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Amateur Radio
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Main Site Index
APRS Pages Index
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APRS was originally designed to graphically track Amateur Radio stations operating mobile in their vehicles using GPS equipment connected to their radio transmitters pinpointing their longitude and latitude on a map that could be viewed on a personal computer.
And since it's development in the Amateur Radio world - like a lot of other radio and television technologies that started here - it has now moved into the general market and is used in a similar fashion commercially with applications like "On-Star" available in a lot of General Motors vehicles.
As it evolved from its original DOS version to a Windows environment more sophisticated software and mapping programs have become available, and manufacturers of home weather stations like Davis, LaCrosse, Ultimeter, Radio Shack and others, have developed PC software to receive the signals from their outdoor weather equipment, and automatically update the conditions to be reported to APRS, rather than having to key it in manually.
And, continuing on in the usual "experimental" nature of Amateur Radio one of our operators (Steve Demise - K4HG) down in Florida found a way to capture these signals off the radios and get them into his computer database. He then extended that server to an Internet connection and developed the appropriate software and links to a number of other servers receiving radio signals and making them available on maps world wide.
His efforts in the Internet linking have now made it possible to transmit this same position and weather data direct into his servers through various interconnected hubs, without the need to have a radio transmitter. And, this now opened up the APRS weather reports to non-Amateurs through the Citizens Weather Corps. (CWOP) who were not licensed to transmit via radio signals.
Most of the current PC weather data collection software from the manufacturers
mentioned
above allows anyone with a home weather station to now register with the
Citizens
Weather Corps and
receive an Internet call sign (beginning with the letters 'CW') to
be able to send their reports to APRS "over the air"
along with the Amateur Community.
Of course, there are many other uses for APRS including Direction Finding, tracking Key Team Members during an emergency, tracking progress of community events like the annual MS Walkathon, and now we are even starting to see Amateur Television come into the picture broadcasting live video shots from a mobile position.
To view some of the current data sent from my station to APRS click the links below.
To view data from any other APRS Station, Location, Zip Code, Latitude and Longitude, etc. click the "Location" button at the very top of the screen, and enter your search criteria.
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APRS stands for "Automatic Position Reporting" and is a registered trademark of Bob Bruninga. He developed it in the early 1990's as part of his research for the US Navy while an Instructor at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD.
Click the link above to visit his site.
To learn more about how you can send position reporting or weather data visit some of the sites below:
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