Anyone using APRS?

[adventureduo]

We would like to setup APRS in our rig in case something happened to us .. our family/friends will know where we are.

Went to the ham radio outlet today to see what they could do for me my setup (Yaesu 2800m and Baja540c)... and it appeared it was going to be about $300 to do what i wanted. I would need to get a complete kit that included a GPS antenna because they couldn't figure out how to setup a cable for my GPS.

Does anyone know of a way to connect a Ham transmitter to a Lowrance unit? I have the big marine plugs on the back.

Anyone use Byonics stuff? Tinkpak?

Any insight on this project would be greatly appreciated. Im just learning about it.. today is day 1 for me.

[DaveInDenver]

Wouldn't a Kantronics MT1200G do what you need? That's probably the $300 option you mentioned, right? Otherwise you could use any TNC, but then you need a laptop and that interfaces the GPS to the TNC. I thought the MT1200G did all the GPS interfacing to the radio.

[adventureduo]

yep thats the unit they wanted me to buy... $276 bucks with it's own antenna. They didnt have one at the store.. 1 left in San Diego store in the USA. I dont know i didn't think it was gonna be that much $$.

[DaveInDenver]

yep thats the unit they wanted me to buy... $276 bucks with it's own antenna. They didnt have one at the store.. 1 left in San Diego store in the USA. I dont know i didn't think it was gonna be that much $$.

If you have the GPS->laptop part handled, then just a regular old TNC would be less, probably about $200 or so. This is the part that packetizes the data from the laptop for transmission on the radio. It basically plugs into mic plug and speaker output for the RX/TX. The Kantronics unit looked cool because it integrated a GPS chipset into the box.

[adventureduo]

Dave, i think i have decided to pass for the following reason..

My buddy just said his dad was just traveling through Texas about a hour ago and dropped off the tracking because he couldnt hit a digi-repeater. There simply weren't any in his general area. This kind of defeats the purpose in my eyes.

I think i will go with the Spot Satellite messenger. I want the unit to work anywhere, anytime. http://www.findmespot.com/

[ntsqd]

As a point of interest, doesn't your 540 output NEMA (?) sentences? I know some do (my 3000MT does), but where you go from there is beyond me.

[Angel?]

Does anyone know of a way to connect a Ham transmitter to a Lowrance unit? I have the big marine plugs on the back.

I just sorted this out today in my 540c / ham radio install.

The 540c GPS unit has a "Power/Data" cable (terminates in a blue connector which plugs into the blue "Power/Data Socket "on the back of unit) that has a [sub]cable labled as "Data cable" [page 19 of the manual]. The data cable is NMEA 0183 compliant, and has 4 wires to communicate with another NMEA 0183 compliant device, such as a TNC (or a ham radio that has a built-in TNC). The wires are orange data into the 540c, Yellow data out of the 540c, bare or "shield" common ground, and blue unused [page 18 of the manual]. You will need to splice the three wires to the corresponding wires connected to the TNC.

The use of APRS between a team on the trail would be wicked cool, as you can transmit your position and others could see your poisition on their unit, as well as vice versa. Of course, that would require those other units to use APRS also.

Right now, I am working to sort out if the 540c's display of other mobile unit positions can "travel" on the map, vs. being displayed as point-in-time waypoints.

[BrianTN]

Not trying to bring up an old thread, but I thought it would be a benefit to others if I kept another APRS question here.

My question pertains to setting up a Yaesu 857 with my MacBook Air for APRS. My goal is for a clean setup where I can easily remove my computer. The components I'm looking at are these:

GPS puck: Globalsat MR350P
Computer: 11" MacBook Air running Parallels with Overland Navigator (hopefully)
TNC: OpenTracker+
Radio: Yaesu 857d
Antenna: Yaesu ATAS 120

Can I connect the TNC and GPS puck to my computer via bluetooth? I was looking at Firefly bluetooth serial adapter to connect the TNC and computer.

I haven't found a PS/2 to bluetooth adapter for the GPS puck, so I was going to use this PS/2 to USB connector then this USB to bluetooth connector.

Haven't found a ready made cable to connect the TNC and radio yet.

Does the 857 allow for APRS on a sub band, with ability to interrupt if I use the radio for voice?

[craig]

Brian,

I can't help with all of that hardware, but I did do something similar with a TT4 and some custom wiring for that GPS. I wrote it up on my blog . Since I wrote that article, I've decided to add a 12vdc to 5vdc ruggedized hard mount power supply and a serial to bluetooth adapter to the system. This will provide me with 100% bluetooth connectivity for both the GPS input and the APRS input/output (GPS and APRS are actually the same COM port in my setup). This whole approach is much more complicated to setup, but will remove all visible wires except 1 power cord to the tablet.

Craig

[h2005]

http://www.delorme.com/inreach/