My reason for voting for the "+" to 'zoom' in to show more details is partly
based on the way the works, or Google Earth,
the "+" plus button brings the map in for more detail, sort of like getting
right down to street level, as opposed to looking down from a plane or
something that is way up in the sky; just my two cents on that.
Dave N8PU

Lynn W. Deffenbaugh wrote:

Noel,

So I was just comparing the two versions of the program,
and I think I figured out what it is I didn't like about the normal one:
The icons get too small when you zoom out to see more map. Just too
small on the 3" VGA screen for my taste.

So, they get too small too quickly in both versions, right? I only
expanded them in the second, but didn't change when/how they get small.

Yeah... they get too small.
I'd rather them just overlap than get really small.

I do kinda like the bigger icon at higher zoom levels.

I don't think they really need to made any bigger.. at least not on this
screen. But it would make them look nicer at high zoom, so I'll work on
that.

So the 2x maximum expansion looks good to you? I concur with that
opinion as well.

I think 2x the "normal" size would be good on a VGA device.

Also, what overall size (X/Y) should I make the grid for the larger icon
set?

To get them up to double size clearly, we'll need each square to be 42
pixels instead of the current 21 pixel squares (21-4 giving the 17x17
icons that the program ends up painting).

I did a quick experiment here with IrfanView and I think if you start
with just a resize/resample 200% retaining aspect ratio, you'll have a
good starting point to clean them up. As I mentioned before though, try
to make sure that all non-important pixels are actually pure white
(RGB(255,255,255)) or they won't go transparent correctly.

Will do.

I'm trying to figure out how to fade them out and keep the transparency
so I quit getting the square around fading stations. If you look close
at the red dot in the screen caps you sent me, you can see what I'm
talking about. I was drawing it at 50% fade, but that messes up the
transparency. I'm going back to 100% for the red dot, but aging
stations will still start having a square around them as they fade.
I'll get it fixed somehow!

I guess I didn't mess around with that too much... it didn't bother me.

Thanks again for any efforts you can do on getting clearer, bigger
icons. I'm hoping that I can just use them for all resolutions with the
320x240 phone just using them at 50% with Win32 doing the scaling for
me. Scaling down tends to look better than scaling up!

Lynn (D) - KJ4ERJ

Noel
W8TVI

Hello,

This email message is a notification to let you know that
a file has been uploaded to the Files area of the aprsisce
group.

File : /APRSISCE6P090811.zip
Uploaded by : ldeffenb <kj4erj@...>
Description : New Station Info (Comment, PHG, cse/spd), Logon fix, OSM prefetcher fix & expansion

You can access this file at the URL:


To learn more about file sharing for your group, please visit:


Regards,

ldeffenb <kj4erj@...>

Testers,

There's yet another release of APRSISCE available (APRSISCE6P090811.zip)! Here's a short list of what's new and different.

Lynn (D) - KJERJ

1) Station comments are now displayed in the station popup.

2) Station course and speed are parsed and displayed in the station popup (ONLY if provided by remote station, not "guessed" at by distance/time). (Thanks to John N8JJ) I'm thinking about providing a scaled arrow (short and thick for slow, long and thin for fast) in the course direction in the future, thoughts? Also, should I think about calculating course and speed, even though this can result in strange answers?

3) Station PHGR (Power/Height/Gain/Range) is parsed, calculated, and displayed, including the Beacon Rate (per hour) if provided.

4) Rng: (Range) has changed to Pos: (Position) in the station popup and the bearing is now displayed in 16 compass point text, not degrees. (16 points are also used for the course if displayed)

5) Corrected the logon string's Version content so we should quit getting the "adjunct HH:MM Missing filter keyword" complaint at login (most of you have probably never noticed anyway).

6) No longer display the Pos: 0 @ 0 if you station pop-up "ME".

7) Screens bigger than 320x240 in size will increase the displayed icon size as you zoom in. This looked better than I expected. I just need to figure out a graceful scale also.

8) Station popup coordinates no longer display table/icon information, but use spaces. The coordinates are now more readable and the selected icon's name is displayed anyway.

9) Double-clicking an empty map space now displays OSM Tile fetcher queue information and doesn't say (1 failed) while it is actively downloading a tile.

10) The OSM Tile prefetcher now pulls all outward-zooming parent tiles whenever a lower level tile is retrieved. This makes zooming out faster. It is smart enough to stop when it encounters a tile that's already been loaded.

11) Corrected a timing issue that could cause the tile pre-fetcher to access non-allocated memory. I have no idea what the user-side of this would have looked like, but it probably would NOT have been pretty.

12) TCP communication errors are now forced into APRSISCE.log, even if Debug Logging is not enabled.

