Setting up APRS for Wheeling n' Stuff

[DaveInDenver]

As to where to find your historical data. On aprs.fi you go to "raw" for a particular station.

It'll show all the packets that made it onto APRSIS going back 2 days.

Also, on the right side of the map screen you can find your parsed packets back 2 years. If you click the year it'll open a sub menu of month and day.

When you pick one it'll show the track and telemetry stored for that day. If you hover over a point it'll show the visual path from you to the digipeater.

 

[rover67]

My position settings don’t seem terribly frequent?

 

[DaveInDenver]

I'd back off on turn rate but otherwise looks fine. I use 30 seconds instead of 15 second that I guess APRSdroid defaults to. I use 600 seconds (10 minutes) for slow speed but 20 minutes is super network friendly. I'd have to check what I use (I think I zero it and give a 28° turn angle). Setting a 10° turn and slope of 240 might reduce influence off road like we do. Turn slope is an angle vs speed parameter so it'll increase influence if you make turns faster. The min turn time is an absolute lower limit. So if you just turn 360° doughnuts it'll try to beacon every 15 seconds.

 

[Stuckinthe80s]

Well, I for one, am super happy Marco was being a dick and sucking up all the bandwidth. This has been very informative!

 

[rover67]

So if I was using Smart Beaconing (which I was as far as I can tell) and its not set that far off how come it was sending packets out every 15 seconds?

 

[DaveInDenver]

Had to make a Home Depot run so did a similar analysis on that to see if I walk the walk. I forgot that I have my TNC (An Argent Tracker3) generate a telemetry packet (it's various data about the TNC and radio) for every position packet. So I'm double tapping the network, too. I drove surface streets at around 35 to 40 MPH so it looks like my Smart Beaconing parameters settle on a packet about every 75 seconds otherwise.

 

[DaveInDenver]

So if I was using Smart Beaconing (which I was as far as I can tell) and its not set that far off how come it was sending packets out every 15 seconds?

That's what I've never really dug into about the turn slope setting. Your speed was high enough and 10° angle small enough that I think it triggered that high packet rate.

 

[rover67]

OK, I think you might be onto something.. Curious how often Andy's sends a packet:

Lifted from here: https://forums.radioreference.com/threads/smartbeaconing-settings.335474/#post-2598041

"
The key parameters to SmartBeaconing™ are (in bold):

Low Speed -- If your actual speed is less than the Low Speed, your beacons will be sent using Slow Rate.

High Speed -- If your actual speed is greater than the High Speed, your beacons will be sent using Fast Rate.

If your actual speed is between Low Speed and High Speed, your actual beacon rate will be the Fast Rate times High Speed divided by your actual speed. The result of this is that when you are going fast, you send beacons more frequently and when you are going slowly, you send beacons less frequently.

The additional parameters for corner pegging are:

Turn Angle -- This is the minimum amount of direction change that you have to experience before corner pegging will kick in.

Turn Slope -- This increases your sensitivity to direction changes when you are moving fast and decreases your sensitivity to direction changes when you are moving slowly. In other words, if you are moving fast, it takes less of a direction change before a beacon is forced by corner pegging.

Turn Time -- This is minimum amount of time that has to expire before corner pegging can force a beacon. Imagine you are driving around in circles in a parking lot. Without Turn Time, the Turn Angle parameter would cause you to send beacons one right after another.
"

Also maybe of interest from that same post:

"
It looks like the default SmartBeaconing™ values in the FTM-100D are:

Low Speed = 5
High Speed = 70
Slow Rate = 30 minutes
Fast Rate = 120 seconds
Turn Angle = 28 degrees
Turn Slope = 26
Turn Time = 30 seconds
"

 

[rover67]

RE: Turn Slope settings...

Turn Slope = Number when divided by current speed creates an angle that is added to Min Turn Angle to trigger a beacon.

from the code:

// Corner pegging - ALWAYS occurs if not "stopped"
// Note turn threshold is speed-dependent

turn_threshold = turn_min + turn_slope / mph;

IF (heading_change_since_beacon > turn_threshold) AND
(secs_since_beacon> turn_time)
{
secs_since_beacon = beacon_rate;
}
}

IF (secs_since_beacon> beacon_rate)
// ... send beacon

So where I had it set at 10* and 240 at my slower speed when we were tooling around the house it was like this:

240/15kph = 16
16 + 10* = 26* was the turn threshold

I think I am going to run 240 Turn Slope and just up the Minimum Turn Angle to like 30 degrees as well as bump the Min Turn Time to 30s. I really don't need it to be that sensitive. If it's still being silly I'll up the Min Turn Time to equal the fast rate. As far as I can tell the whole corner pegging thing is to catch a turn on a city street so the track looks pretty and I could care less about that. It's gonna go nuts as I wind down a trail unless I desensitize it.

