This APRS Client Connects EVERYTHING: Packet, Meshtastic, VARA & TAK

https://youtu.be/INxcxgzFJpQ?si=sNPY17xmSLFuoZ59

0:00 · Welcome back to the Modern Ham where we are connected in new ways. Today, I wanted to publish an application I've been working on for about half of a year now called APRS Tag. What is APRS Tag?

0:09 · Well, it's an APRS client, but it's a lot more than that. If you've used APRS on a desktop before, you know that um there's not a whole lot of options and most of the software is pretty old.

0:22 · There are some uh packet-like applications like BBQ32 message boards that do offer a lot of advanced functionality, but it's kind of locked behind antiquated text file editing and pages and pages of documentation that you have to scroll through in order to just do some relatively simple things. APRS Tag is the solution all of that. It's an APRS client that is also an iGate. It's an in digipeater. It has an embedded file share system. It has an embedded BBS.

0:51 · And not only does it connect to traditional FM um you know, KISS modems and things like that, but it also connects over its own self-hosted client and server over TCP/IP and it can connect over Meshtastic at the time.

1:07 · And it's available on Linux, Windows, Android, Raspberry Pi, and Mac. I haven't tested the Mac build yet because I don't have a Mac to test it on, but theoretically, it should work.

1:21 · Suffice to say, if you know how to use the platform on one operating system, you should be able to use it on any other ones because it's structured exactly the same. It's also available on the browser, so you don't have You can uh you run it on a computer, you open up your local server host on your browser.

1:36 · I'll show you how to do it. It's not It's not bad. And any other device on your network can optionally also open it up. It does a lot of things. It will digipeat between lower Meshtastic and FM. It'll go from HF to HF FM.

1:50 · All right, so this is the main meat and potatoes here of APRS Tag. There's a map and you have a timeline of packet data that you can view.

1:58 · And in this particular system here, this is all of the stations it's seen.

2:03 · Now, uh we have a scroll bar here.

2:05 · Obviously, we have some great information about where we're at.

2:08 · But, it also has an embedded weather um sensor decoder. But, so basically, wherever I'm looking at on the map, this weather thing here will change and show me the new weather based on the closest weather station uh and also contribute it to who that station is.

2:25 · So, it's kind of neat in that way.

2:28 · It also has a GPS that you can connect to in the settings. So, if you have a GPS dongle like I do, you can connect there.

2:35 · Any station on the map you can click on and you can immediately just send a message or track it. So, it's going to follow it in real time.

2:42 · So, all those things are pretty cool, right?

2:45 · Um if I go to messages here, I can obviously just do the traditional send APRS messages. I can type in who and I can choose how I want to send it.

2:55 · If I choose auto, it's going to use the port where the last uh way that we contacted that station or heard that station was. So, if they sent us a message over uh Meshtastic Laura, well, and I select auto, if I send a message back, it's going to go over Meshtastic Laura first and then it's going to attempt others.

3:13 · So, it's a little bit intelligent in that way.

3:16 · The status report is something that is APRS tech specific. It's just a type of packet that gets encoded and decoded in a specific way that allows other APRS tech users to send status reports on different things.

3:30 · This application's meant to be used in a kind of like emergency response scenario.

3:35 · So, that's why all of these are basically here. Each station can broadcast status and that can kind of help some type of emergency operations center determine how you're doing out there, right?

3:47 · The repeaters is a it's a neat thing that if uh APRS tech detects that this is maybe a repair advertisement in the APRS packet, it will try to categorize it here.

3:59 · Your weather tab will actually uh watch weather sensor stations and record their status over time.

4:08 · So, these are all stations that have reported uh weather data uh nearby and I can see their history from the past hour, the past 24 hours, or the past week if I have that much data.

4:21 · So, you can kind of see how things change over time. And so, if you have an APRS station that's out there reporting weather, you can use this to actually see what it looks like.

4:32 · Statistics is this showing your APRS or your packet statistics. It shows the top five stations heard, as well as the total RX packets over the past 24 hours, and it even separates the RX and TX per port that you're using as well. So, this can kind of help diagnose and see how much traffic you're using on each of these different communication mediums.