13) The forecast range red dot is now 100% opaque again to avoid the square background it had at 50%. I need to get fade and transparency working together for the station icons.

14) Double-clicking where a rectangle overlaps the circle should now honor the top rectangle, this was really strange for a while!

Known Issues:

1) I had the tile prefetcher lock up last night during testing. I ran out of data coverage range and it just stopped fetching tiles. Closing and restarting the client corrected the situation.

2) If a corrupted OSM tile is fetched (web server error during the fetch, for instance), that tile file is detected as corrupt but not removed from the device. This means you'll have a permanent map "hole" there at a single zoom level until I get this fixed.

To Dos: (Incomplete)
Parse and display Frequency object information
Delete bad PNGs to allow refetch
Support larger Icons (complements Noel W8TVI)
Fix up fonts for VGA (640x480) devices (test with Noel W8TVI)
Allow configuration of location for OSMTiles cache (w/o editing XML)
Allow configuration of date/time display & GMT vs local (Dave N8PU)
Allow configurable removal of some screen elements (Satellites, John N8JJ)
Optimize circle redraws for off-screen stations
Track selected station (in center of screen)
Pan (Drag) screen for browsing the map
Record/Recall last DNS/IP for OSM/APRS-IS (faster reconnect)
Asynchronous TCP/IP connections & reading (solves hangs)
Timeout on OSM Tile fetcher (solves stalls)
Implement whatever results from the Zoom +/- Poll

Win32 client only for the following:
Simultaneously track multiple targets in separate circles
Support NMEA GPS

--- In aprsisce@..., "ldeffenb" <kj4erj@...> wrote:

5) Corrected the logon string's Version content so we should quit getting the "adjunct HH:MM Missing filter keyword" complaint at login (most of you have probably never noticed anyway).

This would have been noticed as the server "going dumb". If the server's filter is not set properly, then all you will receive is keep-alive comment lines. I highly recommend that you go back to considering the keep-alive comment lines as confirmation that the server is there and functional.

If you are concerned about if the login was handled correctly, the logresp comment line that is sent after the login contains confirmation of the login, whether it is verified or not, if the filter was set properly, and what server you logged into.

The keep-alives are generated after 20 seconds of inactivity on the port -from- the server which is every 20 seconds if you don't set a filter and no one sends you a message. If you do your reads as ReadLine with receivetimeout set to 30000, you shouldn't have any hang issues on reading (be sure to encapsulate in try/catch code looking for any exception). If there is an error, close the connection and try to reconnect.

73,

Pete AE5PL

--- In aprsisce@..., "Peter Loveall" <pete@...> wrote:

--- In aprsisce@..., "ldeffenb" <kj4erj@> wrote:

5) Corrected the logon string's Version content so we should quit getting the "adjunct HH:MM Missing filter keyword" complaint at login (most of you have probably never noticed anyway).

This would have been noticed as the server "going dumb". If the server's filter is not set properly, then all you will receive is keep-alive comment lines. I highly recommend that you go back to considering the keep-alive comment lines as confirmation that the server is there and functional.

Actually, this would NOT have caused the server dumb. I don't send the filter string with the logon, but send it as a separate command so that I can re-send it if the user re-configures the settings. I only put the vers on the logon line, but prior to the fix, my version string had an embedded space causing the server to THINK I was trying to send a filter.

If you are concerned about if the login was handled correctly, the logresp comment line that is sent after the login contains confirmation of the login, whether it is verified or not, if the filter was set properly, and what server you logged into.

I field and log the logresp line to a debug log just for that reason. However, since the filter isn't on the logon line, it doesn't help me with that.

The keep-alives are generated after 20 seconds of inactivity on the port -from- the server which is every 20 seconds if you don't set a filter and no one sends you a message. If you do your reads as ReadLine with receivetimeout set to 30000, you shouldn't have any hang issues on reading (be sure to encapsulate in try/catch code looking for any exception). If there is an error, close the connection and try to reconnect.

My hang issues are with DNS translations and the initial connect as I'm doing the synchronous socket calls currently. I poll the Window Mobile Communications Manager for status, but sometimes even though it APPEARS to be on-line for data, the gethostbyname() and/or connect() calls take a LONG time to timeout.

I don't issue an recv() call unless an ioctlsocket() shows that there is actually data available for reading, so once I'm connected, hanging is not a problem, just not getting data or an error for an extended time period, what I call the Quiet time limit.

I WILL re-enable counting the keep-alives as non-quiet traffic as soon as I'm happy that my client is actually working correctly. In the meantime, the 10 or so (max) copies that are out there in use shouldn't be doing much to the APRS-IS.

73s to you and keep asking the questions, it's how I learned as much as I think I know!

