 it's time for the demo KG700W here with the Ham Radio Village. Let's get going on APRS and a quick walk around on usage of every aspect so let's get going. So APRS the automatic packet reporting system is based on the AX25 protocol from the 1980s. Pretty old. Another slang term for this protocol you may have heard is packet. Packet is basically another use of this. We're going to dive into more of the APRS route of this. Some of the basic usage so we'll go from the APRS website how to see APRS. You won't need a license to do this. We are going to go to the end user someone transmitting APRS from a handheld mobile and we'll also take a look at a DigiPeter file parts of the APRS network that get your message to other DigiPeters or to an iGate out on the internet to be posted online. So let's first take a look at where I go. This is where you are going to see APRS traffic live for your area. There's two main websites. Let's dive into the first one. So this is APRS.FI. For those of you who haven't been here it's a great resource to see live APRS traffic. We'll zoom out here. Let's go to the Las Vegas area. Defcon Central here and see what's going on. So when you come to the site it'll first probably throw you in somewhere in Finland. You'll have to navigate to where you want to go. The right hand side will let you select how much traffic you want to see. Do you want to see traffic for the last hour? You don't want to see the last traffic for the last day there. So plenty of information to see. We're mainly going to focus on the map here though. So here's the Vegas metro area. There's all these icons about. We got looks like an RV icon down here in the middle. We're driving around as RV broadcasting APRS packets. We have weather stations. We have other objects on the map such as D star repeaters and things like that like N7 ARR over here. Zoom is not working great on the video. We'll get some more details later there. And then here we are outside of Vegas. My favorite mountain Mount Potosie. This is home to the Vegas Digi Peter and Eyegate. So it's definitely really cool to see all this on a map. And again you don't have to be licensed to view this map. It's definitely a great resource. So this is what I go to when I am looking for who's coming through my area. What are they doing? Are they listening on a frequency that I might want to talk to them on? Mainly for vehicles here. But if we pan out into the desert a lot of the times you'll see planes. You'll also see weather balloons and other things like that going across the map. So definitely keep an eye out for those. Let's for a chance see if there's any weather balloons or anything going across right now. I do not see anything up. They typically do launch every couple of weekends though out here in the west desert. So definitely something to keep an eye out on. Okay let's look into detail on some traffic. What are these users? What are these objects sending to the APRS network? So here's a car out in the west desert going just past let's see just past the test side over there. We have K6 BFA and he is cruising along the highway. We can see the timestamp of the data. We can see his heading, his speed, his altitude. Any GPS metadata that that radio is capable of putting out. He has a little message Mike E N route and he is repeated by the Vegas Mount Potosy repeater. If we zoom out here we'll know we can we can kind of visualize how his packets are getting to the internet map here. Oh come on there's no one any clear. So if you hover over an object oh come on it is not wanting to work for me here. There we go let's uh let's get out here okay. See so I'm hovering over his icon there you can see it's going through the Vegas Digi Peter up on Mount Potosy down in the bottom middle there and looks like it's going to another eye gate. Maybe the eye gate there Potosy's down. So these eye gates that it's going to transmit to can be hundreds of miles away looks like that's down in the San Bernardino Valley so that's a pretty crazy run for some APRS traffic. When you get to things like weather balloons you'll have hundreds of stations picking those up directly but the first station that picks it up is the one that gets to report it to the system. So another really cool map to hit up when you're looking for some APRS action is APRS Direct. It's more of a high-end web 2.0 type interface it's got live updates the icons will update live you'll be able to see pings on the map when things happen as they're happening so sometimes it's a little easier to see things here. This is kind of a newcomer to APRS maps which is great. Here let me throw a let me throw a link there in chat for you guys when I'm going through. So this map very similar to the last map it's just a little more interactive we got same amount of data you can see hops that these packets are going through you can click on an object there's our same guy we're going to be pick on on here K6 VFA he is cruising along there's his same path he's being reported through Vegas at his timestamp same information bearing heading things like that so this is just really cool very awesome way to see what's going on with the APRS network now how do you get traffic to the APS network so this traffic including weather stations handheld radios mobile radios that are APRS capable or anything else you can think of they all require a modem enabled device or just a fully integrated APRS device to get out there one of the easiest ways to get into it is with a integrated radio so let's look at my handy Kenwood THD 72 it's a great here we go it's a great little radio not really little it's a little bulky needs to go on a little diet there but it's an all-in-one solution to get your packets out to the APRS network this particular handheld can be used with the built-in GPS with the antenna on the top there it can also be connected with a cable to a weather station or other kiss enabled device so it's very cool very fun to hear APRS going on so it looks like someone's keyed up on APRS but uh sounds like voice data someone's got a hot mic so the APRS frequency you're going to want to dial to on your all-in-one inclusive device is 144 390 in North America I haven't gone through APRS on