About the Software

This site is running APRS Track Direct Pro 2023-11 build 27b released by Steve White, N2RWE.

What's New (Changelog)

11-27-2023 :: Tracker 2.0 Continued...

Station View Counter.
There were a couple things that didn't make the release of the massive Tracker 2.0 update. One feature is the station view counter, which is essentially a good ole-fasioned page counter. It counts how many times a particular station has been viewed by others. This includes views to the main page, telemetry, weather, raw packets, etc. pages There is some filtering to reduce page refreshes from artificially inflating the view counts.

11-22-2023 :: Tracker 2.0

Introducing N2RWE APRS Tracker 2.0
This is a massive update that adds an user account backend, Map Snapshots, personalized #APRSTHursday reports, and much more!

User Accounts!
User accounts have arrived! Its now possible to register for an account which allows visitors to personalize their experience, view their personal #APRSThursday progress, and best of all, set default map preferences.

Customized Map Preferences at Login.
The brand-new user preferences manager enables registered users to define their preferred default map preferences, including data sources, map settings, layers, map location and zoom. These map settings are loaded after successful login. The new animated login window will show the progress as the default map preferences are applied.

Map Snapshots ("Mapshots").
Have you ever wished that you could save a map view to recall later? Perhaps it was from a special event, or an APRS track from a long trip. A Mapshot is a moment-in-time snapshot of the map, including location & zoom, date/time, filter settings, historical information, ("Time Travel"), and more. Mapshots make it possible to recall and map any event with just a click of the mouse!

Shared Mapshots.
A great new benefit of Mapshots is that they can be shared to the public. This is very useful for special event station who want other participants to be able to view the same info on the map. Not only can Mapshots be shared, a shared mapshot can be saved to user favorites for later recall!

#APRSThursday Personal Profile.
A new benefit of signing up for an account is the new #APRSThursday personal profile. This page shows leaderboard progress, SSID (station) check-in history, and a nice graph that depicts the past year of #APRSThursday check-ins.

Favorite Stations.
Maintain a searchable list of stations that you frequently follow with at-a-glance information such as latest received packet, location, and even a link to activate Time Travel to the time and location of a stations last known activity. The favorites list can be selectively plotted to the map, exported, and event printed.

Personal API.
The Personal API allows our registered members to query data from any of their stations associated with their callsign into 3rd party apps and web pages. The Personal API can query station data, plus current weather and telemetry data. Data is returned in JSON format. There's also a documentation tab with a built-in link generator to make querying our database as easy as possible.

Moving Stations View.
A new view has been added to show all of the Moving Stations across the entire world. This includes stations from the APRS network, gliders on OGN, and others. The view includes station name, symbol, grid square, and last comment. It's a perfect compliment the Latest Stations view!

Backend Changes.
This massive update adds facilities for new user signup (with e-mail confirmation), user login, forgot password, and "remember me". In addition, a new account management page here users can change their username, password, and e-mail address. This release also introduces new facilities for sending sending e-mails (e-mail confirmation and lost passwords), a separate high-availability backend for securely storing use accounts, session tokens, e-mail codes, user profiles, and user settings separate from APRS packet data.

Menu Reorganization.
Our menus have been reorganized so some items such as Map Api and Map Type have been combined into a single menu. There's also a new Account menu for our registered guests.

Redesigned About Page.
It's certainly not the most significant part of this site update, but our new about page has received a badly needed update. If you have a minute of time, check it out.

Redesigned FAQ.
Probably one of the least signficiant changes of this update is that we've given the FAQ page a very small facelift. If you still have some free time, after checking our the new About page, check out the FAQ.

Other Additions.
Server health now monitors and reports on up to three secure backend database servers.

Fixes.
#APRSThursday leaderboard stats now properly filter out duplicate checkins across multiple SSIDs. (Sorry stations that were checking in multiple times from different SSID's each week!).

10-15-2023

Canadian Amateur Database Integration.
The Canadian call sign database joins the FCC database with full integration into the site. For Canadian Amateurs this includes license class and qualifications. The license class is now displayed in the station overview page below the APRS icon.

New License Status Page.
There is a brand new License status page showing license details for both US and Canadian amateurs. This information is accessed by the call sign link at the top of the station details page.

New License Search Page.
With all of these new call sign database integrations, it makes sense to be able to search both of these databases. The license search can be found in the main menu under Search, and also appears in the tab menu on the other search pages.

10-10-2023

FCC Database Integration.
The FCC call sign database has been intergrated into the site. For US Amateurs, the license class is now displayed in the station overview page below the APRS icon. More integration of this information is planned for the future.

Fixed DMR Database.
The DMR database import process is working again. It was broken by a recent code update.

10-10-2023

Updated Server Health Page.
The Server Health page has been streamlined to better present the status of the various server components that make this site operate. Check it out!

10-9-2023

Wind Chill in Graphs.
Wind chill data is now available as a separate line in the Temperature graph for stations that report both temperature and wind speeds.

