[aprssig] APRS activity triggering a text or email notification via internet push

[Steve Hanis]

Hi John,

I have no intention of irritating anyone one the list, and apologize
if I have done so. I haven't written any programs since college back
in the early 90's and don't consider myself programmer, I use Linux
occasionally. I was made aware of this list after I posed this same
question on the APRS Yahoo group.

What I am looking for is something like what is described on
http://www.aprs.org/aprs-messaging.html:

"APRS Messages to Your Cellphone: . N3FLR Frank Rossi reports that he
uses "YahooAlert" to send all of his APRS messages to his cell phone.
First, Find-U has RSS output capability so he has his computer RSS
Feed Reader watching his Feed From FindU, and YahooAlert also
watching. After setting up Yahoo Alert for a pager, he uses his
phone's text e-mail address such as xxxxxxxxxx at txt.att.net . Then you
just need to know what your phone's "e-mail address" to "text address"
is. You don't need mobile internet to do it this way, just text
ability. That will work with a text pager also. . When FINDU sees a
message to him on APRS it generates an RSS Feed that now Yahoo-Alerts
is watching. YahooAlerts then forwards the RSS Message as Text to his
cell phone. Although this is only one way communications, it still
lets him receive his APRS messages. He also says that you can set up
RSS feeds from FindU for weather alerts, or APRS users X amount of
miles from you. You can make the miles anything you want. He has not
tried that function yet."

I've tried this to no avail, but was wondering if anyone else had come
up with a different way to accomplish the same goal. I have no
commercial interest in this, I just want to be pinged on my cell phone
(SMS, Email, IM) when my friend goes mobile, or for special cases like
a high altitude balloon with a known call sign goes active on APRS.

Kind Regards,
Steve




On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 7:35 AM, John Gorkos <jgorkos at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It "can" be done.  It hasn't yet.  What you're asking for is 4-6 hours of
> custom coding (mostly for the web interface).  Do you have a web server that
> can host something like this?  I've got a few hours this weekend I can use to
> code this.
> Let me make sure I've got the requirements right:
> You want a web interface that allows you to enter a "monitored" call sign, and
> an email address to send a message to when that position report from that
> monitored callsign indicates movement.  You want one message only.  Then, time
> passes and the monitored station stops moving.  Once the station starts moving
> again, you want another text message.
> The SMS messages will have to be sent via email (i.e.
> 2125551212 at sms.verizon.com), since a direct SMS interface is spendy and less
> standard.
>
> Do you have any programming skills you could apply to this?  Web design,
> maybe?  I hate web design, but the back-end portion isn't too difficult.  This
> request will probably irritate some people on this list, FWIW.  Everyone has
> an imaginary line they draw between "ham radio" and "commercial radio and
> internet."  Using your cellphone/commercial radio to get updates about APRS
> happenings on ham radio is probably on the far side of some peoples' lines.
>
> John Gorkos
> AB0OO
>
> On Thursday, February 10, 2011 18:48:04 Steve Hanis wrote:
> > Thank you for your reply. I am looking for a way to trigger an email, IM or
> > SMS using existing web interfaces. A way to "push" an alert to me when I am
> > working or relaxing at home. Can this be done?
> > Kind Regards,
> > Steve
> >
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 10:41 AM, Guido Trentalancia
> > <iz6rdb at trentalancia.com
> >
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > Hello Steve !
> > >
> > > On Mon, 07/02/2011 at 22.19 -0600, Steve Hanis wrote:
> > > > A friend and I just starting using APRS.  Is there way to trigger a SMS
> > >
> > > text
> > >
> > > > message or email via Internet monitoring when his APRS goes active or
> > >
> > > moving?
> > >
> > > > This would let me know he is mobile and available to chat or view his
> > >
> > > location
> > >
> > > > on a map. My apologies if the question is too simplistic for this
> > > > list, I am a newbie.
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > > Steve
> > > > AB5ID
> > >
> > > Suppose your friend has call AB4HB, then you could use something like:
> > >
> > > FROMEMAILADDRESS=dmesteve at gmail.com
> > > MYEMAILADDRESS=dmesteve at gmail.com
> > > APRSCALLSIGN=AB4HB
> > > SMTP_SERVER=smtp.ab5id.org
> > > axlisten -a | grep -q " fm $APRSCALLSIGN to " && echo "An APRS packet
> > > from $APRSCALLSIGN has been heard" > /tmp/aprs_message.txt && env
> > > MAILRC=/dev/null from=$FROMEMAILADDRESS smtp=$SMTP_SERVER mailx -v -n -s
> > > "Mail from APRS" $MYEMAILADDRESS < /tmp/aprs_message.txt && rm
> > > -f /tmp/aprs_message.txt
> > >
> > > Note that APRSCALLSIGN is case sensitive (unless you pass the -i option
> > > to grep). Note that SMTP_SERVER needs to be defined according to your
> > > actual smtp server.
> > > Most importantly note that the above will send out an email message for
> > > every packet that is received from APRSCALLSIGN and this might not be
> > > desirable as there might be a lot of packets coming continuously (so you
> > > might do things better with some extra code that checks whether a
> > > message has already been sent recently, for example by creating a
> > > temporary file each time a message is sent and then checking that the
> > > timestamp of such file is not too recent before sending a new email
> > > message).
> > >
> > > Or otherwise you can download a tiny program that I wrote
> > > (ax_emergency_listen) which is generally used to monitor APRS emergency
> > > packets and adapt it to your needs (by modifying the C source code):
> > >
> > > http://iz6rdb.trentalancia.com/en/aprs_igate.html
> > >
> > > 73,
> > >
> > > Guido IZ6RDB