[aprssig] Use of XXX devices for APRS

[Georg Lukas]

Hi all,

* Gregg Wonderly <gregg at wonderly.org> [2011-05-03 19:27]:
> The growth of the mobile device marketplace and available
> APRS software authoring will allow a lot more participation on the
> network, if we can figure out how to manage traffic flow from these
> devices to RF when it is from licensed users.

I think APRS is neither practical for non-licensed users, nor should
they "infiltrate" the IS network. There are enough location-sharing
services out there already aimed at a wide audience.

> I have software and
> devices that can use APRS-IS just fine, but I can't have a
> conversation or be visible to RF only users without outbound i-Gate
> traffic.  I can of course talk about this with a local i-Gate owner,
> or setup my own i-Gate to do this locally.  But, when I am away from
> my home area, I will have issues getting to RF.

This is indeed an important issue. I would like to see i-Gates
automatically back-gate (IS->RF) position reports for their approximate
neighborhood within certain bounds:

 * use a circular value corresponding to the approximate antenna range
   (this is not too hard to implement in software)

 * apply restrictive rate-limiting

 * use a cautious path setting (WIDE1-1?)

 * do not have several i-gates back-gate packets for an overlapping
   area, as this leads to duplicates on RF.

> So, I'm wondering what others have been thinking about this.  I can,
> for example put a small computing device with a wifi->serial path
> (WiSnap for example) in front of a TNC-Radio "unit" and have a path
> to RF.  But, what else can we do to help manage the convenience of
> using various devices in concert with getting APRS to work as it
> should on the RF side?

I think the combination of a smartphone with a bluetooth-rs232-tnc-radio
setup is the smallest possible way to achieve RF coverage (except for
buying an APRS HT). However, this is still very cumbersome for portable
operation.

What I'd really like to see in a not-too-distant future is using your
smartphone for the GPS/APRS-IS part and have a HT free for local QSOs
with people who actually see your position on HF APRS. But then again,
I am probably just a biased day dreamer ;-)


73 from Germany,

Georg DO1GL
-- 
APRSdroid - Open Source APRS Position reporting and Mapping on Android
http://aprsdroid.org/m ++ https://market.android.com/details?id=org.aprsdroid.app
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