Monday, March 8, 2010

Decoded and hex raw packets, default coordinate format, and eesti keel

The raw packets view can now show the packets in hexadecimal format (revealing all unprintable packets and exact amount of whitespace) and decoded format. The decoding is done using the free Ham::APRS::FAP parser module, as usual.

Developers: Please note that the raw packets display is an user interface, not an API. Don't use it for downloading packets to your applications. Please get them directly from the APRS-IS and decode them yourself. The same goes for other views on the service, too.

The default coordinate format is now degrees and decimal minutes (60°10.92' N 24°31.86' E), which is the default format used on most APRS applications. aprs.fi used to default to degrees, minutes and seconds.

ES1TFJ and ES3AT have started a translation to Estonian, and the language has now been enabled on aprs.fi. Thank you!

I've also added a bunch of basic system-level tests which are run always before the software installer is built ('make bdist'). They feed data to the system using a simulated APRS-IS server and a simulated AIS receiver, and see that the uploaded data appears in different views on the site. I can also run just the system-level tests ('make testsys') which takes about 8 seconds for 93 test cases, or the whole test set ('make test': unit + system tests) which takes about 12 seconds. The validators of the tests are not very strong, but at least they check that the data is updated and that the views don't crash.

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