APRS comms

I had heard about APRS in passing on a group trip which led me to do a bit of research. What surprised me the most is how little attention it gets in the off road world.

APRS is a digital protocol for Ham radios. And basically with a $20 cable and a cheap Baofeng you can attach your to cell phone to a Ham repeater network. The GPS tracking it provides is nothing a cell phone can't do but APRS also shows GPS locations of everybody else pinging the network. The other big upside is that it provides rudimentary messaging abilities with no cell coverage.

You have to get a Ham call sign, but that's $15 and memorizing easily available test questions, well worth it.

 

Heck yea.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/aprs-ham-radio-w-bs.556190/

The biggest thing is it works when cell phone don't

 

HAM is awesome. So many things you can do and way better than CB in both range and quality.

 

Yep. In addition, I use the SMSGTE gateway to send sms messages to my family member’s cell phones who aren’t license holders.

Edit: I should add that I can also rx replies from them.

 

Great post my search skills must be off because I missed that one. Thanks.

 

Hey I'm for the cause. I use APRS all the time. Glad to see other on here using it too!

 

He’s just pimping out his own thread. Lol

 

He did some fancy screen shots so it would be ashame to see that talent and hard work go to waste.

 

He a overachiever.

 

Do they make a Android/iPhone app with a built-in TNC modem?

Because last I checked you need a modem + APRS app to go the baofung route.

 

The APRS Droid app does all the work. There is cable that plugs into your head phone jack on the phone and set your Baofeng to VOX. The app does all the digital translating.

 

Well I didn't know that. Thought you'd need a mobilelinkd device. That's cool

 

@Ferball didnt you come to Maine with us ? Lol

 

Yep. Cool beans. They must of added the AFSK audio input ability recently:

AFSK via Speaker/Mic
You can connect an audio cable (or a bluetooth headset) to your radio transceiver. APRSdroid will modulate its packets directly via AFSK and decode incoming transmissions.

The High-Quality Demodulator is based on javAX25 by Sivan, 4X6IZ and requires Android 2.2 and a modern CPU to operate. However, it provides a significant boost in decoding quality and allows to use a Bluetooth headset.

Set the Frame Sync Prefix in [ms] to fine-tune your VOX control. AFSK output is on the left channel. Be sure to turn off ring tones and notifications from your phone/tablet to keep them from being transmitted inadvertently.

 

Although VOX on a Baofung is pretty much useless.

 

Just keep in mind that if you aren’t in range of a repeater and an igate all the super cool features of APRS don’t work. You’ll still get position updates of anyone within direct range of your radio but a Baofeng at 5w with a rubber duck antenna won’t get you very far.

 

Yes I did you help change a couple of tires.

 

Thought that was you. Haha. I'm terrible with names on her. Finally clicked when I was unity!

Need to look into a portable cubical quad to really get some back country APRS going on!

 

SMSGTE is tits. They just redid their website too so it’s much easier to manage. I suggest donating a few bucks if you use it as they pay per message sent.

 

APRS works ....

SIMPLY it does... for us people that NEED a resource that need a simple way to pass off a location .....here is a Screenshot on HOW it can work and it does....

So in our case, we needed to send a location. You cannot see the "other end" but passing our 'silly' drive to find our friends....this worked out TREMENDOUSLY!

They knew where we were at via APRS where NO cell phone reception happened.

If you are curious.....let me know!



So I turned off our APRS after the Link up.....Privacy while camping...but you get the gist...........\

APRS is INVALUABLE.........and friends and family can see you (if you have it enabled) whenever you want.