[aprssig] Now this is an interesting use for APRS

[A.J. Farmer (AJ3U)]

On 4/12/06, Joe Della Barba <joe at dellabarba.com> wrote:
> Amateur Radio WB8NUT wrote:
> > http://www.acentient-software.com/acentient/default.htm
>
> Is this legal???
> Joe

My first impression is "no".  A couple of points:

The website promotes monitoring and controlling devices "at your
business" via APRS.  An obvious FCC rule violation.

Apparently it uses some type of encoding system in order to allow you
exclusive access to control your system via APRS so that others can
not get in.  While this makes sense from an operational standpoint, it
sounds like encrypted or "coded" transmissions to me...  Another
blatant rule violation.

It's not a product targetted to the Amateur Radio community, but
rather a product for general public use with an Amateur Radio
"feature".  The first question I had asked was "why"?  Just use your
cell phone's text messaging feature to control it and get
notifications.  It is a much better fit for the application.  Using
APRS for this just seems to be asking for trouble...

--
A.J. Farmer, AJ3U
http://www.aj3u.com