Comments on: APRS Tracker

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 13 May 2009 18:28:41 +0000

Lots of great comments here, let me respond to a few:

Sean: GPS coverage problems and outages are a pain, most noticeable is when I am driving on the lower deck of the Bay Bridge – zero signal for several miles! Someone could make the ultimate APRS rig by combining a modern GPS receiver with something like the Sparkfun IMU. Chris Anderson posted a blurb about an open source Kallman filter for it here: http://diydrones.ning.com/profiles/blogs/705844:BlogPost:14328

A good GPS plus the IMU and Kallman filter could allow the system to flywheel through the GPS outages and still report a reasonably accurate position (limited by the accuracy and drift of the IMU).

Robert / jrocky – The D7A would be cool but part of the reason I put this project together was that I already had the TH-79A. For years it was mostly just sitting on a shelf collecting dust, so I was happy to find a use for it.

neko68k – Thanks for the offer, we ended up making a quick stop in Albuquerque to see the Balloon Museum. Traffic kept us from being able to see much else (we had a huge moving truck, so getting around in traffic was a real problem). My brother and I spent 2 days in Santa Fe, though, and made a side trip to Los Alamos, which was really cool! I really enjoyed seeing New Mexico for the first time (and the food was fantastic, too!)

N0QBH – I have long been interested in making an AVR-based packet modem. I’ll check our your project – thanks for the link!

By: N0QBH

N0QBH — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:10:27 +0000

I’ve written PIC code to decode and track APRS stations on a mapping type GPS.
http://www.ringolake.com/pic_proj/decoder/rx_206.html

The GPS version is on the right side of the page. There are also experimental modemless versions here:
http://www.ringolake.com/pic_proj/zcd/zcdmodem.html

By: GPS and APRS « Walking Through Time

GPS and APRS « Walking Through Time — Tue, 05 May 2009 08:48:04 +0000

[...] across this interesting post as an alternative to using smart phones. Using radio networks rather than phones to relay GPS [...]

By: Robert Diamond

Robert Diamond — Tue, 05 May 2009 04:12:19 +0000

Yeah, I used the ‘D7A for my motorcycle ham rig. The pictures are of my first real embedded project, using an AVR Butterfly board to display and change the frequency.

By: neko68k

neko68k — Tue, 05 May 2009 02:28:17 +0000

Kind of OT. If you’re going to travel through Albuquerque, I recommend a ride up the Trammway. Longest free span in the world. The view from the top is great and you get a discount on the ticket to ride if you eat at the restaurant at the top or the bottom(dont eat at the top). Also if you need a hotel to stay at in Albuquerque I can shamelessly plug the one I work at Catch me in email and I might be able to swing you a fair rate.

By: jrocky

jrocky — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:03:32 +0000

With the Kenwood TH-D7A/[G] and a GPS device that supports NMEA/NMEA96 connected is all you will need. The TH-D7A[G] has a built in packet modem that supports APRS.

By: APRS tracking - Hack a Day

APRS tracking - Hack a Day — Mon, 04 May 2009 20:09:08 +0000

[...] really wish we had a little more information on the construction of this, but [Jeff] made this APRS tracker several years ago. APRS, or Automatic Packet Reporting System is a system where shortwave radios put out small [...]

By: Sean

Sean — Mon, 04 May 2009 18:24:37 +0000

Cool thing, APRS! We used it to track the follow-up boat on a boat race. It was really neat watching the progress on a laptop computer many miles from the activity. Good antennas are a must, a centrally located Digipeater on a high location and good strong GPS receivers. Our major problem was when it hit the canyon and the older GPS we were receiving got kind of wonky as its view of the sky narrowed.