Monday, August 31, 2009

Label colour, messaging capabilities and case sensitivity

Today I installed an upgrade which contains a few small visual enhancements and a couple of bigger architectural changes under the hood. I hope the latter didn't break anything.

The callsign / object name labels shown on the map now have colours which partially match "APRS symbol attribute" colours in Bob Bruninga's original APRS software:
  • White: APRS stations which are capable of messaging
  • Gray: APRS stations which are not capable of messaging
  • Violet: Objects
  • Purple: Items
AIS stations have green labels and weather stations have yellow labels, although that conflicts with Bob's spec. I'm running out of colours and I don't have any idea which objects are sent by *you*. Hmm, well, maybe I could compare the source callsign with your aprs.fi login...

aprs.fi now updates the case of the callsign / target name to match exactly what is transmitted, even though the service is still case insensitive. So, if you're transmitting an APRS object named 'Oh7lzb' now, and you switch to a normal APRS station (not object) with the callsign 'OH7LZB', the service will now show the updated upper-case 'OH7LZB'. Before now, it retained the old mixed-case name. Both will refer to the same station and tracking history on aprs.fi, as before.

The path adviser on the info page now warns you about funny path elements like WIDE1-3.

The bigger under-the-hood changes make the web UI marginally quicker, easily expandable, and enable more fine-grained per-feature access control and site configuration.
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4 comments:

  1. LA3QMASeptember 7, 2009 at 11:03 PM

    wow tnx :o)

    There are a few errors with the colors.

    i.e
    LA3QMA (TM-D710)
    LA3QMA-7 (TH-D7)
    LA3BSA-9 (TM-D700)

    is capable of sending/receiving messages.

    anyhow very nice work...

    ReplyDelete
  2. HessuSeptember 8, 2009 at 12:25 AM

    LA3QMA: Well, that's not an error. I think all of those stations are transmitting mic-e packets, which cannot signal the messaging capability.

    If an uncompressed position packet begins with @ or =, then the station is messaging capable. If it begins with ! or /, it isn't.

    I don't (at least not yet) have the magic code to figure out which rig you have.

    ReplyDelete
  3. LA3QMASeptember 8, 2009 at 12:03 PM

    ahh yes know i remember :o)
    In the status text the:
    TM-D710 uses a "="
    TM-D700 uses a "]"
    TH-D7 uses a ">"

    But as you say this is not in the normal position regarding aprs parsing.

    I think the OT and TT4 is also sending some information if its capable of messaging.

    Anyhow i like the new changes

    ReplyDelete
  4. LeighSeptember 11, 2009 at 1:20 AM

    For APRS stations whose speed and direction are available, how about drawing a dotted line along the predicted course, and grow it at the last indicated speed, and then replacing it with a line to the next position when it is ready? -- WA5ZNU

    ReplyDelete