#APRSThursday Statistics Fixed.
Statistics for the most recent #APRSThursday events have been posted. The automated processing script was broke during the recent database upgrade and has since been fixed and past stats processed.

10-8-2023

Wind Chills!
Just in time for Winter, wind chill readings are available in the current weather conditions page, including the table and gauge views. It is also available in the historical table view. This may eventually be expanded to the graph view.

10-7-2023

See where it is Night! (Beta)
There's a cool new way to illustrate the day/night cycles across the world. In the settings menu there is a new option called Show Day/Night Overlay. When active, the map will darken areas where the sun is currently shadowing the earth (i.e. where it is dark) and will update every 5 seconds. A widget also appears on the right side of the map with controls to change or stop the updates. Set the refresh to 1/2 second and watch the sun set across the world in real-time!

We're on Facebook!.
Drop by our new Facebook page and post a hello message! We've added a Facebook button to the top of the page to help you get there!

10-5-2023

External Library Updates.
Updated external libraries to the latest available and optimized loading.

File Download Fixes.
Fixed broken file downloads (raw packets & live view) when Google Maps is selected as the map API.

9-29-2023

DMR ID Lookup.
The DMR Radio ID database has been integrated into the site and ID lookup has been added to the station overview. If a station is an amateur station and has been assigned a DMR radio ID, all assigned ID's will be displayed below the APRS icon with a link back to their profile on radioid.net

9-28-2023

Tail Length Improvements.
The tail length for tracking all moving stations on the map can now be extended up to 18 hours, which is an increase from 12 hours. The tail length when filtering on individual stations can now be extended to show up to 3 days of past movements!

Hide APRS Stations.
We've added the ability to hide APRS stations from the map. This is useful for viewing the map with only a specific type of station(s) (i.e. CWOP Weather or OGN). It can also cut down on marker clutter when zoomed out.

"Loading" Indicator.
When hiding or showing specific station types in the settings menu, there can be a considerable lag in redrawing the map. This is entirely dependent on browser and connection speed. To solve this, during the redraw process the menu text will change to "Please wait..." with a clock icon. When the map redraw is complete, the menu text will revert back. Give it a try to see what we mean!

USGS Satellite Map.
In addition to Google maps satellite view, we now offer USGS Sateliite Imagery as a map choice.

9-27-2023

Database Upgrade.
The Postgresql server has been upgraded to the latest operating system while the Postgres database was upgraded to version 16. This process took longer than anticipated and resulted in a couple hours of downtime this evening (apologies!) which was unexpected.

Server Status Monitoring.
Following this evenings upgrades the database server has been added to the server status page.

9-26-2023

Server Status Improvements.
The server status page now reports the status of the APRS-IS services, APRS collection services, web servers, and websocket servers. This service status is updated in the background once a minute. The collection status is also more accurately reported based on the latest records available in the database for a particular data source.

9-25-2023

Contact Us.
We've added a convenient way for you to reach out. The new Contact Us page is waiting whether you have a comment, question, or suggestion on ways to make this site better. Your input is valuable to us. Give it a try!

Version Control.
A new version control workflow has been enabled allowing for more streamlined coe deployment throughout the server cluster.

9-21-2023

#APRSThursday Leaderboard.
The Leaderboard has been improved with a new view called "Top Participants" This view shows rankings based on a total of all check-ins across all of a stations SSID's. The top stations (call-ssid) still remains and will show only stations with 20 or more checkins.

9-20-2023

#APRSThursday History.
We've imported past event history from the official #APRSThursday site that goes back to April 21st, 2022. Unfortunately, our full data set only goes back to July 13, so some data points will still be missing.

#APRSThursday Station Badge.
The station details page (Overview) will now show a badge on the right side if that station has participated at any point since January 19th, 2023.

9-19-2023

#APRSThursday Leaderboard.
We've added a new Leaderboard to our #APRSThursday page. Initially this will show stations that have checked in to the net 10 or more times. Unfortunately, our data only goes back to July 13, so as the site accumulates more data we will add some some more exciting ways to filter these results.

#APRSThursday UI Tweaks.
We've changed the #APRSThursday tables (Checkins, Statistics) to be more in line with the design of other areas of the site.

Telemetry Print, Save, & Export.
Controls have been added to the Telemetry Data & Bits Tables to allow for copy to clipboard, print, and save to file. Telemetry data can be copied to the clipboard or saved in either of these file formats; CSV, XML, and PDF.

SOTA Fixes.
Small tweaks to better identify current SOTA activations and show hyperlinks to several SOTA resource sites.

9-18-2023

New Dew Point Data.
The weather pages have received a significant overhaul in todays release. First we've introduced Dew Points to many areas of our weather pages starting with a new Dew Point gauge in the Current Weather Conditions. The Temperature graph has a a new line depicting the calculated Dew Point.

Wind Gust Data.
Continuing with todays weather page enhancements a new Wind Gust gauge has been added in the Current Weather Conditions. For the graph view, the Wind Speed graph has a second line depicting Wind Gusts while a new column was added to the table view for Wind Gusts.

