Amateur Radio APRS Parsing Plugin

[mloebl]

Well I may or may not have found it... but I did find something I was having the same error here when I was working on the "Between" condition, and thought I had messed something up on the condition code I was updating. Well turns out I had an SSID (Device) in the APRSParser location that had a value it didn't like so was getting kicked out by one of the HS functions... I removed the SSID and it fired right up. There are some known issues I believe still with non-SSIDs as devices in the "APRSParser" location causing problems, but this it the first time I've seen an new empty SSID do it. I'll keep playing with it and see what else I can find.

-Mike

[mloebl]

I know it's been awhile since the last update... if I was to release a new version, is this something people would be interested in? I completely rewrote the APRS engine into a new C# DLL, redirected/updated references in the VB DLL, and so far seems to have eliminated all parsing errors in the logs (good) and increased the station decoding capabilities (even better.) It's also should be a lot more efficient than before with the decoding. Additional incoming weather station types than before including Peet and Ultw formats. It should also allow more "generic" position and position-less weather format decoding with less false-data. There's still a few quirks, but it's getting there. Been playing with C# lately and figured I could use a challenge to increase the mental toolkit.

-Mike

[mloebl]

Guessing from the lack of responses not many users left... However just in case I'm pretty close to a test version if anyone is interested. Been running the new rev for awhile and the decoding seems pretty darn good (tweaking as I go along). I can decode pretty much all position and weather formats at this point. No more failures to the log either. One giant impovement is that it's now threaded so in theory should be able to process a lot of incoming APRS packets. Some of the mapping functionality is still broken as I haven't finished redoing this section yet. Message decoding is supported as well, which is logged to the dbase, but nothing is happening with it yet.

-Mike

[Pete]

Mike,

I am interested. Been busy but still looking to implement APRS. Just recently redid my GPS time sync stuff; as I believe my antenna got struck by lightning and no longer works; so I went to the attic with a GPS antenna and its working well. I have not yet collected all of the pieces required for said endeavor. Just reading a lot.

I would prefer something with the cars than the cellular phones. On that note though I did work with a developer (spain) who wrote an application that would triangulate position of a cell phone using signal strength of the cellular towers. It is a neat application because it used signal strength and tower ID's. It takes this information and store it in a DB; you could create events with the information; IE: I use it today to autoforward my cell phone to nearest copper / VOIP based on where I am at. You can set it up to write the DB information to your DB (which was part of the application suite) sans Google; but using google maps.

[mloebl]

Mike,

I am interested. Been busy but still looking to implement APRS. Just recently redid my GPS time sync stuff; as I believe my antenna got struck by lightning and no longer works; so I went to the attic with a GPS antenna and its working well. I have not yet collected all of the pieces required for said endeavor. Just reading a lot.

I would prefer something with the cars than the cellular phones. On that note though I did work with a developer (spain) who wrote an application that would triangulate position of a cell phone using signal strength of the cellular towers. It is a neat application because it used signal strength and tower ID's. It takes this information and store it in a DB; you could create events with the information; IE: I use it today to autoforward my cell phone to nearest copper / VOIP based on where I am at. You can set it up to write the DB information to your DB (which was part of the application suite) sans Google; but using google maps.

Hi Pete,

Sorry to hear about the antenna That's never fun...

VERY Cool about the cellular based VoIP routing!!!! I was really into VoIP/Asterisk for awhile but haven't had a chance much lately to play. I ended up dissolving my server into an IP04 appliance... much less horse power and features, but 10th of the power usage.

I'll work on getting the kit together. I'm actually feeling pretty good about the decoding, it's definitely much easier than how I had been doing it...

-Mike

[Automated]

I am interested in the newest version of this...
I didn't expect Homeseer to have something available for this, so it would be great to play with.

[mloebl]

I'll try to get a beta version ready; been swamped at work so haven't had a lot of play time lately The version I have mapping is still a WIP, but the decoding side is pretty rock solid.

-Mike

[mloebl]

Ok, so here's the latest beta build. Again some maps are messed up, but with any luck you should see pretty much no decoding errors in the logs. I've lost track on the number of fixes and changes, but it's a lot. Mostly in the back end with a whole new APRS engine I rewrote as well as new decoding queues and threading.

The new engine works well enough that I ported it over to Android and was working pretty solid there too

-Mike

[Bert.Twildge]

Hi

I'm also interested in the system, I need to get some hardware hooked up but I'm really keen to get this working!

[Automated]

OK. I have it running now. The trick was to install a local Xastir server that could validate with an existing internet server, and connect HS to that.

edit
Hmm, I can see all the stations around me in the Received list, but not mine. Strange. I can see it on the Xastir map. Typical...all stations show up in HS, except mine!
There is an error in the log: System.NullReferenceException. Mike, I'll send you an email with details.

/edit

[mloebl]

Now that we're moved into the new house and the baby is now a bit older, finally catching up on stuff. Moved my desktop environment over to Linux and just finished staging up a Windows Dev VM for use with Homeseer (for those who don't use VMs... they are awesome for stuff like this.)

I am currently testing a new build with the following fixes:

Fixed APRS-IS authentication bug: I found a scenario where connecting to an APRS-IS server may not send the callsign/callpass when connecting. To make matters worse, *many* APRS-IS servers will no longer allow clients to connect unless they have a valid callsign AND send a passcode (it's based on your callsign.) which leads into the next change...
Add APRS-IS Callsign Passcode to Options: You can now specify a callsign passcode (default is -1). There are free tools to generate this code. If you don't have the ability to do this and want to use APRS-IS, PM me your callsign and I can send you your code.
Geonames requires dev account: The Geonames geolocator service I use now requires an account associated with the query to their server. I have generated a developer account, however if they get hit too hard with queries, may need to force users to create their own account. Google for example charges after 2500 queries a day, so it's not unusual for Geonames to have locked things down a bit.

I'm currently testing this build against my local APRS-IS gateway I have at home running javAPRSServer. If all goes well I'll post up a new build to test out. I also know that Mapping is currently a bit broken in places as APIs have changed a bit in the few years since this plugin was created. I am considering dropping Bing and looking at fixing the Google Maps APIs.

-Mike

[Automated]

Looking forward to the new version!

[mloebl]

Attached it the latest version of the plugin with fixes for APRS-IS authentication and GeoNames.

-Mike

[TBI]

I look forward to trying this soon.

[Pete]

Great News Mike!

Actually just caught your thread here!

Here just recently have gone through the area's CWOP and APRS local stations cleaning up a bit over the last few months.

It appeared that it had been a bit neglected.

One person was extremely helpful (great customer service).

Not really sure how this all worked but someone from NOAA was also helping. Much of the database had not been updated in a few years.