[aprssig] 9600 Baud Packet Network?

Sun Jun 12 13:49:25 EDT 2016

Guys,

19k2 is there – the modules are $40

Use them 

From: aprssig [mailto:aprssig-bounces at tapr.org] On Behalf Of Robert Bruninga via aprssig
Sent: Monday, 13 June 2016 3:13 AM
To: TAPR APRS Mailing List <aprssig at tapr.org>
Subject: Re: [aprssig] 9600 Baud Packet Network?

> I once tried... a 320x240 SSTV-like image over packet.
>... it took over 15 minutes to send one image.

Agreed, but at 9600 baud it might take only 3 minutes.

> Classic packet is dead - the infrastructure isn't there anymore....

But we also never upped it to 9600 baud either.  As we get more and more dependent on our smart phones, and we all know we need a backup, why dont we think about what we could do?  And can we somehow use our smartphones as an end terminal for the display?

People know how to text on their phone.  Is it possible to have an app that looks similar on the phone but can talk to a serial port and a packet network as a backup?

We all have 9600 baud radios and TNC's now and they have little benefit for APRS, so we should figure out something to do with them and the level 4 network at least between emergency operations centers might be worthwhile.

We seem to have lots of people wanting to write code on their favorite little $35 processor, why not level 4 code to use all these radios in KISS mode to build a 9600 baud backbone network between EOC's at least.

It is sure better than a bunch of old fuds reading ARL radio grams and spelling every word during a comex.

Bob, WB4APR

On Sun, Jun 12, 2016 at 8:53 AM, Stephen H. Smith <wa8lmf2 at aol.com <mailto:wa8lmf2 at aol.com> > wrote:

On 6/12/2016 3:57 AM, Robert Bruninga via aprssig wrote:

We are not using our 9600 Baud Radios well!

What kind of external processor could we plug into the back of a 9600 baud APRS
radio with built-in TNC to make it function as a NETROM node?

Not very practical.  The internal TNC would have to operate in KISS mode to allow an external processor get at the raw packets. Given the notorious unreliability of the KISS mode in many APRS radios, this is dubious at best.

What could we do with it?  All I remember about NETROMS were something like this:
1) You could connect to any node and see what it could connect to.
2) Then you could connect to anyone in the net
3) Such as their PBBS

Except for a few DX packet clusters, There is virtually no packet infrastructure left.  Conventional connected packet (and BBS systems) were killed off by Internet email in the 1990s, cellular  text messaging in the 2000s, and full internet access on cell phones in the late 2000s/early 2010s.

Remember, it was all those abandoned TNCs, left over when the connected packet era of the '80s died, that were the foundation of APRS........

4) where you could see their message list
5) And then read any of their messages.

6) Could a message be a FILE???
7) And a file could be a small picture?

8) And JPG cameras now cost peanuts

These cheap cameras are USB-based and require massive software stacks provided by real operating systems like Windows, Linux, iOS or Android.   Not something you are going to run on a PIC-class controller.

9) THey could plug into the same extrnal processor!

Which is now going to have to be essentially a "real" PC with a real operating system.

10) Now I can see what you are seeing!

Even a small JPG image file is HUGE (i.e. 10s or 100s of K) compared to the bare ASCII text files of the packet messaging heydays that were at most a few hundred bytes.

I once tried transferring a 320x240 SSTV-like image over packet.  With all the back and forth transmit-ack-transmit-ack hand-shaking on each few hundred bytes, it took over 15 minutes to send one image.  And that was direct radio-to-radio without the overhead of digipeaters, nodes, etc.

We have the radios, we have the sites,

What sites???

but we are not using our 9600 baud
capabilties at all.

I'm thinking it does need to be seamless with the existing NETROM, THENET, KA
node archetecture for the long haul links so we can use a lot of our existing
stuff.

What "existing stuff".   Classic packet is dead - the infrastructure isn't there anymore....

Hummh...
Bob, WB4APR

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