[aprssig] Open Source/Commercial Use acceptable APRS Alternative?

[Borja Marcos]

> On 17 Aug 2023, at 19:08, Charles Gallo (KG2V) <charlie at thegallos.com> wrote:
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> On 2023-08-17 10:39, Steve Dimse wrote:
>>> On Aug 16, 2023, at 6:55 PM, Gregg Wonderly <gregg at wonderly.org> wrote:
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>> The second issue is compatibility. Bob felt strongly that nothing other than APRS (as he defined it) should use the APRS infrastructure. To him, APRS was a functional system used by tens of thousands and occasionally depended upon in important situations. <snip>
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>> Bob said OpenTrac is not APRS, it is different and incompatible ham radio protocol. But today there is nothing to stop anyone from doing anything regarding APRS.
>> Steve K4HG
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> (I forget if this is a top post list or bottom)
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> The problem with this is "Do we let backwards compatibility kill innovation"?

I would begin by defining "what is APRS infrastructure". The digipeater network? The underlaying servers?

> What if, as a bunch of hams, make something that uses the APRS infrastructure (most of which was never actually owned by Bob), and then extends on it, and maybe even breaks a lot of it.   No one owns a frequency, and these days, there seems to be a lot of open frequencies anyway

On another thread I am wondering about making some extensions to the underlying server infrastructure and the iGates so that the APRS protocol transmitted on the air is intact, but we can add some useful metadata to accomodate new data transmission technologies (such as LoRa and VARA HF) and even providing data for research purposes.

Frankly I don't see how it would break anything. 

To begin with, the original APRS supports three different modems: the 300 bps FSK on HF, 1200 bps AFSK on VHF and 9600 bps. So, what is the problem with
adding other transmission systems such as LoRa or VARA which were not available, let alone feasible (at least at an affordable price) 20 years ago?

You can do real APRS using different modulation schemes. 

> So someone comes up with "NGPRS" (Next Generation Packet Reporting System) that say, runs on UHF (or even say on the licensed part of the Wifi Band - Humm, even allow non hams in maybe?) that is compatible with the best parts of APRS, drops all the backwards kludges - maybe the stuff that is the old KPC (not KPC+) stuff  or whatever

That would be different though. Especially because you cannot allow non hams in ham spectrum.


> "OK, it isn't APRS" - You are right.  But when was the last time you saw a Gopher Server vs HTTP?  Eventually, APRS "Goes away" - sort of.  If everyone has moved on, there will be some diehards left behind (Heck, they even dropped mandatory support for Group 1 fax eventually).  We might even use different modulation etc.  Ham radio is SUPPOSED to be about innovation, so let's innovate - Go with Bob's vision (maybe) expanded for the 21st century, starting say with a clean slate

I agree 100%!




Borja - EA2EKH