Re: APRStoot (logout)                                         06/24/24
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If you're interested in  ham radio,  you maybe saw logout's post about
APRS[1]. In  it, he  mentioned a program  he wrote  called "aprstoot",
which  receives  APRS messages  at  OK1ZXS-15,  and  posts them  to  a
mastodon account. Quite fascinating!

APRS is a 2m / VHF thing,  which means that range is limited. However,
APRS is also  a gateway and internet thing, which  means that range is
UNLIMITED. To test  out the theory, I setup my  APRS station this week
in an attempt to reach OK1ZXS-15.

My gear  is not fancy.  I have a  Yaesu FT-2980R transceiver,  with an
EasyDigi[2]  that plugs  into the  mic jack  and audio  jack for  PTT,
galvanic isolation, and audio in/out.  There's a Diamond CP22E antenna
on my roof. The  EasyDigi connects to a laptop that  I have setup just
for ham radio, where Direwolf and SARTrack are installed.

A few miles from my house there is an i-Gate station on a tower, which
I  can reach  without any  issues. When  I send  location packets,  or
messages, that's usually the station that receives them and sends them
on. I directed  a message to OK1ZXS-15, and sure  enough, it showed up
on mastodon moments later[3]. It worked!

What a cool little piece of software, thanks logout!

If anyone out  there is curious about  APRS, I'll note that  it can be
used  for position  tracking, text  messaging, SMS  and Email  gateway
messaging, and  even Winlink.  If you've got  2m capabilities  and the
ability to wire up your radio to a computer (not nearly as hard as you
might think), then APRS might be something to check out.

[1] gopher://i-logout.cz:70/0/phlog/posts/2024-05-11_aprstoot.txt
[2] https://nu6xb.eecs.berkeley.edu/site/index.php/eecs/easy-digi-modifying/
[3] https://botsin.space/@aprstoot