Friday, July 31, 2009

Mic-E status message supported

I've just added support for Mic-E message bits. These are sent only in the Mic-E formatted packets, and I've been told it's quite easy to switch between the different messages in the Kenwood TM-D700 / TM-D710 rigs. I don't know how, since I don't own any of these rigs, and they're a bit expensive. If you're working for Kenwood, please consider sending me one for review and compatibility testing, there are over 130 000 potential APRS users visiting this site every month (absolute unique visitors according to Google Analytics). You can find my email address behind the 'complete profile' link on the right. Thank you. :)

The Mic-E status message is encoded in the packet using just a few bits, and can contain one of these 8 standard messages: Off duty, En route, In service, Returning, Committed, Special, Priority, Emergency. 7 custom messages (Custom 0 to Custom 6) are also defined.

The current message is shown on the info page of the sending station, and the info balloon of the current position on the real-time map. Old values of the message bits are currently not stored in the database.

8 comments:

LA3QMA said...

Getting better and better :o)

The Kenwood radios for APRS are great.

So when is a standalone APRS program comming from you? ;o)

Now when the MicE is ok you could possible add a "nag" screen if theres a station in you local area sending EMERGENCY. Not sure how you can test this without triggering the alarm in the Kenwood radios.

Always someone sending one: http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/emergency.cgi?last=96

Chris K6DBG said...

Whee! Thanks for doing this.

The various little trackers from Argent and Byonics also send Mic-E. If you'd like one to play with, I have one sitting around that I'm not using and would be happy to donate it to the cause! (send me some email, I'm "good in QRZ.com")

73,
chris

Anonymous said...

A couple of things for the no-rush wish-list:
The status-page:
- report both date and time (you did something on this earlier as I remember, my IE-browser now shows time-time)
- possibility to sort newest on top.

Map-view:
Got myself a Nokia 6300 with Opera Mini installed(http://www.opera.com/mini/) and learnt that this is a popular+ quick and good browser. The rendering for aprs.fi-map is close :-), but need some finetuning.

Your professional service and excellent piece of software continues to impress me; THANKS!

73's
LA5OEA, Odd Erik

Hessu said...

LA3QMA: I've barely got enough time to develop this site properly, so maybe it's better if I don't try to start another software project right now. I would have to stop, or slow down, developing this site. Displaying local emergency packets would be interesting, as would be showing new local bulletins.

Chris: I've got two Argent trackers (OT1+ and OT2m), and a Hamdr, but none from Byonics (or Yaesu or Kenwood). I usually prefer the compressed format myself instead of Mic-E, because it has better position resolution and still uses tiny packets.

LA5OEA: The status packet view isn't very good, it would need some more work in many respects.

There's really not much I can do to fix Google Maps on Opera Mini. Only the guys at Opera software can do it, and with the things they do at their servers, it's probably quite hard for them to fix it.

They have a set of proxy servers somewhere in Norway, and all web requests made by Opera Mini go via those proxies. If I surf aprs.fi using Opera Mini from here in Finland, all of those requests appear to be coming from Norway (.opera-mini.net domain). Those proxy servers optimize and compress web pages and images so that they will download quicker on the slow mobile link. Unfortunately that process breaks Google maps.

bernad_law said...

Hi!

I do not know if this is the right place, but.... Why is the July 24th data missing from your site regarding the missing "Arctic Sea" vessel?

Regards
bernad_law

Hessu said...

bernard_law: MarineTraffic is not sending all of their AIS receiving station's data to aprs.fi. Only a subset of the stations.

Occasionally they've increased the number of stations being forwarded when the station owners have requested so. I suppose they are forwarding more data to aprs.fi than aprs.fi has available for them, so it's fairly fair, still.

bernad_law said...

Thank you very much,

I am not an expert on this, so I will take your word for it. However, I found it rather strange that all the data from the day of the alledged kidnapping and bizzare change of course is missing. My first tought was that the data at marinetraffic somehow was tempered with, but that seems very unlikley.......

Hessu said...

bernard_law: In the case of July 24th 2009 (Arctic Sea hijacking day) it's very highly unlikely that the data was tampered, it's simply missing (not forwarded by MarineTraffic to aprs.fi). It's a fact that not all data is forwarded, many areas are missing.

Yesterday's (15th of August) position for Arctic Sea seems more unlikely, but still possible. There is only a single point, the data comes from an anonymous contributor to MarineTraffic, and it's technically possible to send spoofed and invalid data to MarineTraffic over the internet, as there is no authentication of receiving stations who use NMEA over UDP to transmit data. Even if the data would be authenticated, you can configure an AIS transmitter to send an invalid position with someone else's MMSI and other data. Or you can grab the AIS transmitter from the ship, and take it away with a speedboat and power it up.