Ben's APRS page. (Or how to locate the Goldwing (and Ben!) using satellite tracking)

First, the links to the map pages so you can find Ben, then a quick overview of what APRS is, lastly, how Ben got it going.
Maps. (i.e. click one (any/all?) of the following links to locate Ben.)

This link will show a web page that has a Google Map page at the top and an old style map under it. Its rather nice as the Google map can be zoomed pretty easy (Click the white + and - on the left). Also it shows pretty clearly where in the state Ben is. Possibly worth noticing up the top of this page is an indication of how old this position fix it, and the raw data from Ben's station. At the end of the data is the battery volts of the bike and temperature of the equipment (pretty close to ambient).

Google map with old map under.

This link will show a web page that has two old style maps. The first is more zoomed in than the bottom one. You can not zoom the maps at all. The main attraction of this page is that it will show where Ben has been. It leaves a 'bread crumb' trail showing the positions and a line in between them. I transmit my position every 2 minutes, but that doesn't`t mean the network receives every transmission. So the dots could well be further apart than every two minutes.

Two old style maps with bread crumb trail.

This one is a simple clean map, none of the other stuff around this one, I want to see if I can embed this one into a web page somehow down the track. It also has a bread crumb feature (I'm guessing that this trail aspect is going to be rather useful to clearly show where I have been?)

Single clean and clear old style map with bread crumb trail.

This next one is a bit of a repeat from the first, it just shows the Google map with the raw data at the top and some options on the side again.

Google map and data.

This next link opens a page with a single clear image of Australia with Ben's location plotted, no roads or any other data is shown. It may come in handy down the track (not saying much here).

Map of Australia.

This one is a bit of a repeat, but I want to see which style of bread crumb looks the best. So, what we have is two older maps, one on top of the other with trails marking where Ben has been. The first is a little zoomed up, the latter is zoomed right out.

Two old maps (one zoomed in) with a different type of bread crumb marker.

Two old maps with a different type of bread crumb marker.

This last one is two extremes, all of Australia and the local area, each map has bread crumbs.

All Australia and the area around Ben's current position.

This is an experimental map.

Zoomed up map of Ballarat and Buninyong showing Ben's current position.

 

So, that's where Ben is, but what is APRS and how do you get it going?

Well, APRS is used by amateur radio operators to transmit their locations into the ether. The location is derived from a GPS which is hooked to a device called a tracker. The tracker converts the serial data into audio tones and is hooked to the operators radio. Every so often (depending on how the operator has the tracker configured) the tracker transmit's the audio over the air waves. This audio is picked up by the nearest radio that is on the some frequency and it may relay this information via radio to another station, or will take the data and put it on the internet.

Once the position data is on the net it floats around for a while allowing the end user (you) to be able to click on links like the above and thus find out where Ben is at any given time.

To get it going you need a 2m or 70cm radio. Pretty much any type works. A tracker and a GPS. Hook it together and that's about that...... (More to come.....)