Maximum requests per day?

[Elizabeth]

Hi there,

I'm interested in using the APRS.fi API for a school project. The current task is a "data visualization" project, in which an API is used in conjunction with a microcontroller to create an interesting physical visual representation of said data.

In my case, I want to create a slowly updating LED map of APRS location signals in my area. My original plan was to parse this data directly from APRS-IS, but my teacher declared it out of scope so I'd like to use this API to create a similar effect. I want to use FCC callsign records for a certain region and manually query for active signals, but I want to make sure I'm not sending so many requests that it qualifies as abuse.

What would be the relative maximum for requests per day? The last thing I want to do is step on any toes. Thank you so much -- this is a brilliant resource!

[xyn3rgy]

Hello Elizabeth,

So far I've used 120 requests per day at a 2-minute interval and Heikki hasn't become angry with me......... ...........so far :)

What's helpful is specifying multiple targets MMSID's per request... there are examples in the API docs... but if you need help formatting it... just ask.

Really cool project.

[Heikki Hannikainen]

On Wed, 9 Dec 2020, Elizabeth wrote:

> Hi there,
> I'm interested in using the APRS.fi API for a school project. The current task is a "data visualization" project, in which an API
> is used in conjunction with a microcontroller to create an interesting physical visual representation of said data.
>
> In my case, I want to create a slowly updating LED map of APRS location signals in my area. My original plan was to parse this data
> directly from APRS-IS, but my teacher declared it out of scope so I'd like to use this API to create a similar effect. I want to
> use FCC callsign records for a certain region and manually query for active signals, but I want to make sure I'm not sending so
> many requests that it qualifies as abuse.

Elizabeth,

The API does not support querying for a certain region; this is
intentionally not a feature of the API. To get a region, I believe you
currently need to parse the APRS-IS stream, but there are ready-made
libraries for Perl, Python and Java at least to do it.

> What would be the relative maximum for requests per day? The last thing
> I want to do is step on any toes. Thank you so much -- this is a
> brilliant resource!

There is no published strict request limit, because I'm afraid people
would then configure their apps to poll unnecessarily precisely at that
rate. I may also need to adjust the rate at times, and it may be different
to different clients based on heuristics.

Figure out the minimum rate that you *need* to poll at, and try if it
works. Do read the API specification and terms carefully. Poll many
callsigns with a single query, as the rate limit is for the number of API
queries.

- Hessu