Re: APRS on Bernuda and Atlantic
This is a good reason to use APRS on Cubesat for telemetry. Imagine if even half of the cubesats launched transmitted their telemetry as APRS packets and simultaneously operated as APRS digipeaters. We could have a global constellation of APRS repeaters feeding the terrestrial internet backhaul in short order. This is not only great for us but a major advantage for the folks running the on board experiments since: 1. It provides a standardized method of formatting and transporting the science data2. Allows the science data to be automatically forwarded to a collection server allowing greater access to the raw data3. Every APRS igate around the world becomes a 24x7 collection node We in turn get a worldwide messaging tool. Imagine being able to notify the whole world at once that you just came up on SO-50 in that really rare grid :) Oh well, at least I think it's a good idea :) Howie- AB2S
On Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:30:09 -0500 Howie DeFelice howied231@hotmail.com wrote:
Oh well, at least I think it's a good idea :) Howie- AB2S
Ah, but an APRS satellite would be one of those silly pointless FM beepsats. Why bother launching any more of these waste-of-time c*b*s*ts when for merely a hundred times the price you could tie a radio to a bucket of rocket fuel and blow it to shrapnel in HEO?
Ah, but an APRS satellite would be one of those silly pointless FM beepsats.
APRS has had an HT global text-messaging tool before the cell phone craze brought it to everyone.
Since 1998, Ham radio has had an HT (the D7) that can text-message any other APRS HT or mobile on the planet in real time by only knowing the receipient's callsign. This is not email, it is live texting HT-to-HT anywhere, anytime.
Too bad most of ham radio still has never even tried it and criticize it when most of billions of people on the planet now embrace texting as a valuable human-to-human communications tool.
We've had HT texting for over a decade. Well ahead of consumers... yet we squander it away rather than learn to use it.
APRS was never primarioy about GPS tracking. It was first a human-to-human work-everywhere comm link on a single national channel. Too many people got distracted by the maps, and never even tried to communicate with it.
Bob, WB4APR
On Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:35:31 -0500 "Bob Bruninga" bruninga@usna.edu wrote:
Ah, but an APRS satellite would be one of those silly pointless FM beepsats.
APRS has had an HT global text-messaging tool before the cell phone craze brought it to everyone.
<snipped>
I must have put on weight, my cheek is obviously so fat you can't see when my tongue is in it ;-)
On 12/19/2011 3:30 PM, Howie DeFelice wrote:
- It provides a standardized method of formatting and transporting the science data
Well, APRS's defined telemetry only supports 5 values ranging from 0 through 255, but most client implementations support 0 through 999. And there's also 8 on/off bits to go with it. Maybe not enough for some of the science, but they could always transmit their own packet format(s) under the "experimental" data type.
- Allows the science data to be automatically forwarded to a collection server allowing greater access to the raw data
Yep, they could just tap into APRS-IS and receive all of their own packets. An no one would have to install any specific software to be receiving for them, only if they were interested in the content of any experimental type packets.
- Every APRS igate around the world becomes a 24x7 collection node
Well, at least every APRS SatGate. IGates are still country and/or locale specific on what frequency they're listening to, and I really don't think you meant to have the satellites competing with the local APRS traffic on a shared channel.
4. And with each satellite having it's own ID in addition to (hopefully) ARISS as an alias, one could play with satellite-to-satellite digipeating and hop extreme distances with multiple satellite links. The satellites themselves could do this if they were aware of their own orbital location. When centered over vast water bodies and well out of footprint range of possible ground stations, they could even add ARISS to their own path to use brother/sister satellites to maybe bounce through to get to a ground receiving station.
We in turn get a worldwide messaging tool. Imagine being able to notify the whole world at once that you just came up on SO-50 in that really rare grid :)
Make that a world-wide RF messaging tool. We already have world-wide APRS messaging via the APRS-IS if you want to use it that way. There's automated world-wide high altitude balloon launch notification groups, ISS activity notification groups, and APRSSATS notification groups. No reason you couldn't create an SO50 ANSRVR notification group if you could interest enough satellite operators to monitor it for notifications.
The one requirement that this introduces for the CubeSats, however, is an APRS-receiving TNC and control logic. Right now, I can imagine, many of the CubeSats may be deaf transmitters...
Lynn (D) - KJ4ERJ - Author of APRSISCE for Windows Mobile and Win32
participants (4)
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Bob Bruninga -
Gordon JC Pearce -
Howie DeFelice -
Lynn W. Deffenbaugh (Mr)