4:52 · Uh so, that's pretty neat.

4:55 · The bulletin board system.

4:57 · So, this is a modern bulletin board system. Right now, you can post messages from the web. You can also send messages.

5:04 · Uh if you go under host, this is where you basically enable this functionality.

5:08 · And if you go to connect, it's going to connect to a bulletin board system, but what's really cool is if you're on APRS-Tac, it's a web view of the connection of the bulletin board system. Meaning like I can click buttons, send view messages, and send messages.

5:22 · Any other station, uh it will automatically default back to the old terminal style bulletin board system, and you just type in like, you know, the traditional commands like S for send or R for read and those things. But, if you're on APRS-Tac and you view another APRS-Tac bulletin board system, it's going to be more modern web, almost like you're browsing uh you know, a message board or something.

5:45 · The file share is a way to host you can host files here uh and if others connect and you have the file share enabled, uh they can download those files. And that will be over mesh tastic aura or that can be over packet FM or the internet or whatever medium that you have connected to this thing.

6:04 · It'll automatically choose a encryption method that is best suited for that file to help reduce the size.

6:10 · Uh and the packet log is obviously just a list of packets.

6:15 · If I go into settings here, this is uh I tried to make this simple. It does This application does a lot, but let's just take a look.

6:23 · Here you're setting up your basic station settings as you normally would.

6:27 · Your station beacon, I think this is pretty straightforward, but you can choose which ports to actually beacon out on.

6:34 · Now, the status beacons that you saw earlier, you can optionally enable those and set the time frame and here's where you would set that station status.

6:45 · Now, over to the ports tab is the main tab here. This is how you get data in and you get data out of APRS that.

6:52 · So, if I UDP is a UDP broadcast. So, [clears throat] with this port, if it's enabled, any other APRS tech instance on your network, whether it be on a computer or on a phone, if it's on your LAN, your local wireless, they will all be able to communicate with each other without any additional configuration if that port's enabled, just from broadcast traffic.

7:15 · That could be useful maybe in something like Arden.

7:18 · Uh so, here we also have a um we have KISS TCP. So, your dire wolf sound modem, things like that.

7:26 · You have the APRS information system, so this is if you want to function as an iGate, you make sure you enable this.

7:32 · Uh mesh tastic TCP, so if you have a mesh tastic device that's connected over uh wireless, you can interface with it this way or if it's connected wired, you can interface this way.

7:43 · It has support for VARA FM. So, this specifically is not for beacons. It's only for BBS and file share at this time cuz it's a connected mode.

7:54 · Um the reflector client and reflector server. So, this is kind of like your pro own private APRS-IS uh information system, right?

8:03 · So, I can have one I can have a server port on one client and then I can use a client port on the other and connect to the server and send data that way.

8:15 · Um and it any other client connected to that server will uh be able to see all of the other data that you all those other clients are sending. So, it's all in your your it's like your own private internet uh APRS packet reflector.

8:31 · Uh and we also have the APRS-Tag public reflector. And this is like what anybody can use. This is almost like APRS-IS.

8:39 · Whatever package you send, it's going to go back to everybody else connected to that reflector.

8:43 · This is used for testing and as this application grows, if lots of people are using it, I'm not sure how sustainable hosting that we're public reflector is going to be, but it's there right now for testing.

8:55 · And you can see some statistics on each of these ports.

8:57 · Moving on to the IGate, this is your traditional IGate settings. Uh the only difference between the APRS-Mobile uh the APRS-Tag mobile version is you don't at this time you can't send messages from APRS-IS to RF. You can gate packets from RF to the APRS-IS, but uh on the desktop version you can do all of them.

9:22 · And you can choose which packets that you want IGate and which packets uh which ports you want to IGate and which packets you don't want to IGate.

9:31 · The digipeater uh if you enable this, um obviously you know what this is, it's going to repeat the packets on each of these ports if certain criteria is in the packet like your wide paths, right?

9:43 · Uh but on top of that, this is what enables digipeating packets from one uh transport layer to the other.

9:51 · So, if you have digipeating enabled on a port, that means you know, if I have it enabled on Meshtastic TCP and Direwolf, that means packets coming in on Direwolf will be sent over Meshtastic.

