Here are my DPRS tracks from the first two days of having the GPS receiver mated with my ID-880. It works pretty well, and it's been lots of fun. What you see here are all hits heard by the AK4EG B port, that's UHF, repeater(444.8875). You can see that the repeater has a fairly large footprint. You can kinda build a bit of a coverage map for a repeater by looking at the repeater at www.aprs.fi and looking at all the reports gated through that entity, unfortunately the aprs.fi site only keeps one month at a time. Here is a screen shot of the gated reports so far from 8/10:
Most of the Dstar radios do have DPRS (Digital Position reporting system) capabilities. It is fairly inexpensive to get yourself a GPS reciever and build an interface for the radio, can be done for under $100. It's been a lot of fun to play with so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of the Data from my commuting next week! You should try it too!
73
AJ4TW
While I'm fighting back the impulse for an 880 I was thinking about the APRS/DPRS interface. The two appear on the surface to interface seamlessly but that couldn't be further from the truth. They are completely separate networks with no intercommunication. The only place they come together is online at aprs.fi or www.openaprs.net. This is why I can't send you APRS messages. I like that gated reports view! You can use it when you are visiting a different area to see if you are close enough to a DStar system.
ReplyDeleteActually, there are some people who built a translator. The DPRS information is turned into APRS packets and sent out over RF. I believe they have one in Charlotte. I'm not sure if it also reports APRS stuff back into Dstar networks or not.
ReplyDeleteI believe that their could be a solution to that in the future. I believe that the reason the DPRS was included into the Dstar package was in consideration for Emergency Communications, especially damage reporting from the field. So it really is just a simple position report, but it's been fun to play with so far.
Oh just get an 880 already, they are awesome radios! ;)