aprs.fi

Solid product and never had a problem in the past. Recently drug out my Mobilinkd and YAESU to get on the airwave again. Beaconing seems to be working in the app, radio transmits, app shows my coordinates.. but when I try to send a msg for weather or any other service that requires location it tells me to beacon.. I do beacon again and no luck. Everything else seems fine.

For iOS, this is the APRS app to get. It's surprisingly full featured and has been stable for me so far. It's not without fault. One biggie is that for some reason the app tries to connect to a TCP/IP KISS TNC on my local network, but has no option to tell it directly where my network TNC is. The more prevalent way to connect to, say, Direwolf or APRX is to enter the IP address and port number of those apps. The other issue is general UI. In APRSDroid, one can have a view where only raw packets can be seen on a list instead of a map. Here, the same can be done but only per user via "Track". Perhaps the feature is buried somewhere but I can't find it. It would help if there were a single place to get all settings, instead of having them strewn in m. For instance, the beacon button has its own settings... Additionally, each time I run the app my filter settings default back to "network" being on. To the developer: please save state? There are also three settings for beaconing, one of which is "beacon my position" ... which enables beaconing when the button is pressed. Maybe just grey out the beacon button if it doesn't function? Also what does "RX iGate" under the other settings menu do? It's not in the help. Much is missing from the help in general. Another tip, there are yet MORE settings under Apples prescribed Settings for the app, but not those for beaconing. This is a great little piece of software, and with a UI design and help file update it's five stars.

Update: Not much change. I really want to like this app and give it 5 stars but I can’t. I use it but only with reservations and some disappointment over its operation on beacon timing and lack of a working filter. Original Comment At first glance, the app looks pretty good. Really liked it. After time and considerable usage, not so good. I started using app because radio beacons are unreliable in my area. I needed a more consistent result. This app is not it. The controls for beaconing is fixed set to a min beacon of every 5 minutes as the fasted rate you can get. Any faster is up to the app with no insight to how it chooses to beacon. It could be 30 seconds or it could be 5 minutes. I found it taking 4 to 5 minutes between beacons. At 40 MPH, this means the beacons are as far as 2 to 3 miles off. Not useful for me. I need last known position to be accurate to hundreds of feet while traveling. Not miles. I went back to radio where I control the beacon rate which makes sense for speed and accuracy. Unable to get filtering to work. I want to filter on a single station. Entering the call sign doesn’t do it. Enter call sign with wildcard asterisk doesn’t work either. No guide on how to use filtering.