WT-700 Windows Tablet for $60

If nothing else it's a good way to learn Microsoft Windows 8..

Open Questions:

• Where's a tutorial?
• What is a good bluetooth mouse and keyboard to get.
• Can it be used for serial by bluetooth with the AP510 APRS Tracker?
• How would one power this full time from DC - perhaps 12V?  Would being on constant charge be some how damaging?
• Is this a good APRS client for the full time DC powered APRS emergency application I'm working on?

References:

• Purchase from MicroCenter
• Blog of Survival Guide
• WA8LMF Review and Info

Configuring Data Radios for 9600 baud

See the wiki:  (link coming soon)

Next Generation Unconnected Amateur Experimental Packet System

APRS is 20 years old and still using 25 year old technology.   What can we do different:

• Remove the scheme of hard coded paths and hops like WIDE1-1.  Instead go to a purpose coded system or better yet - just eliminate it all together.  Let the network nodes, which we used to call digipeaters, do it.   They're better, smarter and cheaper.
• These network nodes will tell the clients how to address their packets.  The system will be automatically configuring.
• Servers, and even clients, can record ALL the audio heard on the channel.  It's a minimal amount of data by todays standards.   A user on the web should be able to click on a callsign and packet and hear just how it sounds.
• Trackers (and even home stations) will take a web cam snapshot associated with every position transmission.  These will be web uploaded when bandwidth allows.  Possibly it would be a 360 degree panorama.
• No data will be directly injected into the IS infrastructure.  Only what's heard on the RF.  All stations gating from RF to IS will be keyed with a secure certificate that's created either locally or at trusted sources such as ARRL's LOTW.
• Stations may have an alternate frequency agile RF receiver such as one of the RT802 dongles.  This will allow automatic Direction Finding of on the air signals when queried by local clients.
• much more to come

AP510 Tracker

Better all the time.   Radio, GPS, TNC, memory, thermometer, etc etc.   All for around $100 with Amazon Prime shipping.

Perhaps this will be the Ham Radio side of the Montana Lander...


2015-2-7  AP510 arrived at Zeus.  Downloaded files from the Yahoo group.  Watched helpful 9 minute video by Eric/KI4xxx - on how to configure hardware and software.
   *

Alternate download location for AP510 files

2015-2-8 Watched video again.  First pass at configuration.  Fortunately there were no issue on DLL's or serial drivers with my dated Vista laptop.

Visited 8GNJ - helped him set up his AP510.  His went fine - mine started acting weird.

Reinstalled Firmware in mine.  Now it's happy and acting normally.

2015-2-9 It's running.  Light turned solid blue for the first time while sitting on the car's dash.  Apparently that indicates GPS lock.   Note to self.  Beacons and beeps every 15 seconds is a bit much.  Reconfigure tonight to turn off beep and set transmission to nice sane 2 minutes.

2015-2-10  Reconfigured.  Changed SSID from -4 to -5 to be in sync with Herb.  The -5 is for 510..  Set beacon time to 125 seconds.  Turned off the beep.   Next time - turn off MIC-E to see what it looks like.  MIC-E is much shorter which is a good thing but we're curious how the packets are going to look.

All the Audio

We have big CPU's and bigger hard disks.  There's no reason today to not record (compressed) ALL the audio from a data channel.  In particular - APRS - with its wide mix of stations and applications.

Here's a twist on the web pages - instead of "Map Me" how about - play back what my packets sound.

APRSTT - Touch Tones

Using touch tones to do APRS:

• http://www.aprs.org/aprstt.html
• http://www.aprs.org/aprstt/aprstt-v.txt - the spec
• https://www.tapr.org/pdf/DCC2010-APRSSpeak-KA2UPW.pdf - implementation
• http://info.aprs.net/index.php?title=APRStt - the APRS wiki

Touch tones?   Why not use voice input?  As long as a raspberry pi has Internet access to Google, it should be fairly straight forward to replace the touch touch responses with speech commands.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/meet-jasper-open-source-voice-computing/