[OZAPRS] What's up on aprs.fi

[VK6MRG]

FROM: ZLAPRS via vk6mrg.

What's up on aprs.fi  

New view filters, alerts, out-of-order packet filtering and other features

Posted: 25 Jul 2011 02:11 PM PDT

I've just finished installing a rather large upgrade on aprs.fi. The upgrade
comes with a couple of noticeable new features which everyone should get
familiar with, a bunch of smaller style fixes and some tiny bug fixes. The
web service was down for a while due to the database schema changes and
engine upgrades. Only very little APRS data was lost - APRS-IS traffic was
buffered during the database maintenance and processed later when the
database was up again.

Here's a list of the major changes:

Complex but easy filters:

 

The old filters (APRS, AIS, Items+objects, WX) in the Preferences have been
replaced by a whole new Filter tool button on the right side of the tool bar
It's the one which tries to look like a funnel (I'll have to work on the
symbol image to make it more obvious).

Let's do a little exercise to get you started!

Deselect the All stations filter, so that no stations are displayed. Then
enable the Station type: Weather filter and you'll only see stations
transmitting weather data.

Next, continue by enabling Station class: APRS stations. At this point
you'll see both APRS stations and weather stations, which doesn't make much
sense since all the weather stations are also APRS stations. But it starts
to make sense again if you click the red downward-pointing arrow for the
weather stations, which throws them to the bottom of the list, in the red
AND NOT" department, effectively removing them from the display.

Now, click on the plus (+) button to add your own fancy filters to the list.

For example, it's possible to create a filter which only shows APRS stations
using Kenwood radios which are also acting as Digipeaters, but do not have a
callsign starting with "OH2". That filter can then be used in the green
display any of these" side of filters (think of logical OR if you're into

programming) or the red "but not these" side (think of AND NOT).

Once you're finished designing your favourite filter list, use the Save
button to save it to a new named list. The default filter will reset to its
factory settings every time the map opens (so that you'll see something if
you get lost with the filters). The filters are saved together with your
user account, so you'll need to log in to save them. The upside of this is
that you can easily use your preconfigured filters on many computers and
even mobile devices!

Personally, I've set up several commonly used filter sets in my named lists,
such as "Infra" for network infrastructure: digipeaters, iGate's, and
"Moving  for stations which have their speed larger than 2.

New graphing engine:

Telemetry, weather and station graphs are displayed by a new third-party
graphing engine instead of a homebrew one. The new engine reduces load on my
servers (and adds some on the web browser's side, but that's OK since there
are thousands of those against my 2), generates prettier line graphs, and
will enable some really fancy interactive features in the future!

Station activity alerts:

This feature is mainly for digipeater and iGate operators. It lets you know
by email if your station stops working, or when it starts working again.

Very handy especially if you're like me and maintain digipeaters far away
from your home and would not otherwise notice when they go "kaput".

Click on the Favourites (star) tool button, then select My stations and
bookmarks. Add your digipeaters in the Stations I follow list, and then
click Settings for each of them and tune the timings.

Please note that due to APRS-IS duplicate filtering aprs.fi often does not
get to know when your iGate or digipeater hears a packet and repeats it.
It's a good idea to set the "has not heard station" alert for a very long
timer such as 24 or 48 hours, and then go down or up from there depending on
the amount of false alarms!

An additional duplicate packet filter algorithm:

In addition to the old filtering methods, out-of-order and duplicate packets
are now filtered using APRS timestamps embedded in the packets. If a packet
comes in that has an older timestamp than the previous packet, it is
promptly discarded. This should be a very effective duplicate filter when
timestamps are transmitted by the tracker.

The raw packets display can now also display the decoded timestamp when
using the Decoded mode.

Facelifts:

Since most people come to aprs.fi to look up a station's position, the
callsign search box has been moved up on the right-side panel, and the time
range selector has been moved down.

The real-time map displays a nice "loading" image until station data has
been first received from the servers.

Buttons now have a prettier and consistent style everywhere. Some other
layout and style tunings have been applied, too.

Bugfixes:

 The real-time map's content reloading logic has been improved. It should
now be more responsive when panning and zooming around. There's still a
small bug in there - sometimes stations are not reloaded on the map when the
filters are changed at precisely the right time. Oh well.

The sortable tables were not working in many views. Now they are. Click on
table column headers to sort, ascending or descending.

PHG overlays are now correctly hidden when zooming out to area activity view

 The duplicate stations API bug was fixed.

As always, some smaller ones were fixed too. I also did some profiling and
optimisation of old code, hoping to keep the performance of the code on
similar level as before, even though new features were added in the critical
code path.

Upgrades of third-party components:

Web server software, some operating system components, database engine, etc.

Post a note on the discussion group when you find a bug - this is such a
large upgrade that I'm certain quite a few things don't work quite right
from the start.

As usual, there are translations which need to be updated with the new
features. Thank you for your ongoing support!

Regards,

Matthew

VK6MRG

 

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