Dashboard

The Dashboard shows what your station has heard, sent, relayed and reached, one tile per number. It is in the drawer: swipe up on the tab bar. Drag it to the first cell of the bar and the app opens on it.

Everything on it is counted on the phone as it happens and kept there. None of it is sent anywhere, and it works with no connection. The exception is the OTA tiles, if you add them: see below.

Periods

The switch at the top sets the span every tile adds up: Today, 7 days, 30 days or All time. Days are your phone's local days. All time says which day counting began.

When you first install an update with the Dashboard, the app counts what it still holds from before: the packet log (30 days by default, see Packet log) and your message history. Time running and the longest direct reception start from the update, because nothing recorded them before.

RF, IS or both

The switch beside the title picks which traffic every tile counts:

• All: everything, with tiles such as Packets heard split into what your radio heard and what came over the internet.
• RF: only what went over the radio. Packets heard counts what your radio heard, Beacons the beacons a radio sent, Messages the ones sent or received over the air.
• IS: only what went over APRS-IS, the internet side. Packets heard counts what came over the internet alone, Stations heard the stations your radio never heard.

A beacon or message sent both ways at once counts under RF and under IS. Air miles, Longest reach, Heard by, Digipeated and Longest direct only ever come from the radio, so under IS they say RF only. Distance beaconed and Time running have no path and read the same under all three. So does IGated: every packet an IGate passes is heard on one path and sent on the other, so it always shows both directions.

The tiles

• Air miles: how far your own packets flew. Every time a copy of one of your packets comes back, from a digipeater your radio heard repeat it or from an IGate that put it on APRS-IS, the app adds up the hops: from where you were, to each digipeater, to the IGate. A hop only counts when the positions of both ends are known, and each hop counts once per packet however many copies show it. A digipeater that never beacons its position cannot be measured.

• Longest reach: the farthest station that carried one of your packets. Under All time it names the station.

• Heard by: how many different digipeaters and IGates carried your packets, and how many of them were new in the period.

• Beacons: position beacons this device sent.

• Distance beaconed: how far you moved between GPS beacons, in straight lines from one beacon to the next. From the update on, a fixed-position beacon does not move it.

• Packets heard: everything received, split by whether your radio heard it (RF) or it only came over the internet.

• Stations heard: different stations heard, how many of those your radio heard, and how many were new in the period.

• Longest direct: the farthest station your radio heard with no digipeater in between.

• Messages, Packets sent, Digipeated, IGated and Time running are what they say. Time running only counts while the app is actually running.

• The OTA tiles are your APRS OTA record, as aprsota.org keeps it:

  • OTA points: points from every confirmed QSO, drawn as the points you earned hosting and the points you earned chasing. Under All time it is aprsota.org's own total.
  • OTA chases: QSOs you made chasing other people's ops, and how many different hosts.
  • OTA ops: ops you hosted, counted on the day they went on the air, even one nobody worked, and the QSOs logged on them.
  • OTA QSOs hosted: QSOs logged on the ops you hosted, and how many different chasers.
  • OTA stations: different stations you made a QSO with, either way, and how many were new in the period.
  • OTA countries: countries on the other end of your QSOs: the chaser's for an op you hosted, the op's for one you chased. aprsota.org records only the chaser's country on a QSO, so the countries of ops you chased are looked up a few at a time, and the tile says Still counting until they all are.

  These are the only tiles not counted on the phone. While one of them is on the Dashboard, the app asks aprsconnect.com for your record under your callsign, about every ten minutes while you are looking. It keeps the last answer, so they still show numbers with no connection. None of them is on the Dashboard until you add it.

Distances follow the units setting.

Any tile bigger than the smallest also draws its period day by day, with today on the right. A tile that adds two things up, such as packets heard over RF and over the internet, draws each day as a column of the two, RF at the bottom in amber. Tap a day, or slide sideways along a chart, and every chart shows that day's figures, with the date beside its name; tap the same day again for the whole period. Once All time covers more than about a year of weeks, each bar is several days: counts add up, and station counts show the busiest day, because the same station heard on two days is still one station.

APRS-IS keeps one copy of each packet. When the app sends a packet over the radio and to APRS-IS at the same time, which is the default, the copy an IGate hears arrives second and APRS-IS drops it, so IGates only show up in Air miles and Heard by for packets sent over the radio alone.

Arranging the tiles

The Dashboard is a grid two columns wide. A tile comes in four shapes: small (one column, one row), wide (both columns), tall (one column, two rows) and large (two by two). Tiles fill the grid in order, so two small tiles after a tall one stack beside it. A chart has the most room in a tall or large tile.

• Hold a tile until it lifts, then drag it. Whatever it passes over swaps into its place.
• A tile you have lifted keeps a dot on its bottom corner and an X on its top corner. Drag the dot sideways to make the tile wide or narrow, and down or up to make it tall or short. Tap the X to take the tile off the Dashboard.
• Tap anywhere else when you are done.
• Add tiles, under the last tile, lists the tiles you are not showing. Tap one to add it at the end. Reset to default there puts back the layout the app ships with.

With a screen reader, each tile has actions to move it earlier or later, give it another shape, or remove it. On Android, TalkBack lists them in its actions menu; on iPhone, VoiceOver offers them when you swipe up or down on the tile.

The layout is kept with your other display settings; the numbers are always this device's own.

The Dashboard is free. Tiles that come from a Pro feature (the radio, the digipeater and the IGate) show PRO without a subscription. See Free and Pro.

Last updated 27 September 2026