Sharing your position on the map without a GPS
Heikki Hannikainen
The aprs.fi site now supports sharing your current position from the
convenience of your web browser by simply pointing at the map, without
using a GPS or web browser Geolocation API support.
1. Sign up to the service, if you haven't done so already. Your
account's nickname will, by default, be used to mark your position.
2. Log in!
3. Find your current position on the map.
4. Zoom up close for more accurate pointing.
5. Right-click the position and select Upload my position. On a Mac,
press ctrl to simulate right mouse button. Left-handed mouse setup will
probably use the left button, but if you have one, you know better.
6. If you didn't get the position quite right, simply move the symbol
image by dragging and dropping it.
7. When you've moved, right-click and upload the position again.
To change the symbol icon, the web station's name, or the comment text,
click on the Favourites (star) tool button in the top right of the screen,
and select My stations and bookmarks, and then Settings from the default
My web stations item.
I also upgraded the web server software to a new major release. Nice
surprise – it didn't require any configuration changes, it just worked. Or
so it seems.
- Hessu
Julian, G4ILO
http://aprs.fi/?call=G4ILO I get "Found 2 targets" and two G4ILO's
with different icons and ages, and I have to select one and click
"Show selected." Every time. Which is a bit annoying.
Is there any reason it could not use browser geolocation? If you
aren't in Helsinki, navigating to your position manually is a bit time
consuming.
Julian, G4ILO
Heikki Hannikainen
> I did this out of curoisity, and now whenever I go to my bookmark of
> http://aprs.fi/?call=G4ILO I get "Found 2 targets" and two G4ILO's
> with different icons and ages, and I have to select one and click
> "Show selected." Every time. Which is a bit annoying.
Yup. The location uploaded over the web is a 'web station' and lives in a
different namespace from the APRS and AIS stations. This is done to avoid
abuse cases where a malicious random web user A would move a prominent
blogger's APRS station to the middle of the ocean, which in turn would
break the reception of APRS beacons for some time (due to the bad GPS fix
filtering and "overspeed" limiting in the APRS receiver at aprs.fi).
Also, aprs.fi now correctly handles the case of multiple stations or ships
having the same name, for example 'Aurora' which is both an APRS object
and the name of many ships.
You can get around the additional step by either prefixing the callsign
with a/ for APRS or w/ for web (a/G4ILO) when looking it up on aprs.fi, or
by changing the name of the web station in My Stations so that it doesn't
match your APRS station's name. Click on the Star button (My stations and
bookmarks), and then click on Settings under "My web stations". Just add a
"-web" "SSID" or something. You can even delete the web station completely
if you like.
The web station's name is not limited by APRS limitations, it does
international characters, spaces and stuff.
http://aprs.fi/?call=w%2F4225895793
> Is there any reason it could not use browser geolocation? If you
> aren't in Helsinki, navigating to your position manually is a bit time
> consuming.
No, as a matter of fact browser geolocation was implemented already in
August. Just click the 'star' tool button to center the map using
geolocation, and the 'antenna tower' button to share the location on
aprs.fi.
- Hessu
Heikki Hannikainen
Oops. Click the 'crosshair' tool button to center (the tooltip says
"Center at current location". Not the star (favourites).
- Hessu
Julian, G4ILO
change the position of an APRS station that was unable to update its
own position (not within range of a gateway or something.)
Julian, G4ILO
Tim Chapman
Heikki Hannikainen
> Is there a way to send your location to APRS.fi via the API?
All of the API methods are listed on http://aprs.fi/page/api - if it's not
there, it's not there.
- Hessu
Nosey Nick VA3NNW
> Is there a way to send your location to APRS.fi via the API?
No.
No? There's always the actual APRS-IS API, even if there's not an aprs.fi one?
Connect to an APRS-IS server on the right port (Tier 2 or 3, NOT tier-1 if you are "only" a client not "backbone"), authenticate with a callsign and the right passcode, send one line of APRS data, disconnect?
Some (most?) of the APRS-IS servers even have a semi-official HTTP POST API too?
http://www.aprs-is.net/SendOnlyPorts.aspx
Nick VA3NNW
Tom Crawford
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Tim Chapman
Tim, KB7MDF