Humidity Data.
Max and Min humidity values are now displayed as part of the Alamanac page for daily and weekly summary. Weekly max and min humidity values are also highlighted to identify the days with the highest and lowest humidity.

Pressure Data.
Weekly highest and lowest pressure values are now highlighted in the Weather for the Past Week table in the Alamanac page.

Current Weather Table View.
In addition to the weather gauge view, current weather conditions can be viewed in a table view.

Print, Save, & Export Table View.
Controls have been added to the Weather Data Table View to allow for copy to clipboard, print, and save to file. Weather data in the view can be copied to the clipboard or saved in either of these file formats; CSV, XML, and PDF.

9-17-2023

Weather Data Fixes.
Fixed a couple weather report bugs in the underlying aprs-python library responsible for parsing packets that was causing wind speed/direction data in weather reports to be recorded as course & speed, instead of wind direction and wind speed. Updated all exisiting weather records in the database to re-classify the wind speed/direction data so it's available in table and graphs format with correct values.

Weather Data View Cleanup.
The weather data table view now shows empty cells anytime a weather station does not report a specific type of data.

CWOP Station Popup in Map View.
Hide course/speed information from the station popup dialog in the map view for CWOP stations.

9-15-2023

Cardinal Direction Support.
Direction information now shows cardinal directions (N, S, E, W, etc.) in addition to degrees. This includes the the station pop-up window in the map view for both weather and course, station overview page for course information, and the weather data table view in the station weather tab.

Escape Key Closes Main Window.
Pressing the escape key will now close the window and return to the map view.

Google Maps Fixes.
Map pop-up windows were not working as a result of a change introduced in a recent release of the Google Maps API. We are now falling back to an older version of the Google Maps API which has restored the map view pop up windows.

Wind Speed Fixes.
Wind speed information was not being shown in the correct area within the station pop-up window in the map view. In addition to wind speed and direction, wind gust information is also being displayed in the window.

9-14-2023

Mic-E Support.
We can now decode Mic-E encoded packets! Last-known Mic-E status is shown in the station details (Overview) page and also in the station pop-up window in the map view.

Comment Cleanup.
With the addition of Mic-E packet decoding, the packet capture and storage subsystem for newly recorded packet comments will no longer record extraneous characters at the beginning or end of comments.

9-7-2023

Telemetry Graph Fixes.
Telemetry graph data is now properly converted to the correct unit based on the latest EQNS data available from the station.

9-1-2023

Equipment Identification Enhancements.
Attempt to use MIC-E radio data (when present) to identify station equipment when the packet TOCALL cannot be resolved against the known equipment database.

8-31-2023

Station Comment Display.
We will always display the latest non-empty comment received within the last 24 hours under the station's callsign on the station details page. This is seperate from the comment that is shown under the "Latest packet" section which always shows the comment of most recent packet.

Packet Path Linking.
In the station details page, any real station that relayed a packet as shown in the packet path are now hyperlinked to their respective station details pages.

Extraneous Characters in Comments.
Cleaned up extraneous characters in packet comments when the packet contains Mic-E data.

8-30-2023

More Telemetry Bugfixes.
Fixed an edge case that occurs when a BITs data packet is arrives several seconds after the last telemetry packet. When this occurs, the system displayed out-of-date BITs data that was one packet behind.

8-29-2023

Telemetry Bugfixes.
Fixed an issue that prevented Telemetry values and BITs data from displaying in both the table and graph views if the BITs values change too frequently. The symptom of this bug was seeing significantly less data in the table or graph views than what is expected.

8-28-2023

APRS Passcode Generator.
This update adds a passcode generator to our APRS toolkit. The APRS-IS network requires the use of a call sign and passcode to connect directly to the APRS-IS network over IP. You can now request a passcode on this site by entering your callsign by going to Tools -> APRS Passcode Generator.

Terms of Service & Privacy Policy.
Published our Terms of Service and Privacy Policies.

Coordinate Converter Bug Fixes.
Identified and fixed a rounding error in generating the DDM-APRS and NMEA coordinates.

8-26-2023

New Coordinate Converter.
This new tool will display geographic coordinates in a variety of coordinates systems. This is especially useful for converting coordinates to DDM-APRS format (4304.93N, 07601.16W) for configuring TNC's, trackers, etc. The converter is available wenever there is a globe icon next to a set of coordinates. Clicking the globe will bring up the converter dialog. This is also integrated into the previously released Find a Place / Geolocation search feature, allowing a location to be searched and coordinates to be displayed in a variety of systems. The converter also features a one-click copy to clipboard feature; clicking in any cell in the converter table will copy the cell contents to the clipboard.

8-24-2023

What's New (Changelog) Added.
This new page will allow us to announce changes, new features and other improvements to the site. Check back here often for updates!

8-19-2023

Find a Place / Geolocation Search.
Finally! You can now search for an address, park, landmark, business, etc. The list of results contain links that will move and center the map to the location of the search result. These geolocation search results are provided courtesy of Nominatim.