any other country so I'm not 100 sure if they're throwing other frequencies around for other regions but definitely 144.390 for North America now tuning into this frequency you're going to hear the raw APRS packets they are going to sound very much like an old classic modem I don't know it sounds like I'm getting some interference or someone's hot mic and 390 for me so I'm not going to be able to decode anything yep just static so I'm thinking I got some interference but with this handheld I can beacon directly just by hitting beacon here and it will manually beacon my location based on the GPS uh to the APRS network I'm inside so my GPS likely is not going to get my coordinates and without proper coordinates I don't think it will show up but just in case let's go let's go look for kg7 o o w I am not showing up so there's definitely some traffic around though so with a handheld like this we get to configure it so out of the box you need to configure your handheld with typically just your call sign so I just I just go to the menu hit up APRS and it typically just needs your call sign so you throw your call sign in there oh there we go you'll typically just throw your call sign in maybe a SSID at the end see that dash 9 at the tail in there you can do that if you have multiple radios or if you want to have a specific ID for that radio and then you'll basically just need tell it how to beacon so on this handy Kenwood we got here we go where is it going you can set your position manually and you have beacon so this is how it's going to beacon your information typically on a handheld like this you can set it to beacon on an interval or you can have it beacon using uh what's called smart beaconing and that will automatically beacon you based on your speed and your heading so if you take a turn you change speeds it's going to broadcast your APRS data accordingly so it's really cool these little handhelds are great but definitely on the pricey end so this Kenwood THD72 had to look that up there is I think I got this around 500 bucks so it's definitely pricey it's definitely capable but uh there's other options out there so let me slide this over and give kind of a cheaper option so one another cool option is a standalone unit I got this handy AVR T5 from amazing aliexpress these little things all inclusive it's only one watt of power but you'd be surprised how far you can get out with APRS on one watt of power this handheld this Kenwood I've gone probably 150 miles is pure line of sight so this was definitely to a mountaintop digipeter I was out in the Nevada desert and was able to get to a digipeter in central Utah so it was really cool but this little this little one watt uh Chinese kind of hard to configure radio is actually pretty handy I got hams here that will either throw just leave it alone or throw a linear amp on it and get a little bit more distance out of it but definitely something you can throw into your backpack hiking uh on your bike in your pocket so it's very cool very very nice little slim device here another option when you're picking end user APRS equipment is definitely an app called APRS droid for Android so APRS droid I haven't gotten to work on the latest version of Android but most ham software you're going to expect that you can get little this is called a microlink TNC and it's just a little 3D printed case with basically a Arduino nano inside and it connects the little three and a half millimeter jack there to an adapter cable to your radio of choice so it can be paired with a bauphin it can be paired with another radio anything you want and it connects via bluetooth to your phone so your phone will be running the APRS droid app and very much like the handheld keyboard you get to put in your call sign you can put in icons that you want to put and any messages that you want to put as your beacon another really cool feature about APRS is not just GPS location but messaging so on my little Kenwood handheld here I can send messages by you know using the keypad pretty old school kind of like how you used to have to text back in the day uh the touchpad there but the advantage of this cool little microlink TNC with your APRS droid enabled phone you can just use your android phone type the message and get it sent so it's much easier to use this paired with a phone and a radio than to just use the radio if you're going to go the messaging route so definitely something really cool there's just I always look on aliexpress or amazon for new APRS devices and there's just every once in a while they'll come out with something really cool so that gets us around the end user devices handhelds other dedicated units from china that may or may not have reporting capabilities for or the government there to mobile link TNCs with your android phone but there's another piece to this puzzle and that's the stations that actually get that data the packets that these devices put out to other digipeters and eventually to the internet and that's where a digipeter comes in so this is a basic digipeter setup I got these all over the state here in Utah and we have definitely increased the here let me let me zoom out here and we'll see if we can okay we have definitely increased the IPRS coverage in my region and hoping to expand into other parts of Utah so this whole setup consists of a two meter radio this particular radio is just when I got officer plus it's an e of johnson rs 5300 here and all you need is a two meter radio that has connections on it to for push to talk and for the audio mic and speaker most radios you see out there will have this either through the front port jack here or with a dongle or connection in the back this one just happens to be done with a db of 15 connector on the back db 9 and this just plugs in and gives me the breakout for audio push the talk and and that's all we need on the radio side so a two meter radio it can also be a handheld I've seen people use bow things for this so definitely something that can be done a little cheaper but this is nicer plus radio I got it for about 35 40 bucks so not too bad too shabby so this radio needs to hook up to a device that can decode these aprs packets to do this decode will you I interface