[Xastir] OpenTrac

[Curt Mills]

The only trackers that implemented it were Argentdata trackers. APRS-IS
can't handle the packets but your average digipeaters can. I used to run a
dual-protocol tracker in my Jeep that would do both APRS and Opentrac
packets every posit and it worked well. I don't have that in my later
Argentdata trackers though.

Unless Scott starts putting it into his trackers again it's unlikely anyone
will be using it. It's definitely a nice protocol though!


On Sun, Apr 7, 2019 at 9:01 PM David Ranch <xastir at trinnet.net> wrote:

>
> Hello Tom,
>
> Thanks for working on this.  To be honest, I've never even heard of
> OpenTrac protocol before and I consider myself somewhat knowledgeable on
> APRS.  Guess not!   Anyway, as I've learned from the hobby, the APRS
> protocol is very capable but also buried in a huge amount of legacy
> "debt".  It's shift away from RELAY, it's multiple addendum and what not
> really make it difficult to implement a clean solution.  I don't know
> why OpenTrac didn't catch on but maybe embedded solutions can't support
> both protocols simultaneously on the same frequency?  Maybe there isn't
> enough real benefit over APRS to deploy it more widely?  It also doesn't
> help that TNC vendors like Kantronics, Timewave, etc. have essentially
> abandoned their firmware work.
>
> If something modern like say Direwolf added Opentrac support, would that
> help?  I see that YACC supports it already as well.
>
> --David
> KI6ZHD
>
>
> On 04/07/2019 02:01 PM, Tom Russo wrote:
> > So, I have been going through Xastir very slowly trying to clean up the
> many,
> > many warnings that are emitted by modern compilers.  GCC 8 is especially
> noisy,
> > and warns about many things that are not in fact errors in Xastir, but
> it is
> > also finding a bunch of potential problems that need cleaning up.
> >
> > A bunch of these potential problems are showing up in the various
> functions
> > to handle OpenTrac protocol packets.  Some of these are potential buffer
> > overruns, others are just noise.
> >
> > I discussed with Curt how to clean these up, and we could do one of two
> things:
> >     - work hard to work out exactly how to fix things so the code
> actually works
> >     OR
> >     - just remove OpenTrac support, since it's basically dead
> >
> > The latter is probably the right thing to do, as there are probably very
> few
> > people out there who even remember what OpenTrac was, and even fewer who
> still
> > use it.  It was meant to be a more carefully designed protocol than APRS
> > (which grew more-or-less organically, and randomly), but never really
> > caught on.  I do not believe there are any currently-available trackers
> or
> > software that supports transmitting it.
> >
> > So, is anyone at all using the OpenTrac decoding in Xastir, and would
> they
> > be upset if it were removed?
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Xastir mailing list
> Xastir at lists.xastir.org
> http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
>


-- 
Curt, WE7U        http://we7u.wetnet.net        http://www.sarguydigital.com