Object Kill

[Lynn (D) - KJ4ERJ]

G4ILO was testing objects with APRSISCE/32 last night and created the
"Skiddaw" object. This worked fine and then he tried to Kill the
object. The last two packets below have the Kill flag (_ instead of
*), but he says that the object is still showing up. I checked
http://aprs.fi/?call=Skiddaw and indeed can see no trace of the kill
attempt.

Does aprs.fi support killing objects? And how can we tell if an
object was Killed?

Lynn (D) - KJ4ERJ - Author of APRSISCE for Windows Mobile and Win32


2010-08-12 08:10:21 UTC:
G4ILO>APWW03,WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1,qAR,MM1BHO:;Skiddaw *120810z5439.08N/
00308.87WrTest APRSISCE object creation

2010-08-12 08:34:10 UTC:
G4ILO>APWW03,WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1,qAR,MM1BHO:;Skiddaw *120834z5439.08N/
00308.87WrTest APRSISCE object creation

2010-08-12 08:34:53 UTC: G4ILO>APWW03,TCPIP*,qAC,T2ITALY1:;Skiddaw
_120834z5439.08N/00308.87WrTest APRSISCE object creation

2010-08-12 08:45:03 UTC: G4ILO>APWW03,TCPIP*,qAC,T2ITALY1:;Skiddaw
_120845z5439.08N/00308.87WrTest APRSISCE object creation

[Heikki Hannikainen]

On Thu, 12 Aug 2010, Lynn (D) - KJ4ERJ wrote:

> G4ILO was testing objects with APRSISCE/32 last night and created the
> "Skiddaw" object. This worked fine and then he tried to Kill the
> object. The last two packets below have the Kill flag (_ instead of
> *), but he says that the object is still showing up. I checked
> http://aprs.fi/?call=Skiddaw and indeed can see no trace of the kill
> attempt.
>
> Does aprs.fi support killing objects? And how can we tell if an
> object was Killed?

aprs.fi doesn't really support killing objects at all. One of the main
features of the site is to allow looking up old stations (and objects and
items) from the past year or so, so object killing can't really delete
anything from the database.

It could maybe override the "show past 1 hour" setting in the real-time
view and make the object disappear immediately even if it was last
transmitted within the selected amount of time. But I don't see how it
could sensibly make http://aprs.fi/?call=Skiddaw go away.

- Hessu

[Lynn (D) - KJ4ERJ]

I think making it disappear from the current screen would meet the
intent of the Object Kill definition. I totally support the specific
URL showing the station, but would it be possible to include the fact
of the Kill in the popup somehow? Maybe strike-out the callsign in
the popup display? I'm not a Google Maps programmer, so I apologize
if I'm suggesting difficult or impossible to accomplish.

Lynn (D) - KJ4ERJ

On Aug 12, 1:44 pm, Heikki Hannikainen <he...@hes.iki.fi> wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Aug 2010, Lynn (D) - KJ4ERJ wrote:
>
> > G4ILO was testing objects with APRSISCE/32 last night and created the
> > "Skiddaw" object.  This worked fine and then he tried to Kill the
> > object.  The last two packets below have the Kill flag (_ instead of
> > *), but he says that the object is still showing up.  I checked

> >http://aprs.fi/?call=Skiddawand indeed can see no trace of the kill

[Dustin Sallings]

Digging up an old thread, but has there been any further thought into this?

IMO, sending out object kills should make them not be immediately visible, though perhaps something can resurrect them later.  The APRS specification says "Implementation Recommendation: When an Object/Item is killed it should be removed from display on the screen."  I suspect this is what most people expect.

Alternatively, if you want to keep stuff on the screen, perhaps not processing kill messages at all would be preferable.  I'm using xastir which has sent nothing but kills for the last hour, but aprs.fi shows "Last Position:  2016-11-03 15:01:47 PDT (2m8s ago)"

[Robert Teuma-Castelletti]

I am also digging up an old thread to implore this site to implement killed objects and items properly. They can still be archived and accessible by searching, but they should be removed from the map immediately. I hope to implement automatic creation and deletion of objects representing road hazards, weather events, and others near my QTH but without supporting killed objects, the aprs.fi map is going to look extremely cluttered and would convey no information about when the event has ended.