Blog
What's new in APRS Connect 1.8.0
APRS Connect 1.8.0 is on Google Play: an IGate, a digipeater, a digipeater coverage map, pinned stations, a grid square tool, and a tab bar you arrange yourself. Every feature, with a link to its post and its documentation.
-
What's new in the September update for APRS Connect 1.8.0
An over-the-air update for Android version 1.8.0 adds message routing, a retry schedule, an #APRSThursday reminder, ISS features and a set of fixes. Here is how to check that you have it and how to install it now.
-
APRS Thursday: a live map of the weekly net
A new site from APRS Connect shows every station checking in to #APRSThursday on a live map, with every net back to January 2023.
-
Why APRS Connect starts from the Messages tab
Why APRS Connect opens on conversations rather than a map: one thread per station, delivery states shown as facts, and service bots you talk to.
-
Taking the map where there is no signal
How the APRS Connect map keeps drawing with no signal, the difference between the tile cache and a downloaded region, and what a radio still does offline.
-
Reading a raw APRS packet
A position packet and a message packet taken apart field by field, then the same packet as the APRS Connect packet inspector shows it.
-
Sending a text message or an email over APRS
How to reach a phone, an inbox, or a Winlink account from an APRS station using the SMS, EMAIL-2 and APRSLink gateways in APRS Connect.
-
A digipeater that waits its turn
APRS Connect 1.8.0 can run your phone as a fill-in digipeater that stays quiet when another digipeater already repeated the packet, or as a wide-area one if that is genuinely your job.
-
Where your signal has actually reached a digipeater
The coverage layer in APRS Connect 1.8.0 is a heat map of the places a transmitter provably reached a digipeater from: your own, everyone's, or one digipeater's footprint.
-
Pinned stations
Star a station in APRS Connect 1.8.0 and it sorts to the top, is followed on APRS-IS wherever it goes, and can be the only thing on the map, the list and the packet log.
-
Your grid square, and the distance to any other
APRS Connect 1.8.0 has a Grid square screen: your own Maidenhead locator, and the distance and bearing to any other locator or callsign, worked out on the phone with no connection.
-
The tab bar is yours to arrange
In APRS Connect 1.8.0 the More menu is gone. The tab bar is the first row of a drawer holding every screen in the app, and you drag tiles to decide what sits on the bar and which screen the app opens on.
-
Your phone as an IGate
APRS Connect 1.8.0 can gate traffic between your radio and APRS-IS in either direction, and it transmits only for stations your radio has actually heard.