[drats_users] Possible Who Is Online feature request

[Dan Smith]

> Currently, I believe, lists such as the Stations list are only
> populated when stations send out a QST beacon, when a Chat message
> is sent, or they are specifically pinged across D-RATS.

Actually, it's whenever a packet from that station goes over the
wire.  So, if you come online during a file transfer between two other
stations, even those packets will add the station to your list.

> How about a QRZ type feature, that when activated by a user, would
> broadcast a common message causing each D-RATS station to respond,
> thus building up everyone's Stations list that is currently
> monitoring the frequency, Ratflector, etc.

Yep, as you indicated, pinging CQCQCQ will cause everyone to respond.
Each station will (in the case of a CQ ping) wait a random number of
seconds between 0 and 10 before replying to avoid stepping on each
other on RF.

> Alternately having callsigns colour coded, or some form of symbol
> displayed, you could show whether or not stations are available to
> Chat (similar to programs such as Skype, etc).

Are you suggesting some sort of gratuitous status broadcast by each
station?  I'd like to avoid adding more periodic transmissions in
favor of intelligent as-needed ones as I think they're more courteous
to voice users and more frugal with the bandwidth.

I can consider adding a bit of status information to the ping response
so that you can ping CQ (or a specific station) to get an updated
status message.

-- 
Dan Smith
dsmith#danplanet.com, s/#/@/
www.danplanet.com
KK7DS