Trouble with Telemetry ! (Byonics MT RTG)

[RichD-2e0rkd]

Hiya all,
I've been having a few problems for a few days now with getting the telemetry to display correctly on APRS.FI from my MT RTG.
(its new to me, so not something that has just stopped working...i have not used it successfully previously.)

I have worked through the setup and have had some exchanges with Byonics, and my setting appear to be correct.
and it 'seems' like my data is being received properly but for some reason the EQNS message doesn't seem to be recognized or applied.

I can 'see' the packet appearing in the RAW feed (example below)

And it appears to show the :EQNS message with the correct values to display the voltage and temperature for the 1st and 2nd parameters.
the Voltage appears correctly on the Telemetry page..
but the temperature does not seem to register the numeric offset shown in the RAW packet (the last value -273.14)




On the telemetry page the equation seems to be missing that third (numeric offset) value. (by the mouse cursor in the above image.)
yet the 0.489 conversion multiplier is being received and applied.
and the telemetry values are received and displayed and show the daily temperature cycle in my office.
just showing a little warm perhaps :)
on the image below... if the -273.14 were to be applied i would have a much more believable value in the mid 20's (deg C)


can anyone suggest why the value appears in the RAW log, but doesn't (appear) get passed to or parsed by the Telemetry screen ?
or do i have to 'reset' the graph in some way to get it to see the change/update the offset.
I have tried sending the data packets as both MIC-E and non MIC-E data. but doesn't seem to make a difference to the offset value showing.

The raw value from the sensor or temperature is multiplied by 0.489 to give a value in Degrees Kelvin
so for Deg'C  subtract 273.15

Thanks in advance..
regards/73

Richard/2E0RKD

[Heikki Hannikainen]

Hi,

On Thu, 2 Mar 2017, RichD-2e0rkd wrote:

> I have worked through the setup and have had some exchanges with Byonics, and my setting appear to be correct.
> and it 'seems' like my data is being received properly but for some reason the EQNS message doesn't seem to be recognized or applied.
>
> I can 'see' the packet appearing in the RAW feed (example below)

> [IMAGE]

> And it appears to show the :EQNS message with the correct values to display the voltage and temperature for the 1st and 2nd parameters.
> the Voltage appears correctly on the Telemetry page..
> but the temperature does not seem to register the numeric offset shown in the RAW packet (the last value -273.14)

It seems that aprs.fi's telemetry parameters decoder is a bit too strict
on the input.

The EQNS packet you've sent has an extra space (0x20) character at the end
of the line. Actually, so do the PARM and UNIT packets. The space isn't
immediately visible on the normal raw packets display, but if you switch
to the Hex mode (there's a dropdown at the top), it becomes visible. Or,
if you try to mark, copy and paste the packet with the mouse, it lets you
select and highlight the space in the end, too.

http://aprs.fi/?c=raw&call=2E0RKD-9&limit=500&view=hex

2017-03-02 04:08:58 EET 2E0RKD-9: 71 bytes
0x00 2 E 0 R K D - 9 > A P T 3 1 4 , W I D E 1 - 1 , W I D E 2 - 1 ,
324530524b442d393e4150543331342c57494445312d312c57494445322d312c
0x20 q A R , 2 E 0 R D J : : 2 E 0 R K D - 9 : U N I T . V o l t s
7141522c32453052444a3a3a324530524b442d39203a554e49542e566f6c7473
0x40 , D e g . C
2c4465672e4320

In the ASCII table you can look up the bytes. In the end of the packet
0x67 is 'g', 0x2e is '.', 0x43 is 'C', 0x20 is a normal ' ' space.

2017-03-02 04:08:58 EET 2E0RKD-9: 86 bytes
0x00 2 E 0 R K D - 9 > A P T 3 1 4 , W I D E 1 - 1 , W I D E 2 - 1 ,
324530524b442d393e4150543331342c57494445312d312c57494445322d312c
0x20 q A R , 2 E 0 R D J : : 2 E 0 R K D - 9 : E Q N S . 0 , 0 . 0
7141522c32453052444a3a3a324530524b442d39203a45514e532e302c302e30
0x40 2 9 3 , 0 , 0 , 0 . 4 8 9 , - 2 7 3 . 1 4
3239332c302c302c302e3438392c2d3237332e313420

0x31 is '1', 0x34 is '4', 0x20 is ' '.

The aprs.fi EQNS parser is trying to parse '-273.14 ' as a number and gets
upset on the non-numeric ' '.

I'll make the parser trim out spaces from the end before trying the
decoding so it won't get confused if an accidental space is typed in.

However, if you didn't accidentally type the space in there, and if in
fact it's Byonics code inserting that space there always, it could be a
bug in their code - the space character certainly is not needed there,
it's a very little bit of wasted bandwidth and might confuse some silly or
pedant receivers like mine over here.

- Hessu

[RichD-2e0rkd]

Hi And thanks for the reply..
I did manage to get it working before I saw this reply..
I didn't know about the hex view, which would have helped :)

I went back over everything and eventually found the space at the end..
It seems I had copied and pasted the extra space from the PDFs manual for the byonics RTG.
The config program just did what I told it to :)

Anyway thanks for your help, hope the space filter in your parser helps someone else.

Cheers/73

Richard/2e0rkd