you know when you have a good idea and......

you know when you have a good idea and you think some must of had it and done it?
you look around no nothing so you tell friends, start work on it and then you find:
http://www.twitwx.co.uk/ and http://uksnowmap.com/ but there you are nothing is really new.

http://twitter.com/bordersweather
http://twitter.com/benmarsh
 I'll keep a watch on these when the bad weather comes.
If any one knows of more drop us a line.

Stormy weather

more on weather I've found a uk metoffice gadget I'll have a go adding this:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/gadgets/igoogle.html
but they are phasing it out?
but for my area there is a feed of warnings only:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/data/PWSCache/Warnings/RSS/Region/wl
or uk
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/data/PWSCache/Warnings/RSS/Region/UK
you could add to gadget but it is not quite what I was looking for "real time and user reports"

snow patrol.

after last years snow sitting in my office wondering if it was it snowing at home and I had to get kid.
I did a search for blogs or twits that gave the current snow levels but nothing.
it would be good if you could do a weby map thingy where people could post pictures of the current snow or bad weather. CB'er and Ham used to do this before web killed them.
But I have no way of doing it, not knowing much about tweets and facebook things.

post and pictures any where

let me explain the post and picture were posted via e-mail from a simple Nokia J2ME phone at West midlands safari park. With google lots of things can be done, like this you can post to blog see example or save pictures to Picasa. see this one. I could do a blog of photos from my phone.
the setting up is covered in the help files for both blogger and Picasa and it's not hard. only one point it's not the mobile blogging settings as these are for US only? another case of US and THEM.

Drop Box

Mobile blog post

You post anywhere

Any not have an iPhone?

Me for one!


I’ve nothing against iPhones but I’ve never been able to justify the cost just to run apps. I have an old Nokia series 40, pardon! It’s a type of Nokia that runs java apps of the J2ME standard. I’ve collected and odd collection of apps to go on it.

If you have no idea what J2ME is hop over to the Wiki and take a look (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J2me ) there are links on how to write your own apps without spending a penny ( cent in USA English). I’ve had a go it’s not that hard if you can understand a little JAVA and follow a tutorial. There are lots of premade apps out there and source code. This is not Android but some Android apps have a cut down version for J2ME.

One of my favourite apps in the Android cut down is trekbuddy (http://www.trekbuddy.net/forum/index.php) a real cool offline mapping application with a scriptable system to create head up displays such as Speedometers, geocashing tools and satnavs. You download the map tiles to the phone so you don’t have to keep down loading then when you need a map. I’ve always found I need a map when I have no cell signal. My only complaint is that your tracks and waypoints are stored in gpx format and must be stored in specific folders. Converting to gpx is to great problem there is our old friends gpsvisualizer ( http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/convert_input ) you can even make them up with a spreadsheet.

I have some other apps, not the millions of games that are in this format, there is http://www.tonetool.tk/ a Morse, DTMF and selcall generator and some text editors, for scripting I’ve used HECL (http://www.hecl.org/) but I’m not 100% sold on that one Python or VB would be nice still looking until I upgrade to Android?

Oh yes the emulator for a PC is less that the monster for Android, so you can check your new app in a sandbox. One last tip download the JAD file it’s sort of a start-up script with knobs on.

Any one seen an APRS over the air app. Something to generate APRS packets as tones?

Hide and seek;

Finally found how APRS gets on to Internet, sort of, it uses APRS-IS (http://www.aprs-is.net/ or http://www.aprs2.net/).


This connects data from a packet radio set up to the big world of the web. The above sites you some very interesting technical info, Maps, servers and web links, but I still can’t work out which Rabbit hole on 144.800 Mhz my signal would go in to end up on a map at http://aprs.fi/ ??

What would be nice if someone did a simple PC sound card APRS beacon software so you could plug it into your PC and watch to see if you pop up on http://aprs.fi/ or http://www.openaprs.net/?

Not a full blown TNC just a simple UI+APRS sender even if you have to type in position.

APRS? Where are the hams?

While digging into the brave new world of ham radio and looking up my old stomping ground of packet radio I came across Automatic_Packet_Reporting_System (see wiki). To cut a long story short it’s a system of broadcasting your position over ham radio.


There are web sites where you can track of all these signal like http://aprs.fi/ and http://www.openaprs.net/ or pick them up off air? I live in a black hole for APRS figures :-(.

But this has not stopped me from finding PC sound card decoding software and listening to the main frequency in the UK 144.800 MHz I’ve heard some signal but PC was not plugged in at time.

APRS was first designed for sending positional data in emergencies but if in range or on internet you can also get weather reports. Local to me but not in radio range is http://www.oaprs.net/search/EGFF at Cardiff Wales airport which sends out a stream of weather data. Looking like this 14 C / 57.2 F 87% 996.30mbar 270° W 13.7 MPH (gust: 0.0 MPH) and you can get it’s graphs from http://www.oaprs.net/graph/weather/day/EGFF. There are others that should be in range of me?