So, with modified settings it would be (at 15kph tooling around speed):

240/15kph = 16
16 + 30* = 46* is the turn threshold

My new settings I'm gonna try next are:

Fast Speed: 100km/hr
Fast Rate: 80s
Slow Speed: 5km/hr
Slow Rate: 600s
Min Turn Time: 30s
Min Turn Angle: 30*
Turn Slope: 240

 

[DaveInDenver]

Forgot to include the track map for the trip.

 

[DaveInDenver]

One thing that Marco could have done is not asked for a wide coverage since I think he was only interested in getting positions to the Internet with whatever iGate could hear him. Just setting WIDE2-1 (dropping WIDE1-1 off the front) should prevent retransmitting packets widely.

I realized I was backwards. Could do just WIDE1-1 to use small fill-in repeaters to get to a "wide" digipeater but not have your packet repeated by a WIDE2. The intention would presume that fill-ins and wide are all likely to be APRSIS gateways. Another option would be to use DIRECT in your path, which I think (never tried this) would only do gates to the Internet and never be retransmitted by any digipeater.

Looking back at Marco's packets from that trip it looks like W0UPS-15 was hearing you easily and that called itself both a WIDE1 and WIDE2. It is able to hit AC0YV-10 consistently, which is an iGate. W0UPS-15 is not an iGate though it would seem but using WIDE1-1 should have it bump your packets most of the time to one.

KD0GWX-9>APDR15,N0EPA-1,W0UPS-15,WIDE2*,qAR,AC0YV-10
KD0GWX-9>APDR15,W0UPS-15,WIDE1*,WIDE2-1,qAR,AC0YV-10

Also looks like you consistently hit several iGates directly without needing any hops.

KD0GWX-9>APDR15,WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1,qAR,K0PRW-10
KD0GWX-9>APDR15,WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1,qAR,W0ARP-3
KD0GWX-9>APDR15,WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1,qAR,N2XGL-5
KD0GWX-9>APDR15,WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1,qAR,K5RHD-10

And a few other iGates just once or twice, also directly and no hops.

KD0GWX-9>APDR15,WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1,qAR,AA0QQ-10
KD0GWX-9>APDR15,WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1,qAO,AI0J-10
KD0GWX-9>APDR15,WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1,qAO,N0ZTN-10

There's also evidence of other gateways you hit infrequently but in this case needing a hop from W0UPS-15.

KD0GWX-9>APDR15,W0UPS-15,WIDE1*,WIDE2-1,qAR,K5RHD-10

And just a FWIW, looks like you hit the North Central Fire digipeater which is in Kiowa, which gave your packet a hop to the Hugo iGate, which is southeast of Limon. That's a long chain indeed.

KD0GWX-9>APDR15,NCFPD,WIDE1*,WIDE2-1,qAR,HUGOCO-10

 

[rover67]

I'll try just WIDE1-1. The ultimate Idea here is to try and have connectivity in remote areas, so I wonder if the settings for those types of places would be different in terms of the digi path

 

[DaveInDenver]

Depends on what you're trying to connect to I suppose. APRS is more than just blindly pinging your location to the Internet. If you're trying to get two-way messages and you hear WIDE2 repeaters but aren't routing your reply packets using them then it's not truly a two-way link. I mentioned it before but I usually run "WIDE1-1, WIDE2-2" because there aren't a lot of fill-in WIDE1 stations to respond so it's possible to need two hops on high level WIDE2 when you're in Green River or Meeker. It's the opposite problem of having too many repeaters and stations of what originally prompted the discussion. If there's 6 mobiles stations within a 200 mile circle and perhaps 4 or 5 high level machines within a geographic region the size of a small State you want the packet to ping-pong over longer distances.

 

[DaveInDenver]

I mean, compare the number of stations around Four Corners...

against the Front Range.

