aprs.fi app for iOS: version 2.7.0 is out!

[Heikki Hannikainen]

Hi!

There's a new version of the aprs.fi iPhone & iPad app out today! It's set
up to roll out slowly to everyone over the next 7 days, but you can always
go to the App Store app, search for aprs.fi and download the latest
version from there.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/aprs-fi/id922155038

List of changes:

• TNC selection view: Make it possible to manually configure TCP KISS TNCs
by entering an IP address and a port (or a hostname and a port).

• New real-time oscilloscope in the software AFSK modem. Implemented with
Metal/GPU so that the CPU usage is not affected noticeably. Refresh time
(T) and decay (D) buttons adjust the scope.

• Waterfall! Now when the modem scope runs on the GPU, we can have a
hardware accelerated waterfall view, too. Tap the OSC / WF button to
switch between scope and waterfall. Waterfall is disabled on older
hardware which does not support the current GPU acceleration
configuration.

• Remove audio sample format conversions in the software AFSK modem.

• Slightly smaller CPU use when the software AFSK modem is running in the
background.

• Fixed two different crashes seen in the wild (once each)

• Localisation updates: NL, JA. Thank you!


= Version 2.6.2 was also released on the 15th of July, but not announced
here. Here are the changes in that version: =

• Translation updates: German, Spanish, Japanese, Romanian, Chinese (both
zh-Hant and zh-Hans). Thank you, everyone!

• Fresh versions of the APRS device identification database are
automatically downloaded from the upstream source - but only when
modified.

• Updated the local pre-installed aprs-deviceid database.

• Clean up and vacuum the local target / station cache database
periodically. Reduce local disk writes with improved journaling.

• Slightly improved APRS text message fetch scheduling.

• Reworked text message queue/database access in the transmit & fetching
scheduler, hoping to fix a few rare crashes.

• DSP AFSK modem: Support transmitting back-to-back frames from the queue
(up to 3 at a time). This reduces transmission time, as most packets are
small, the txdelay is long, and a lot of time is spent waiting for the
next transmission slot.

• A new TNC developer view for people implementing KISS modems: Support
sending 1-3 small and 1-2 large packets, back-to-back. Useful for
buffering tests and back-to-back packet support. Packets are sent with a
"NOGATE" path, which should prevent them from traversing the APRS-IS.
Tested with the AFSK modem and the Mobilinkd TNC3 (both seem to support
back-to-back transmit and receive correctly).

• Almost all frameworks & dependencies were upgraded to latest versions.

• Built for iOS 18!

- Hessu