[aprssig] Multi control station situational awareness - How's this supposed to work?

[Greg Troxel]

I would urge you to step back and consider your requirements, think
about the protocol that will be used at a high level, and then figure
out how to use specific techniques to implement that protocol.

If what you want to do is publish infomration about status of particular
places, then APRS probably is the best fit.

If you are trying to synchronize the list of checked-in stations among N
NCS stations, then I think you want some sort of database sync protocol
which is going to send messages among the participants, and you may or
may not want to carry that over APRS.

I think you implied this, but from the "train like you'll fight" I would
suggest using the over-the-air sync all the time, and not use any
direct-to-APRS-IS internet-based injection.   Gatewaying to APRS-IS is
great for others to probably be able to see what's up, but I think you
should plan on no internet, and thus operate that way routinely, because
otherwise you are likely to be depending on it more then you think.

ALl of this is going to push you to protocols that are very terse and
push just the data, with all formatting and UI local.  This means
writing a local implementation of the UI for the protocol.

73 de n1dam