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?