All looks very cool and techy but I still have not figured it all out, like how this data gets on web when I don’t hear a lot of signal on 144.800 MHz, how you build a tracker for you self and how to decode off air got some programs but they take a lot of setting up virtual serial ports and TCP/IP forwarding.

If anyone knows of a APRS run and see data program let me know?

Been actually playing with radios?

As you can tell by the tint of this blog, I like radio stuff.


But I’ve been a little busy with computers and other things lately. So I’ve been quiet on the radio front. Until recently my brother also a radio passed me an old IC2E (a real classic 2meter rig) with an alleged volume pot problem. To cut to the chase it was a push button on the pot to activate the repeater tone burst. This fixed and make shift ¼ wave antenna (aerial in old money) and I’m on the air?

What is going on?

New calls 2W and MW? Extra repeaters that sound off frequency and some odd sounds in odd places. Phoned brother and explained 2M is now 12.5khz channels and there are things called Gateways. IC2E can only work in 5Khz steps and all the new fun stuff is on the channels I can’t get to.

My birthday came around and bro bless him got me a cool prezzy a Boafeng UV-3R, look it up VHF/UHF handheld. It’s got 12.5khz steps CTCSS tones and all sorts of bells and whistles. I was set up 2M (144Mhz) and 70cm (432Mhz) but 70cm is madder than 2M loads of repeaters all over the place and invader with data signal.

I feel like that guy in the fairy tales or Buck Rogers, I’ve woken up in a strange new world.

Mapping it Part 5.

In part 3 mentioned http://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong.html script whch could do the hard work of working out how far.
I've now embedded it on my test page using the info on http://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong.html#using.
but i have a few comments if you want to add it to blogger.
1. it won't go into a post or gadget,
2. you need some where to store the .js files. as they don't work if you call the ones on http://www.movable-type.co.uk/. so I've put them on my google site and it works.

if anyone knows why i  had to do it this way i would like to know?
any blogger javascript gurus out there?

and a little one how do you set the spelling language on blogger to british english?
PFK out.

Mapping it Part 4.

if you like me are fascinated by gps stuff and maps, I’ve found a good site to convert data and get way point data:
http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/you can type in your address and get you magic gps numbers.

there is a lot of tools on www.gpsvisualizer.com a good place to start is at the examples:

http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/examples/
one I quite like is the geotagged photos in Google Maps where small icons show the position of geotagged photos, how it all works I’m not sure.

http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/examples/google_photo_map.html#data
next job is to find out.

"this is a copy from another blog of mine I'm moving all my techy stuff here"

Mapping it Part 3.

I've spotted a less graphic way of finding the distance and getting a bearing?
http://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong.htmland he explains the magic maths behind it.
sphinx is at

29.9753,31.1375 or 29°58′31.1″N 031°08′15.0″E

and Billy is at

51.54229, -3.38149 or 51°32′32.2″N 03°22′53.4″W

giving
Distance: 3711km or 2319.375 mils
Initial bearing: 116°49′07″
Final bearing: 140°09′09″
Midpoint: 42°01′53″N, 016°47′52″E
have a look but the line is a little curvy and google say 2308.22 mils.

this has something to do with maps being flat and the world not, see above link.

pfk out. 

Mapping it Part 2.

Now if you need to know how far with my maps under google maps all you do is draw a line? See below:

View to Cairo in a larger map
The blue line from Llantrisant to the Sphinx show how the crow flies, it’s not that I’ve made contact from these two points but I visited both and they are well known land marks in both areas. If you click on the line a little buble will pop-up with the distance (2308.22 mi).
So if you’re a budding Ham and had a few contacts and someone asks “how far can you get?” you can now pop on google maps and give them a number. By the way google ID’s are a good idea you can get gmail, mymaps and even a shiny blog like this one.

Mapping it

When I started playing with radio one of the first thing people ask is how far can you get?
This was most time answered with a shrug. As to work it out when I started normally needed finding a map(large paper thing) a ruler, paper and much scribbling. Now by the magic of Internet and google maps you can show people on your blog.
see link http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&ll=51.551672,-3.37409&spn=0.036132,0.111151&t=h&z=14&msid=212386886707637984966.00049a09dc780d7dae5c8
 or embed right into page.


View Llantrisant in a larger map

but these are what are known as static maps. They can be explored by you the user but they are a static snapshot of MyMaps on google maps and there is a limited views per day.
They are cool enough for showing your readers where something is or how big it is.
if you want to do realy clever stuff you need to play with the google maps API. when I've worked that out I'll let you know.

but if you want to see what others are doing have a look at http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/

PFK out.

Joy of Radio Control

I bought two little Radio control Cars for Christmas with the hope of a race or two.
but when I opened them and got them set up?
Oh joy they are on the same frequency 27.145Mhz why?
There are 6 different Channel I think but some say 30?
http://www.storacingproducts.com/support/radio_frequencies.pdf
So why all on same frequency.