[Xastir-dev] Topic: Functional Requirements, Xastir-NG

[Curt, WE7U]

On Sun, 15 Jun 2008, Magne Mæhre wrote:

> The reason I mentioned some of these is that there is more or less the
> same basic information (I even did a dirty hack to get input from my
> AIS receiver into xastir for visualization once).  Not that I know how
> useful it would be, but an somewhat broader abstraction for stations/
> objects would make it easier to implement support for other protocols.
> 
> Both AIS and ES have objects identified by a numeric indicator, with
> AIS using the vessels MMSI number, and Mode-S using the 24-bit ICAO
> ID.  The vessels name or callsign is propagated from time to time, but
> initially you don't know... So it would be nice to have one key to
> identify the object and another as the visual ID on the map.. Hmm --
> maybe this is how tactical callsigns are used today?

We've tackled these issues with Firenet scripts again and again.
One of the problems is that these systems often have a number, but
lots of systems have identical or near-identical numbers, so we have
to merge these into an APRS packet somehow.  We usually give a
different first letter or first couple of letter to each one.  Also,
some of these numbers are too long to fit into the APRS formats.

I don't think merging these things into the Xastir code directly is
the way to go.  These systems will come and go over the years and
the code to handle them is very service-specific.  We should have a
way to inject such data though (like the current Xastir UDP port)
which is easy to do from other scripts/programs.

We're doing an APRS app here (perhaps an OpenTrac app as well?),
which is ham-related.  These other services may be injected into
local RF or into the APRS-IS or Firenet by certain individuals, but
most people won't need/want this type of stuff.

-- 
Curt, WE7U.				archer at eskimo dot com
http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
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