[Xastir-Dev] Re: APRS software for SAR (fwd)

[Curt Mills]

My response to the message on APRSSIG.  Comments?

-- 
Curt Mills, WE7U                    hacker_NO_SPAM_ at tc.fluke.com
Senior Methods Engineer/SysAdmin
"Lotto:    A tax on people who are bad at math!"
"Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates!" -- WE7U
"The world DOES revolve around me:  I picked the coordinate system!"

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2003 09:41:34 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Curt Mills, WE7U" <hacker at tc.fluke.com>
To: TAPR APRS Special Interest Group <aprssig at lists.tapr.org>
Cc: TAPR APRS Special Interest Group <aprssig at lists.tapr.org>
Subject: [aprssig] Re: APRS software for SAR

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Scott Miller wrote:

> What do you think is the best APRS software package for Search and Rescue
> use?  And I mean in the command post, not PDAs in the field.

Xastir.  Due to USGS topo map support, free map data, free program,
runs on darn-near anything (but Unix and Unix-like OS'es run it
better/more efficiently).


> Xastir seems to be the most promising.  I'm a bit
> wary of running it under Cygwin, though, and using Linux means the CP
> personnel won't be able to run the Windows software they're probably used to
> on the same box.

Correct.  I'd be wary of running it under Cygwin/Windows for SAR
work as well.


> Does anything support digital elevation models?  I'd like to be able to get
> elevation data for a given location, and maybe plot contours (and shading)
> over non-topo maps.  Viewshed analysis for single points and for tracks
> would be a big plus.  3D projection would be nice too.

We're working on integrating another library that'll give us DEM's.
I expect that's a ways out though.


> To Curt and the rest of the Xastir team - the one thing that'd make me a lot
> happier with Xastir right now is a good map layer setup interface.  Delete
> that blasted map chooser and start over.  Go look at ArcView's layer palette
> and start from there.  Maybe everyone else is just using Tigermaps or
> something, but I have gigabytes of local map data and it's a pain to try to
> display it in any meaningful way.

Please join the xastir-dev mailing list and start making
suggestions.  Several of us work on the map interface and layering
code, and there's some recent work to make Shapefiles
user-configurable as to layer/color/line-width, etc that can be
tried now with a special configure-time switch.  Let us know where
we're going wrong and what you'd like to see.  We won't shoot you...
Yet!


> Please share your SAR software experiences... Xastir's my top choice for
> now, but I'm always willing to listen to alternatives.

I was just in the woods for a week with another SAR member and we
discussed a few things that need to go into Xastir to support SAR.
I also promised last night at a base support meeting that I'd add
some SAR math stuff to Xastir.  Look for more features in the coming
weeks.  First thing that will be added is the donut-hole
calculations based on type of terrain and type of lost subject.
That'll be relatively easy but will be very useful as we'll have
real circles on top of real topo maps.

- -- 
Curt Mills, WE7U                    hacker_NO_SPAM_ at tc.fluke.com
Senior Methods Engineer/SysAdmin
"Lotto:    A tax on people who are bad at math!"
"Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates!" -- WE7U
"The world DOES revolve around me:  I picked the coordinate system!"