 

[DaveInDenver]

A couple weeks ago driving the eastern side of White Rim (3/8-3/9) typical path lengths were 96, 98 and 113 miles. For example one packet from near White Crack camp hit the DOLLAR digipeater near Telluride (Mountain Village) and found an iGate at Sunlight Mountain near Glenwood Springs.

This appears to be one that took two WIDE2 hops maybe.

 

[PabloCruise]

Not sure it's clear, APRSdroid requires its Mapsforge files to use version 3. This has been depreciated to newer version (5 is current latest). So if you download maps from openandroidmaps you need to specifically find the V3.

Those got compiled about a month ago and they are being eliminated from the website, so early in 2020 they will be removed completely. I opened a support ticket with Georg about pulling in a newer Mapsforge library into the application to support V4/V5 mapsforge but that ability is not currently in the OSM version. He's weighing options on what to do about offline maps going forward and apparently mapsforge in the grand scheme isn't popular.

Also, FWIW, I downloaded the complete set of US and Canada from openandroidmaps.com so if anyone wants the Utah-Colorado (or any other) I can get them to you now or in the future. They'll just slowly fall behind the OSM database with additions and corrections but should be fine for a few years. That's the main problem (other than being 2GB) with the KS9N monster map, it's several years old and will have errors.

I wonder if this is my issue? I downloaded Mapsforge, but was not able to get them work with APRS, so I lost interest a few months back.

Thanks for starting this thread, it is getting me back into APRS.

 

[PabloCruise]

So the setup is super simple. Super friggin simple.

It is as follows:

1.) An HT I had lying around which is a Baofang UV-3R and is since discontinued. I think it was a 25$ radio. You could use any HT though and the Baofang s are cheap but there are better name brand options out there....

2.) The TNC2 from mobilinkd. This is basically a modem that connects to the radio via the audio connections and to the tablet via Bluetooth. It is internally powered via a battery or externally through a mini USB port on the side. The TNC2 is about $70

https://store.mobilinkd.com/products/mobilinkd-tnc2-2

3.) The appropriate cable to connect the TNC2 with the radio. The mobilinkd store has several and I just got one from them.

4.) The galaxy tab A 2019. This thing was about 110$. You could do all of this with iOS but it sure seemed like the android apps and hardware are way more refined. Also the tables has a simple micro SD card for expansion.

In order to make it work better I think I either need an external antenna for the radio or a more powerful mobile radio coupled with an external antenna. I’m currently working on getting a spare Mobile radio I have setup to transmit/receive the 144.390 aprs frequency so I can build a cable for it and hook up the TNC2 to it and play around.

I’m thinking I love the tablet with APRSdroid interface to the TNC2 because it gives me super simple mapping and messaging functionality. That being said I’m leaning towards a permanent solution that will include either a dual band radio with one side working APRS or just have another radio in the truck dedicated to APRS. I think if a person wanted to do the latter it’d work well with a decent HT and an externally mounted antenna.

So anyways that’s where I’m at.

I think I will dig back into this tomorrow. Last I played with this I had issues loading the map file and couldn't always get messages out.

Above - I do not think you can do everything w/ iOS, no APRSdroid for example...

 

[PabloCruise]

I got a chance to pull everything out and hook everything up, but not able see my location on aprs.fi.
I see other contacts in the log view, so I am able to receive .
When I Send Location, I do see the transmit light on the HT light red.
Also not able to send a message to my phone.
Map view makes APRSdroid stop responding.
IIRC, this is the point where I stopped messing with this last year.

My guess is I am doing several things wrong, so I would love to ask some questions - is this thread okay, or do y'all prefer if I start a new thread?

First question has to do with Location Source. The instructions for the TNC2 say to use Periodic GPS. My tablet (Samsung Tab A) does have GPS. Is Smart Beaconing a better choice?

TIA!

 

[DaveInDenver]

Periodic vs Smart Beaconing is a matter of preference. Using Smart Beaconing for a mobile station makes sense because it's contextual. You will increase and decrease the position beacon rate based on what you're doing. If you set your rate to be periodic you'll want to keep it long enough not to flood the network when you're in town, so use 2, 3 maybe even 5 minutes at least.

 

[rover67]

I feel like it might be nice to have it all in one spot for a good reference thread. I feel like the issues people have may be common?

As far as beaconing goes I feel like the smart beaconing for a mobile station makes sense also.