APRS By Jim Mastrogiovanni KK5RZ December 14, 2006

APRS was developed in the early 1990's by Bob Bruninga, WB4APR, for digital communications and tracking mobile GPS equipped stations utilizing Amateur two-way radio.

Stations Locations Objects Tracks Areas Weather Assets APRS stands for Automatic Packet Reporting Station APRS can keep track of : APRS also provides short text messaging capability

APRS Equipment

$47.00 built and tested with case $38.00 Kit with case TinyTrak3

Transmit only TNC Fixed Beaconing Smart Beaconing Primary and secondary configuration Transmit hold off on “busy” frequency

$179 to $199 depending on the vendor Kantronics KPC3+ Full featured TNC tx/rx remote access digipeat

A 2 meter capable transceiver -hand held or mobile rig

Garmin GPS 18 PC or LVC $70 to $ depending… GPS

PC

Some examples of APRS stations

Transmit only tracker configuration GPS NMEA 0189 serial output Transmit only TNC 2M transceiver on MHz

Full featured APRS station Personal Computer running APRS software Full TX/RX TNC Transceiver tuned to GPS NMEA 0189 serial output optional

Igate APRS station Personal Computer running APRS software Full TX/RX TNC Transceiver tuned to your.isp.com Internet APRS Server

Full TX/RX TNC Transceiver tuned to RF APRS Tracking Station Personal Computer running APRS software

Full TX/RX TNC GPS and Remote Access enabled Transceiver tuned to Re-configurable stand alone APRS tracker GPS NMEA 0189 serial output

Internet based APRS your.isp.com APRS Server Igate stations RF to Internet gating worldwide PC running APRS client software Large Quantities of APRS Data

Some Local APRS Activity Screen Captures

Mobile Stations collected via RF from my QTH near Bergheim

Fixed Stations collected via RF from my QTH

KK5RZ-9 track on a recent trip to San Antonio

SA Marathon all reports all stations

Trip to SARC Meeting December 14, 2006

Slide 2

Demonstrations Software Tracker Portable Station