[aprssig] Why Not "Gate in Vicinity" (phones)

[Keith VE7GDH]

lotsa people said lotsa stuff...

UI-View will only gate to RF what you tell it to gate. For
starters, the path to be used on RF can be specified, and you can
tell it what is a local station for messages... e.g. heard direct,
heard via 1 hop, via 2 hops and so on. An iGate on a prominent
hilltop or tall building might use zero... i.e. heard direct. One
with a nearby mountaintop digi might use 1 hop. One that was 3
hops from the next iGate might use 2. It would be exceptional
to specify 2 or more hops.

Beyond the usual "gate messages to local stations" (via a path
specified by the operator) it gives you options to gate various
things from a callsign to RF. It doesn't have a setting for "gate
anything" or "gate everything" from within the vicinity of from
some other location. A specific callsign-SSID must be entered,
but it does also allow a wild card can be used... e.g. VE7GDH-7
would gate just that SSID, but VE7GDH* would gate all SSIDs.
This is of course going from "the Internet to RF" and nothing to
do with what it gates from RF to the Internet... i.e. from RF to
the APRS-IS.

For each callsign-SSID or callsign-wildcard entered, there is a
drop-down selection for beacons (APRS position reports) or for
all frames from a callsign, objects, frames sent to a particular
destination, all messages to a particular recipient, and finally a
setting to NOT gate any traffic from a particular callsign. This
includes not gating messages from that callsign to local stations.

On top of that, there are "Internet to RF limits" on how often it
will gate something to RF. The operator can specify the maximum
number of frames (of anything) that can be gated per minute, for
every two minutes, or for every three minutes. There are separate
settings for the number of messages that can be gated to local
stations. The operator can specify the maximum number of messages
gated to RF per minute, for every two minutes, and for every three
minutes.

In other words, UI-View has a very intuitive and flexible
interface for telling it what to gate to RF and it places limits
on the maximum rate that it will send anything out to RF.

re APRS clients on a smart phone... I can only speak for
OpenAPRS on an iPhone. In this app, there is a scrolling selection
for "beaconing" every 2, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 45 or 60 minutes.
In other words, the maximum rate it can beacon at is every two
minutes. I usually leave it set for every two minutes, but on the
other hand, I'm not expecting anyone to be gating it to RF.

73 es cul - Keith VE7GDH
--
"I may be lost, but I know exactly where I am!"