see our failure to communicate.  See below.

>>> ... somebody is trying to correct my use 
>>> of -11 as my SSID in the 18-wheeler...
> 	
>> Yes, that is a good question.  18 wheelers have 
>> been using -14 for nearly 15 years.
> 
> Seems to me that it should be pretty easy to 
> figure out -- if it's moving, it's a car, 
> unless it's going slower than about 
> 75 or 80 MPH, then it's a truck.

But when all I can see is KD5XB-11, I don't see speed, I don't
see ICON, I don't see anything on the screen (after the first)
other than the callsign.  I'm driving.  It is unsafe to have to
push buttons to go find out this info.  And -11 has been used
for high-interest balloons for the same last 15 years as a way
of making them highly visibile in lists since their missions are
very interesting and usually short lived, and also mission
critical if the payload needs to be found before the battery
runs out. 
 
> What I was trying to point out is that we HAD 
> a standard, and it's been discarded.

Ah HA!  I think we have found the basis of our
missunderstanding!...

What HAS been depricated is the SPEC REQUIREMENT for all APRS
hardware and software to make an AUTOMATIC assignment of ICON
based on SSID to a packet containing raw NMEA-0183 GPS data.
You are correct, that has been replaced for over a decade by the
spec REQUIREMENT to derive the ICON from the GPSxyz protocol.
For the last 10 years, there has not been any association
between SSID and ICON.

However, what has NOT BEEN discarded is the recommended list of
standard associations of SSID's to common applications as a user
friendly way of choosing an SSID for the callsigns on one's many
APRS devices.

Those standard recommendations remain:
www.aprs.org/aprs11/SSIDs.txt

Hope that helps.
Bob, Wb4APR





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