my raspberry pi with a easy digi these are available on ebay and it comes in a little kit you have to solder it together just a little more part of the adventure all you really have to do is solder two leads for the audio and the connections to your radio for push to talk things like that so in this particular setup I am using the GPIO for push to talk you can also just use vox if you're using like a handheld radio or bau fang this particular two meter mobile radio is not capable of vox so I definitely have to manually trigger push to talk and that's where GPIO on the raspberry pi comes in so radio goes to your easy digi the easy digi is basically just an isolation you actually don't need the easy digi you can wire things directly it's just safer you're not going to upload you're not going to ruin your pi with its low GPIO voltage and you're not going to screw up your radio and you'll also get cleaner audio so definitely go with the easy digi on the raspberry pi it's fitted since since it only has a speaker output I wish they made this a four pull connector with a mic input but hey you can always go to another pi variant like the banana cream pie or something for that I just fit my $35 raspberry pi with a four or five dollar usb audio card so you can grab these on amazon I'll put a link in a little write up when we post this video but you just take your microphone plug it in and your speaker for your radio plug it in there get it in the pie and you're good to go on the hardware side I guess other than the GPIO so GPIO is another another step in the setup the GPIO portion as well as the software portion is covered in the documentation of the software I use and we'll get into that right now let's go to the good old browser view here so my choice of a pair of software for my raspberry pi or any other system is called direwolf so we'll hit up direwolf I'm just going to use google here they have a great set of documentation on github you can go through any doc on here but the main thing you need to do is go for the documentation on your system so they have documentation for linux they have documentation for windows and they have specific documentation for the raspberry pi so let me look here so yeah I'm just going to scroll down here just to make sure I'm speaking the truth here but there we go raspberry pi for ham radio so direwolf is going to be built on the top of your raspberry pi so you need to install a distro I just use raspian for my raspberry pi get that installed on your raspberry pi and then use the instructions from github here the documentation repo to build it for your system mostly it is literally just downloading the source and then compiling it once you've compiled it you can start right out and get it running so let's go to let's go to console and see what direwolf gives us on the raspberry pi what kind of information what what does it look like when you're actually using direwolf on a raspberry pi I'll go and I'll probably post maybe some quick dirty instructions for actually building a direwolf kit on the website ham village dot org but for now let's go cut to the end results I think I'm pretty low on time here and we'll go to the console here so this is what a typical putty installation well not putty this is what a typical terminal of direwolf will read out once you're up and running you will see traffic coming across from mobiles handheld units and in my area definitely a lot of weather stations um so there's a plethora of information here and we can pick let's see let's pick this latest one that came in so this was an eyegate transmit looks like uh okay that was just for that node so let's go to this one aj6kw so aj6kw with a destination of aptt4 came in with this path and looks like some gps coordinates so he came in with some gps coordinates positioned with time he is using a tiny track so that's one of those cool little all-in-one devices and it's spitting out his coordinates course and any other information it's really cool just to see how much traffic you're going to get on these systems and the console um see here's another one coming in looks like a jeep on a mobile unit coming in here with some coordinates course altitude and he's monitoring on a 146520 so looks like Keith and I can hit him up on that frequency give him a chat and that's just really cool the terminal here isn't necessarily the place you're going to want to stock people on aprs definitely use the web interface to to do your stocking but that's just really cool to see what your radio is hearing directly because again the stuff posted on aprs.fi and aprs direct whoever station heard it first um is the one that gets to post it there so you may have heard it but you may have not been the one that reported it to the servers there so it's definitely something definitely cool to see just the raw data and see here we go here's just an eye gate transmit from frisco frisco peak just throwing a beacon out with its position and location in that this is a lc al 7 bx's rig uh good friend of mine he has helped me a lot with this aprs stuff we we definitely are working together to to build out more at the rs rigs in our area so i think we're pretty much up for time on the demo uh the wonderful radiogram talk was amazing and push the silver tad but no worries uh let's go answer some questions and chat if there are any i know this was kind of a drone out presentation live demo but uh let's see if there's any questions uh either in discord or in twitch here give it a quick glance and we'll get going here okay well definitely an earful there's definitely more resources for aprs if you want to get into aprs you want to uh carry it along with you or you want to expand aprs network yourself go ahead and hit me up in the ham radio village discord on the defconn server or our own ham radio village server i'll throw leaks in chat um just go ahead and i will even be able to help you remotely i've helped people with remote desktop remote uh yeah remote desktop to help set up their rigs so any help i can give i'm just more than happy to expand and contribute to the aprs community so thank you everybody and we'll see you back for closing comments here and just a little bit thank you