APRS: Automatic Position Reporting System

APRS is a system which uses amateur radio to transmit position reports, weather reports, and messages between users. My contribution is the internet portion of the system. Although ham radio is capable of digital long distance communications, it tends to be slow and unreliable, especially when compared to the internet. I've written software to take the data received locally and make it available via the internet, to be displayed with a Java applet.

What you are looking at here is a number of position reports from amateur radio operators in South Florida. At times you may see vehicles, planes, or boats moving around town. These vehicles obtain their location using the satellite system known as GPS, and transmit that position for others to follow. There are also a few weather stations visible on the map. Click on one of these to see their current weather conditions.

You can select different maps from the menu at the bottom of the applet, zoom in and out, and scroll with different keys. See the list below for details. For more info on APRS, check out the APRS Virtual Meeting. For information about how to get started in APRS, try this link.

(Be patient...the applet, map and data files are over 200k, so depending on your connection speed it may take a couple of minutes to load.)

Sorry, your browser doesn't do Java!

If it did, you'd see something like this! javAPRS Screen Shot


javAPRS Commands (Case Insensitive)
U or PGUP
 zooms up (wider view)
D or PGDN
 zooms down (narrower view)
L
 lists stations heard to the Java console
W
 lists only weather station reports to the Java console
B
 lists beacons to the Java console
I
 lists ID reports to the Java console
M
 lists last 25 messages to the Java console
CTRL-click
 centers map on clicked location
ALT-click
 zooms in on clicked location
Arrow keys
 scrolls map

Clicking on a station shows its information in the status bar


For a page that starts with a USA map, and doesn't have the introductory test, look here.

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javAPRS and APRServe written by Steve Dimse, K4HG.

Mail comments to k4hg@tapr.org

Steve's home page

Steve's javAPRS page.

Steve's APRServe page.

Want to add javAPRS to your web pages? Here's how.


A special thanks to the Miami Museum of Science for allowing this server space on their network and museum floor.