Lynn (D) - KJ4ERJ

--- In aprsisce@..., "ldeffenb" <kj4erj@...> wrote:

--- In aprsisce@..., "Peter Loveall" <pete@> wrote:

--- In aprsisce@..., "ldeffenb" <kj4erj@> wrote:

5) Corrected the logon string's Version content so we should quit getting the "adjunct HH:MM Missing filter keyword" complaint at login (most of you have probably never noticed anyway).

This would have been noticed as the server "going dumb". If the server's filter is not set properly, then all you will receive is keep-alive comment lines. I highly recommend that you go back to considering the keep-alive comment lines as confirmation that the server is there and functional.

Actually, this would NOT have caused the server dumb. I don't send the filter string with the logon, but send it as a separate command so that I can re-send it if the user re-configures the settings. I only put the vers on the logon line, but prior to the fix, my version string had an embedded space causing the server to THINK I was trying to send a filter.

I would say that since there have been no other reports of javAPRSSrvr just quitting sending packets but maintaining the keep-alives, the server "going dumb" is actually the result of an improper filter setting. The advantage of setting the filter at login is the logresp comment you get back from the server confirming your new filter setting. At any time later, you can still use a comment line to set the filter to something else.

I am unable to test the software at this point because I have no need for highly active data flows to my cell phone and I want a reconnect attempt as soon as possible when I do use my cell phone for APRS. Personnaly, I find masking a client issue by extending the disconnect time only delays determination of the real cause of a problem and usually leads me to frustration with any software that I work with.

73,

Pete AE5PL

--- In aprsisce@..., "Peter Loveall" <pete@...> wrote:

I would say that since there have been no other reports of javAPRSSrvr just quitting sending packets but maintaining the keep-alives, the server "going dumb" is actually the result of an improper filter setting. The advantage of setting the filter at login is the logresp comment you get back from the server confirming your new filter setting. At any time later, you can still use a comment line to set the filter to something else.

I (hopefully) never said it was a server bust. I'm dealing with a bunch of unknowns here, and I've ONLY seen the problem while driving down the road going in and out of cellular coverage. It's not the world's most reproducable environment.

Since I'm already fielding the #logresp and you've confirmed what I suspected that I'm able to update the filter later no matter which way I specify it, I'll see about embedding the first filter in the logon command.

I am unable to test the software at this point because I have no need for highly active data flows to my cell phone and I want a reconnect attempt as soon as possible when I do use my cell phone for APRS. Personnaly, I find masking a client issue by extending the disconnect time only delays determination of the real cause of a problem and usually leads me to frustration with any software that I work with.

I'm not sure I understand the "reconnect as soon as possible" bit. APRSISCE does try to immediately reconnect if a connection is lost UNLESS the Windows Mobile connection manager status says that it won't succeed anyway. The disconnect time is not delayed, by not counting the keep-alives as traffic, I'm actually ALLOWING the disconnect to occur after the quiet time has expired. Before I started ignoring the keep-alives, the client would simply go (effectively) dead receiving ONLY keepalives until the user got truly frustrated and closed the client.

I'm not trying to "mask a client issue", I'm trying to resolve the issue while still keeping the Beta functioning at the same time. That's the whole point of BETA software, to work around unknown issues to allow other testing proceed while still attempting to find a permanent resolution to the workarounds. Frustration comes with the Beta landscape and testing partially baked software isn't for everyone.

I have no doubt that the issue is in my client code, it's certainly the new kid on the well established block. As soon as I understand all of the vagueness of "always on" cellular data connections and the behavior of continuously open sockets across cellular switches, I have every confidence that I'll eliminate the problem. In the meantime, at least the client recovers the connection and gets the feed going again as soon as it notices the lack of non-keep-alive traffic.

Lynn (D) - KJ4ERJ - Adding my contribution to the APRS community

The following aprsisce poll is now closed. Here are the
final results:


POLL QUESTION: Which way should the zoom up/down +/- work?

CHOICES AND RESULTS
- Up/+ should show more area/stations, 3 votes, 50.00%
- Up/+ should show more detail, 3 votes, 50.00%



For more information about this group, please visit


For help with Yahoo! Groups, please visit

Ah too bad I missed the vote. I would have voted for 'show more detail'.

Jason, K2ENG

开云体育

Ah ha!? A tie-breaker!? Anyone else to offset the tie-breaker?

Paul



radiofreq11 wrote:

Lynn,

Are there any plans on adding an option to be able to change your own icon?

Thanks,
Jason, K2ENG

开云体育

Jason,

Yes, that's one of the things on my hit list.? I need to beef up a bunch of configuration options and that one's in the mix.? (But we KNOW it's a phone, don't we?? Goes along with the snowmobile I use for the mobile in my white car here in Florida - KJ4ERJ-9)? :)

Lynn (D) - KJ4ERJ(-12)

radiofreq11 wrote:

Lynn,

I try to open APRSISCE6P.exe on both my laptop and my Samsung phone and I get an error that APRSISCE6P.exe is not a valid Win32 app.

