[aprssig] APRS iPhone App

[Steve Dimse]

The iPod touch is limited to WiFi determination. That is pretty  
accurate (the range of a wifi signal - say 200 feet) for access points  
the system knows about, mostly public hotspots. Unfortunately there is  
no way to register the location of other access points, so it will not  
know where it is in your home and other private places you visit.

Glad to see this got approved, my quick and dirty app which just did  
position (not messaging like this one) was rejected three times, I'd  
given up trying. First was for limited audience, second was for a  
memory leak (30 bytes every time the program was run, hardly a  
crisis), and the third time without a specific reason. I've heard free  
apps are less likely to get approved than pay ones, but I wanted mine  
to be free. Oh well...

I used my app on a trip from the Keys to Tallahassee, see

http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/track.cgi?call=k4hg-8&geo=usa.geo&refresh=63&start=999&zoom=2

I only ran the app intermittently, I was in a park vehicle with a  
single power port, and running the GPS in the iPhone really sucks  
power, but it worked everywhere along the route. Compare that to this

http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/track.cgi?call=k4hg-5&geo=usa.geo&refresh=63&start=999&zoom=2

which is a VX-8R running all the time with a three minute rate. For  
those that travel outside of cities, even within, the internet has  
become a much more reliable transport medium than the APRS network.  
W7LUS has known this for a while ;-)

For those that use the iPhone, look at these pages, which use the  
iPhone CSS to produce a familiar UI.

http://www1.findu.com/cgi-bin/iPhoneFind.cgi?call=k4hg-5

The www1 is required for now, I have not loaded this on the backup  
server.

Follow the radar link, this uses zoom to produce an image optimized  
for the iPhone display, and can be pinch-zoomed for more detail.

Steve K4HG




On May 19, 2009, at 7:00 PM, Tom Hayward wrote:

> Neat. It's nice to see Apple let this past their gates despite APRS's
> "small" userbase.
>
> Does anyone have a report of how it works on the iPod touch? I may
> purchase this later if it works. I think the positioning in the iPod
> touch is based on IP address, so I doubt it could be very accurate.
>
> Tom KD7LXL
>
> On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 3:53 PM, William McKeehan
> <mckeehan at mckeehan.homeip.net> wrote:
>> Has anyone tried the APRS iPhone app iBCNU (http://ibcnu.us/) ?
>>
>> It's been out for a few weeks. Looks like a a good start to me.
>> --
>> William McKeehan
>> KI4HDU
>> http://mckeehan.homeip.net
>>
>>
>>
>>
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