On Google Play and the App Store · Android and iPhone
APRS Connect is a messaging-first APRS client. Message threads with delivery state, the APRS service bots as guided screens, APRS OTA ops hosted and chased with a tap, every frame decoded, and a vector map that works with no signal. It talks to your radio over Bluetooth, USB or an audio cable, or to APRS-IS over the internet, in eight languages.
Free to install and use over APRS-IS. APRS Connect Pro adds radios, offline maps and more: $3.99/month or $29.99/year, after a 7-day free trial.
stations heard on APRS-IS in the last hour. Each point on the globe is one of them.
A thread per station. Each message shows whether it was sent, repeated by a digipeater, and delivered.
A thread per station. Each message shows whether it was sent, repeated by a digipeater, and delivered. Stations and trails with their real APRS symbols, on a map that works with no signal. Every frame heard, decoded as it arrives. Hosting an op: callers arrive as cards while the clock runs. The APRS service bots, each with a guided screen. One station's position, track, weather and raw packets.How it works
One message sent over the radio, from your screen to the other station and back, and what APRS Connect does at each step.
Pick a station and type. An APRS message holds 67 characters; anything longer is split into numbered parts for you.
Your callsign, the app's identifier, the digipeater path, the addressee padded to nine characters, your text, and a message number the other station will quote back when it answers.
Your radio sends it at 1200 baud. A digipeater in range repeats it and writes its own callsign into the path. APRS Connect hears that copy and marks the message Digipeated, so you know it got out.
Their station answers with ack and the same message number.
APRS Connect matches the number and marks the message Delivered, and
notes whether the ack came back over the radio or over the internet.
If no ack comes back, the message goes out again after 30 seconds, then 60, then 90, six tries in all. The interval and the number of tries are settings. If none is acknowledged the message says Not delivered, and one tap sends it again.
One thread per station, in order, kept. Every message shows where it actually got to (sent, acknowledged, retrying, or given up on) and retries on its own, on a schedule you can change, rather than leaving you to guess and re-send. With Pro, a message that has run out of retries can wait for its station instead and go out again the next time that callsign is heard, up to three tries over two weeks.
Much of what answers on APRS is automated: weather forecasts, group nets, SMS and email gateways, Winlink, callsign lookup. These bots expect exact wording. APRS Connect keeps a directory of them, explains what each one answers, and composes the message for you. The outgoing command is always shown before it is sent, and you can always type it yourself instead.
KISS TNCs over Bluetooth Classic, BLE, USB serial, and TCP; a built-in AFSK audio modem that needs no TNC at all; and APRS-IS over the network, with a filter you control. Several can run at once, as named channels. Reception keeps running in the background behind a notification you can see, and the log marks the gaps when it couldn't. APRS-IS is free; the radio channels are APRS Connect Pro.
Stations, objects and beacons plot with their real APRS symbols on a vector basemap served from our own tile host. Every tile you have viewed is cached on the phone, up to a size you set, and redraws with no connection. With Pro, download whole regions ahead of a trip, or add a map file of your own, and the area draws in full with no signal at all. With Pro, the map can also show the rest of the world: stations heard anywhere on APRS-IS, not only the ones your own device heard.
An optional account ties your phone, tablet and browser together. With Pro, your messages, threads, pinned stations, blocklist, coverage and settings stay the same on every one of them, updating live while the app is open. Where two devices share a callsign and SSID, only one of them beacons, acks and digipeats at a time, so your station does not jump around the map.
Messaging, services, nets, the map, stations and the packet log are free to use over the internet backbone. APRS Connect Pro switches on the radio channels, offline region downloads, the radar layer, GPX and KML track export, extra beacon profiles, capture replay, retry when heard, mobiles nearby, the digipeater coverage map, and running the phone as an IGate or digipeater. Let it lapse and nothing is deleted; APRS-IS stays connected.
English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese and Turkish, on every screen. The app follows the phone's language, or you pin one. Protocol words stay in English so what you quote to another operator reads the same on their screen.
Every frame you hear is kept and decoded field by field (path, symbol, telemetry and the rest), so you can tell a bad digipeat from a bad antenna. Reception charts show what you heard, and just as usefully, when you heard nothing at all.
Everything lives in a database on the phone, so the app stays fully usable with no connection at all: your messages, your packet history, your map. Back the whole lot up to a JSON file and restore or merge it later.
This is the short version. The features page lists everything in the current build.
APRS OTA · aprsota.org
APRS OTA is an activity run on top of APRS: you announce an op, a session of roughly an hour, and operators anywhere try to reach you before the clock runs out. Each contact you confirm scores, and adds time.
APRS Connect handles the exchange with the bot. One tap starts an op. Callers arrive as cards showing where they're calling from, a countdown tracks the time remaining with a button to extend it, and confirming a contact is a tap plus an optional note. Chasing works from the other side of the same screen: see who is on the air right now, and call them.
None of it needs an internet connection. The phone talks to the radio over Bluetooth, USB, or an audio cable, and the radio carries the rest.
APRS Connect is on Google Play for Android and on the App Store for iPhone and iPad. The iPhone app connects to BLE KISS TNCs, KISS over TCP, APRS-IS and the audio modem, which keys the radio by VOX; Bluetooth Classic and USB serial TNCs are Android-only.
Free to install and use over APRS-IS. APRS Connect Pro adds radios, offline maps and more: $3.99/month or $29.99/year, after a 7-day free trial.
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The three most recent releases. Every one, with what it carried, is on the status page.