10:01 · And any packets in on Meshtastic will be sent over Direwolf. So, that's what allows that cross-device communication, which we'll see in a demo in a moment.

10:11 · Um the map is all offline. This is all like whatever you can cache the map, whatever you view is going to be there if you don't have internet.

10:19 · Uh you can also choose to load your own MBTiles file, which is an offline map file. And you can choose to do both. So, you can rely on the internet version and you're caching it in everywhere that you look. Uh but if there's an area that's not cached, you can fall back to that MBTiles map uh to use as well.

10:40 · Email.

10:42 · So, this is almost like your own private uh email gate for APRS. Um so, if you enable this, you can specify your own APRS um uh sorry, your own email server information to send emails with an inbox.

10:59 · And um if you send from APRS a packet to your designated listen call sign for this, uh you can use it to send email using the email server you put in here.

11:12 · And every so often, it will log into this email server to see if there's any messages coming back for APRS stations. And if there is, it will send them over RF. So, this is all on your own. You can host this it's all built into the application. You don't have to rely on SMS gate or email gate or whatever the heck's out there publicly. If you have an email server, you can put in your email settings right here and you can host your own.

11:41 · Notifications, uh this is just for notifications for if you, you know, you get email or you get messages.

11:48 · Um you can also be notified by email if you have those email settings in, if you get a message over APRS. So, if somebody sends a message to your station call sign, you can have the uh an email sent to whatever email you would like with the message contents as a notification.

12:06 · And you can also optionally enable this Discord webhook if you're into that. And if you do, you can select what types of messages you would like to be sent to that Discord channel. GPS, well, you just select the GPS receiver that you have if you have one, and you can use that to uh send your station position.

12:24 · All right, so what I have here in the car is I have one laptop that's running um uh APRS Tac connected to a Digi rig to a radio up here, which is going to be running 1,200 baud packet. And I have a um cell phone that's running APRS Tac uh that's connected to a T-Echo with the Meshtastic firmware in the window here.

12:47 · I'm going to send messages in between these two. And it And it doesn't have to be connected this way, right? So, the cell phone could be connected to the uh Digi rig to run 1,200 packet with APRS Tac mobile app. Or the laptop could be is just as easily connected to the uh the Meshtastic device using serial connection or or TCP wireless.

13:09 · So, these uh these can be connected either way, but I want to at least show how all this ties together. I have another station is in the house that's running as both Meshtastic and packet uh FM connected and it's connected to the internet.

13:26 · And then I have another station that's connected to the internet. All these devices all can communicate with each other. So, I can send from Laura to the station that's connected to the internet somewhere else. I can connect send from Laura to FM packet to this other laptop here. So, let's just see what that looks like.

13:41 · All right. So, I have the mesh I have the APRS TAC mobile app open here on my phone. I'm just going to go to settings here and I've set my call sign on this device to be K4MKB-8.

13:53 · And we're going to beacon every 60 seconds and we're also going to uh send our status beacon.

13:58 · Now, we're going to be using a uh Meshtastic device. So, I'm going to go ahead and add a new port.

14:03 · And it's going to be Meshtastic Bluetooth.

14:07 · And we're going to select a device.

14:13 · Oh, Bluetooth is off. So, we probably need to turn that on.

14:20 · And I'm looking for a MKB2. There it is.

14:24 · And we're going to add port.

14:27 · And now we're going to start it.

14:33 · Cool. So, that is connected and honestly, it's ready.

14:37 · So, now let's go over to the laptop and we're going to add a port for direwolf.

14:43 · And we're going to start direwolf that way we can run over FM packet.

14:54 · I'm doing this this is to show how easy all of this really is.

15:02 · So, we're going to add KISS TCP. We'll call it direwolf.

15:08 · And let's go ahead and save the port.

15:11 · And let's start it.

15:15 · All right. So, direwolf is now connected.

15:18 · Let's go to our station and this one is going to be -9. The other station is -8.

15:23 · Uh our status beacon is set to 2 minutes right now and um let's set our this beacon here to 2 minutes as well.

