Sunday, September 30, 2007

Some more AIS from Norway!

We now have AIS feeds from Aukra, Norway (thanks to LA2PJ) and Harstad, Norway (thanks to LA2MV). Great, keep them coming!

Today I coughed up a list of AIS map positions.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Dew points and more AIS

This morning I added dew point calculation to the weather pages and temperature graphs. It was really easy. I used the Magnus approximation referenced by the Wikipedia article.

Thanks to Kai Gunter, LA3QMA, we now have AIS data from Bergen, Norway. Most excellent! If you're running ShipPlotter somewhere and would like to share your data with us, please drop me an email (the address is in my Blogger profile).

Now I'll head towards downtown, to hear Dream Theater play live in Helsinki! Tomi OH2BNS, the author of gMFSK, is coming too.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Weather of area in view + bug fixes

On Monday morning I quickly fixed Konqueror/KHTML support. This might help with some older versions of the Safari browser, too (in case they had any problems - I don't know if they did).

Last night I added a small local weather info line on the right side of the map. It shows an average current weather report from the weather stations within (and near) the current map view. Before calculating the averages, some of the most extreme samples are removed - if there are 6 weather stations reporting the temperature as 0, 5, 6, 7, 7, and 15 degrees, the average will be avg(5,6,7,7) = 6.3 degrees. There are some stations sending rubbish out there.

Weather history graphs can now show temperatures in degrees Fahrenheit. Some other small weather related bugs were also fixed.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Geographic coordinate formatting

It is now possible to select how coordinates are displayed on the site. Three formats are available:
  • Decimal:
    Degrees in decimal: 25.1235° N
  • Deg°Min'Sec":
    Degrees, minutes and seconds as integer values (DMS): 25°51'11" N
  • APRS format:
    Integer degrees with minutes in decimal: 25°51.03' N
The selection can be made in the Options window, as usual. The new default value is Deg°Min'Sec".

Friday, September 14, 2007

Mobile browser support and xhtml

Some web browsers embedded in mobile phones should now work with aprs.he.fi to some degree. I've only tested it on Nokia E61i (maps work!) and N70 (no javascript + ajax => no maps), so reports for other browsers (iPhones, Windows Mobile) are welcome. Just drop a comment to this post, please.

The live APRS maps require AJAX support (XMLHttpRequest javascript API + DOM). For Symbian-based phones (Nokia smart phones, and some others), only the very latest models, which are based on S60 3rd Edition, have this functionality. E61i, E65, E90, N95, etc. Other phones can only browse the "normal" info pages.

The work is not complete, but some of the content has been converted to templates. There are different content templates for mobile browsers (ones with tiny screens) and "normal" browsers, and separate language template files which contain all of the English strings. So, if there is a typo or bad grammar somewhere, it only needs to be fixed once. And the layout can be tuned separately for each browser type without actually touching the strings or the application code. Maybe I'll add translations to other languages some day - it would be rather trivial (although time-consuming).

Beware - browsing the maps consume a lot of bandwidth. Depending on your carrier, you might end up paying a lot for just a little browsing. Be sure to check how much you're charged per megabyte.

While working on this I converted some of the site to mostly proper strict xhtml syntax. This changes how other browsers render things, so some new bugs might have crept in. This is what broke the weather pages the other day.

PS. The E61i browser is crappy - it hangs, dies or runs out of memory ("please close some applications") after just a little browsing around in the real-time map. Think I'll have to check what Opera has to offer.

Friday, September 7, 2007

Live APRS maps on your own web page!

It's now possible to put APRS maps on your own web page. It's free, and it's easy. Show the current location of your car, airplane, boat, motorcycle or ship, or all the APRS activity in your town. Just copy and paste the following HTML code on your page (replace OH2RCH with your own APRS callsign):

<p>
<script type="text/javascript">
he_track = "OH2RCH"; // track this callsign
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://aprs.he.fi/js/embed.js">
</script>
</p>

It's also possible to start the embedded map at certain coordinates (showing all APRS targets in the area, or limiting shown targets like in the Options of aprs.he.fi). The map updates automatically (every few seconds, just like the real thing) without need for the user to reload the page to get new data. Read more detailed instructions on embedding APRS maps on your web page!