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ZL3AI > APRDIG 10.05.04 08:29l 210 Lines 9710 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: TAPR Digest, Apr 20, 4/17
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From: ZL3AI@ZL3VML.#80.NZL.OC
To : APRDIG@WW
Subject: Re: APRS Kenwood Radios
From: "Scott Miller" <scott@opentrac.org>
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 09:21:08 -0700
X-Message-Number: 15
>Duh, wrong planet you're on. Kenwood is holding nothing
>back. It is just a radio and a display. And it can display
>almost ALL of the APRS protocol. What is lacking is the
>creativity and initiative of HAMS to make use of it in
>imaginiative ways...
If I can assume total control of the display and user interface through the
serial port, and if it'll work as a KISS TNC, I'll buy one. But I'm not
going to try to work within the constraints of what it knows about APRS.
I'd rather move all of the protocol handling brains outside of the radio and
use the radio itself as a dumb front end.
As for firmware updates for ham hardware, anyone developing new stuff should
take a look at the OpenTracker's config interface. It's not perfect, and
it's not even really finished, but it's what I think people should demand as
a minimum for firmware upgrade support. You've got two buttons to upgrade
the firmware - one labelled 'file' and one 'web'. You can click on the
'file' button and browse for a firmware file you've already downloaded, or
you can click 'web' and it'll connect to the OpenTracker website and
retrieve a descriptive list of all available firmware files. Double
clicking on one automatically downloads it to the PC and then writes it to
flash on the tracker.
The major deficiency at the moment is that the config program can't upgrade
itself. That'll be addressed in the future. If anyone would like
assistance implementing this sort of online firmware update, let me know and
I'll be happy to help.
Scott
N1VG
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Subject: Re: APRS greater precision
From: "Curt, WE7U" <archer@eskimo.com>
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 09:23:28 -0700 (PDT)
X-Message-Number: 16
On Sun, 18 Apr 2004, Jeff King wrote:
>On Sun, 18 Apr 2004 17:47:36 -0400, Robert Bruninga wrote:
>>The only way I would support greater precision in APRS is if the
>>following conditions are met:
>>1) Backwards compatible with ALL existing systems
>
>Bob:
>
>Do realize that immediately says you won't support it, because none of the
>existing systems will display some as yet undefined standard.
>
>Think about it (or tell me which ones will display it)
Even Windows finally got rid of DOS compatibility. Windows didn't even
stay compatible with the early Windows apps, although they did seem to keep
the BSOD stuff fairly compatible.
At some point we have to cut loose from the old systems and move on.
Kenwoods should not hold us back from what we could become. Neither should
old APRS software. Yea, there are a lot of Kenwoods out there. Here are
my latest numbers:
Sat Apr 17 19:42:45 PDT 2004
S t a t i o n P a c k e t Relative
Count % Count % Verbosity
----- ----- ----- ----- ---------
Ui-View: 4508 19.24 809714 19.09 99.23
WinAPRS: 961 4.10 235589 5.56 135.44
APRS+SA: 467 1.99 75818 1.79 89.69
Xastir: 306 1.31 39762 0.94 71.79
DosAPRS: 239 1.02 50199 1.18 116.04
MacAPRS: 47 0.20 10995 0.26 129.24
APRSce: 41 0.17 6009 0.14 80.97
PocketAPRS: 41 0.17 6392 0.15 86.13
AprsPoint: 8 0.03 1558 0.04 107.59
Aprsd: 1070 4.57 118847 2.80 61.36
Ui-Digi: 338 1.44 82022 1.93 134.07
Network Node: 270 1.15 74118 1.75 151.66
Digi_ned: 97 0.41 35559 0.84 202.53
Unidentified: 8693 37.10 1626514 38.35 103.37
Kenwood: 3322 14.18 468866 11.06 77.97
Std Mic-E: 1297 5.54 216213 5.10 92.10
TinyTrak: 855 3.65 170949 4.03 110.46
NMEA: 484 2.07 89158 2.10 101.77
Experimental: 370 1.58 121577 2.87 181.53
Hamhud: 8 0.03 989 0.02 68.30
Opentracker: 8 0.03 152 0.00 10.50
-------------------------------------------------------
Total: 23430 100.00 4241000 100.00
--
Curt, WE7U archer at eskimo dot com
Arlington, WA, USA http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
"Lotto: A tax on people who are bad at math." -- unknown
"Windows: Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates." -- WE7U
"The world DOES revolve around me: I picked the coordinate system!"