15:37 · So, now if we go to the map, uh we only see KN4MKB-9.

15:43 · That's okay uh because we just need to manually send our beacon from the APRS Tac mobile app.

15:49 · So, I'm going to go ahead uh well, actually the APRS Tac mobile app actually already saw the uh KN4MKB-11, which is the actual station that's in the house. That's funny. So, I'm going to go ahead and just manually send my position.

16:12 · And as you can see on the laptop, we see our APRS Tac mobile app just pop up here as KN4MKB-8.

16:24 · And I can even send uh I can send a message here.

16:28 · Let's say hello.

16:30 · This is going to go over FM and then it's going to go through LoRa and it's going to pop up as a message on my cell phone through APRS Tac. So, as soon as this comes in through LoRa, there it is.

16:47 · And I'll send a message back. It's going to go through uh LoRa Meshtastic and then it's going to go into the other station I have, which is going to digipeat it back over FM and here we are back and we got the message back. Very cool.

17:03 · And as status reports come in, we should see those as well. So, we can see the status reports here.

17:08 · So, you kind of seen it in practice.

17:09 · You're able to message between all of these different devices. You can go from the internet, the Wi-Fi, Meshtastic LoRa, packet FM, you could do Vara.

17:18 · All of that stuff is working at the moment and it will go in between all of them and it's all using APRS. It's all APRS packets.

17:25 · Um the message the way that things digipeat, um you know, I actually also go out onto the APRS-IS. So, if I was to bring that up because the station connected inside is connected to the APRS-IS, it'll go out there, too, and it's digipeated.

17:41 · So, it's basically handling it everything.

17:45 · Anyways, uh hopefully that demo made things make a little bit more sense. So, all in all, I'm really excited about APRS Tag. I think it offers way more features than any other APRS application I can see out there. I've done some extensive testing and there's going to be bugs uh just because I haven't had a wide amount of people try it outside of myself. So, if you do get bugs, send the bug reports to report@aprstag.com.

18:10 · And here's the deal, though.

18:13 · I want to go ahead and get this out of the way.

18:15 · It's not open source.

18:18 · You can go on the FAQ page on aprstag.com if you want to know why, but to keep it short with the state of AI right now, uh open source if you're not into development, you may not know open source community is like a dumpster fire right now.

18:34 · There's massive amounts of people who are vibe coding things they don't understand, trying to contribute it to projects. Uh it's causing a lot of feature bloat in applications. It's causing instability.

18:45 · And I built APRS Tag for a purpose and that's for emergency communication.

18:51 · Uh there are some neat toy features in there like the Discord integration and stuff, but relatively everything's built to be self-sufficient, like without internet access.

19:02 · And uh if I make this thing open source, I I feel like people may try to turn this into a toy. And I want it to be very mission driven, very purpose driven for specific thing, and that is situational awareness and communication in natural disasters and emergencies.

19:20 · And um I think at this time putting this as open source is just going to cause a a lots of copycats from uh people's vibe coding bots going out and stealing code from people. Uh it's going to cause a lots of fracture in the application. So, at this time I just want to rein it in and just keep it closed source um unless the open source community improves some.

19:52 · I also want to say that right now the APRS I'll just go and put this out there. The APRS Tac Mobile Android application is behind Patreon.

20:00 · I've never used Patreon before, but um I put a lot of effort into this project.

20:05 · I put a lot of effort in a lot of things that I've I've done on this channel, and there's some point where I have to ask for some type of support to do these things. Um I have come to a point where I've sacrificed my career and things that I could be doing to further myself professionally for this YouTube channel.

20:26 · And so I've never really asked for anything like this before, but the APRS Tac Mobile app is behind Patreon.

20:36 · And um I do ask that if you like this project, please support me, and I'll continue developing it.

20:44 · There's some stuff coming into the future such as the Winlink RMS integration uh and some further bulletin board system things.

20:52 · Anyways, you can get all of the application on aprstac.com. Thank you guys so much for watching. Uh I hope you liked uh APRS Tac. Please go check it out. And uh if you do like the project, please go support me on Patreon. The link will be uh down below for that. And um just let me know what you guys run into or what you think of the application. 73 to you.