73,

Dan AI4GK

开云体育

Dan,

You need to establish sync, browse the contents of your phone, and copy APRSISCE6P.exe onto the phone.? Then locate it with File Explorer on your phone and double-click to run it.? It is a Windows Mobile app, not a Win32 app.

Lynn (D) - KJ4ERJ

ai4gk wrote:

APRSISCE6P.exe is NOT a windows application so that is why you get an error
when you try to run in on a windows PC.

Now on the phone, it works fine on my (Alltel) HTC Touch PRO which is
running windows mobile 6.1; so I can't offer any help there.

Dave N8PU

开云体育

Dave,

I've extended on the concept of SmartBeaconing (TM by the HamHud developers, google it to find out) and call it Genius Beaconing. You can configure the parameters via the Configuration dialog and clicking on the big Genius button. It offers the following parameters:

Min Time - Minimum time between beacons in seconds (driving a circle)
Max Time - Maximum time between beacons in minutes (sitting still)

Bearing Change - Beacon if bearing changes by this many degrees (or more)
Forecast Error - in 0.10 miles (see discussion below)
Max Distance - In 0.10 miles (see discussion below)

The last two parameters are what makes up my Genius Beaconing. APRSISCE keeps track of what was sent in the most recent beacon, particularly the speed and bearing component. If an outside observer was to extrapolate the last position by the speed and bearing for the time since the beacon, they would think you were somewhere. The local GPS knows where you actually are. When the difference between these two points is more than the Forecast Error, a beacon is generated. The forecast position is shown in the circle by that little red dot that moves outwards from the center. When it reaches the circle, the beacon is generated. This parameter will tend to generate beacons for slight turns that don't trigger the Bearing Change as well as generating beacons when your speed changes (faster or slower) by a substantial amount.

Because the forecast error won't generate beacons in steady non-turning motion, there's also the Max Distance parameter. Even if the forecast error is keeping pretty close to where you actually are, if you've traveled more than the Max Distance, a beacon will be generated anyway.

When you're sitting still, the Max Time applies. This is designed to be very long just to keep the system current while you're parked.

The Min Time is used to prevent lots of small changes (like driving in circles) from triggering a bunch of updates. APRSISCE will hold off any beacons for at least this time after a beacon was last sent. It shows this in one of the small red lines in the APRS OK box at the top center of the screen.

There are actually three small color bars at the bottom of the box above the top edge of the circle. These three bars show (not sure which is which right now, but if you watch them, you'll soon see which is which):

1) Time since last reception from APRS-IS. This extends from left to right until it reaches the configured Quiet Time maximum at which point APRSISCE will force a disconnect on the assumption that the connection has died in a non-detectable fashion. This is the bar that disappears the instant the stations list scrolls with a new update.

2) Transmit "Pressure". Given the different parameters that can trigger a beacon, APRSISCE shows this bar to give you an idea how long it will be until the next beacon. The line below APRS OK shows which parameter is reaching what percentage of threshold currently driving towards a beacon. This bar grows from left to right and disappears when a beacon is actually sent.

3) Min Time. This bar counts down from right to left as APRSISCE is enforcing the Min Time configuration. Even if the Pressure exceeds 100%, APRSISCE will not issue a beacon until this bar disappears to the left. This is the bar that appears suddenly red and then shrinks down through yellow to green until it disappears until the next beacon.

So, you can tweak the Max Time and Forecast/distance parameters to generate more beacons, but I'd encourage you to consider the effects on APRS-IS and what you're actually gaining by transmitting more frequently, especially if you are having your beacons gated to RF. Once you inform the observers that they can rely on your speed and bearing and elapsed time to place you within X (Forecast Error) miles of where you actually are, you probably don't need to beacon any faster.

The only parameter I sometimes think about decreasing is the Max Time to something like 10 minutes while parked instead of the 30 minutes that mine is currently set to (I don't remember what the defaults are).

Hopefully this answers your question and gives you what you need to know.

Lynn (D) - KJ4ERJ-12 - Watch my bike track tomorrow morning (hopefully)

David Shrum wrote:

Greetings all, as I replace my HTC TyTN II (AT&T Tilt unbranded with front camera), I am getting a I-Mate Ultimate 8502.

Has anybody ran APRS-IS CE on this hardware?

Thank you,
Michael
KE5EUA

Wow! This is just a way cool program!

I'd love to add a icon to my "Today" page on my HTC touch. Anyone know how to do that?

John
K2QY