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Subject: Re: APRS greater precision
From: "KC2MMi" <kc2mmi@verizon.net>
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 12:26:44 -0400
X-Message-Number: 17
Bob?
<We are talking about adding precision to *any* existing APRS position
report format so as not to cause any existing application (or the Kenwoods)
not to still see the position.>
I don't know about the other Kenwood models, but I can tell you that the
only HT which allows for APRS display on the HT itself, the Kenwood
TH-D7A(G), is limited to displaying DDD.MM.mm on the display.
This is an inherent limit in the hardware. There is another limit in that
the radio only supports the Mic-E subset, and a third limit in the number
of characters the radio can display at all.
The only way that "the Kenwoods", including this radio, will ever be able
to display more precision, or simply more digits, will be if you use the
entire text messaging area string to send position data and then of course,
there will be no more space available to send much of anything else.
Once upon a time, "hardware" was built to last forever. Today hardware is
like fresh fruit, available from all over the globe cheaply and locally.
Use it, enjoy it, expect that in a couple of days [sic] it will rot on the
shelf and be obsolete regardless of how good it was when you bought it.
The Kenwood TH-D7A(G) is already obsolete, if the other Kenwoods are
obsolete as well...The only thing to be done is for the next generation of
APRS-compliant radios to use firmware that can be flashed and updated, as
computer BIOSes are today, for exactly the same reason.
Don't hobble your APRS standard in order to support obsolete equipment,
that's putting the horse before the cart.
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Subject: Re: APRS greater precision
From: Wes Johnston <wes@johnston.net>
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 12:26:49 -0400
X-Message-Number: 18
Bob, can you tell me how to take over the screen of the D700 and display
_my text_? I would like to send a command like CLS, print "hello world" on
the d700 screen. You can't do it. When the radio is not in APRS mode, the
screen only shows the two frequencies on either side. You do have access
to the station list, and the message list, but you cannot enter a
message. The voice synthesizer cannot be activated from the serial port,
and received data cannot be a)sent auto the GPS, b)forced to pop up on the
display.
The devil is in the details....
I have no doubt that via the serial port I can meddle with the station list
and message list... but any packets received will have to cause a beep on
the external processor and the user will have to manually press the LIST
button to see the information.
If an external processor were to hear an OpenTrac packet it could decode it
and place it in the #1 slot in the station list using kenwood's format. It
would have to read station list position #39 and write position #40, read
#38, write #39 .....<snip>.... read #1, write to #2, then finally write #1
from the packet which was heard over the air. Granted the radio can do
this at 57kbaud, but it is still very clunky and takes time. The external
processor could interrupt the GPS data line and publish the waypoint $GPWPL
data to the GPS just as the kenwood does. Let's not forget that we only
have ONE serial port and we have to switch it out of TNC mode to talk RADIO
CONTROL stuff... and we have a TNC which has no significant buffer or flow
control, so we have to be very careful how long we are in "radio control"
mode lest we miss a packet on the air.
While in packet mode, you can probably manipulate the message list via the
serial port too... a received message could be stuffed into a message
buffer slot just as the station list was manipulated above. But there is a
catch... you can't *enter* a message into the message buffer using the d700
when it is in packet mode. This would require a display on the external
processor and a keyboard. You may as well have a ham hud attached.
So I will conceed that you can hook an external processor up, have it
collect off the air data and place it in the d700 for display.... you could
also do the auto program / auto qsy fox hunt thing that way.... at the cost
of not being able to send messages using the kenwood. This one thing
causes us to have to have a display and keyboard on an external box, and
once we go down that road, we have reinvented the hamhud and now may as
well not use the kenwood display at all. The other thing we forfeit (ham
hud or not) is the popup stations which appear on the display. Since we
have no way to directly manipulate the kenwood display, we cannot force the
display to switch from showing frequencies to showing a stations status as
a popup.
No disrespect intended here... but I still stand by my assertion that this
is a closed radio... we can make it do most of what we want, but it's a
clunky, haphazard thing.
Wes
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