[drats_users] Possible Who Is Online feature request

[Nate Duehr]

On Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:55:03 -0700, "Dan Smith" <dsmith at danplanet.com>
said:
> > I agree.  Bad idea.  Wasn't thinking about lots of stations.
> 
> I try to anticipate such things since I'm the guy that the admins
> would (unfairly, IMHO) hold accountable for such a thing :)
> 
> > I was watching that with interest, but I'd be more interested not in
> > something that changes packet size, but that shows an
> > "instantaneous" view of error rate.
> 
> Yeah, that's something the radio needs to provide, I think.  Unless I
> add actual error correction to the packets (as opposed to just a
> checksum) I can't really determine what the bit error rate is.  Adding
> ECC to the packets would make it significantly slower when your
> connection is good. 

Doesn't have to be that tricky.  You could send any known message (known
to both sides, hard-coded into the app) and determine whether or not
it's being received correctly at the far-end.

Example:  Send ten lines that say... 

"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog."

When the other end gets: 

"The qwecbniojn bra1136 fox jumped over the Y^$#A dog."  

The signal just ain't good enough for D-RATS use!  (GRIN!)

(Okay, the example is silly, a bit pattern or something else could be
"smarter", but you get the idea.  As long as both ends know what the
TEST message is SUPPOSED to be, the stronger station can send back
"Received 1/10 test patterns."  Or "Received 10/10 test patterns."  Etc.

No need to get fancy.  (GRIN!)

> Yes, that's the typical case.  Your repeater might be good enough that
> you really do fall off that cliff everyone loves to show in their
> powerpoint slides.  When you're on simplex with less impressive
> antennas, a tree swaying in the wind (or something) can put you in a
> much more middle-of the road situation, signal-wise.

True.  Actually, the repeater's moving to a shared receive antenna
system this summer and I'd LOVE to figure out a way to "benchmark" it
with data prior to the change.  D-RATS beacons with a known message in
them, along with GPS coordinates to "plot" the coverage, and then drive
the same routes again after the changes, and since Data isn't error
corrected... it should be EASY to tell if the coverage got better or
worse.  

Call it the: "Can you hear me now?" feature.  LOL!

> Yep, this is a good idea, and one I used a lot in the early days to
> figure out the banned characters and characteristics for each radio.

Banned characters, eh?  Yeah, I should'a known... haha.

I wish they'd publish how to get real-time data from the rigs... like
the IC91/92 programming software does.  I suppose there's no way to
"interleave" using the serial port for data to be transmitted and also
have it tell you thinks like "rig is keyed" at the same time, though? 
Wonder if that'll be possible on the ID-880 or the HT coming out this
summer?  I'm sure the ID-800H is too dumb to do it, since you have to go
through the speaker jack for programming and it's done in an "offline"
state.  But the HT's... maybe there's possibilities there.

> Sending A-ZA-Z-AZ a few times would let you check how much of it is
> getting killed.  The problem is, it's the kind of thing you'd have to
> coordinate over voice with the other side, and you'd need a clear
> channel (clear of incidental GPS traffic too) to really do it well,
> given no reliable packetization mechanism.

It's still quiet enough around here, that shouldn't be much of a
problem.  :-)

> Yep, there's a lot I'd like to be able to do on the gateway, but I
> need some cooperation from the current landlords there :)

Or the release of the ever-promised (and I'm not complaining about the
timeframe) OpenGateway project.  :-)

> You can, of course, use the broadcast-text function in D-RATS and set
> your radio to hit the echo module.  You have to eye-parse and
> eye-calculate the error rate, but sometimes the visual is more telling
> than a number :)

Hmmm... interesting idea.

> Yep, another thing I've thought about adding.  I have some plans to
> implement a part of it (the unintelligent part) actually.  However,
> the automatic path discovery part is not only hard, but it's also
> something that can seriously interfere with voice traffic, especially
> when I can't tell that there's voice traffic happening from the other
> side of the radio.

Automatic?  I was just talking about manually forced routes...  

> So many people want to use it on a voice repeater, I hesitate to give
> it a mind of its own at times for fear of the blacklash :)

Heh heh.  

I'm starting to think that a simplex rig up on the mountain with D-RATS
in some kind of "hub" mode, or call it "king of the mountain" mode...
hahah... and remote control software for that PC, might be interesting. 
Something ultra stable (hmm, would the Linux version of D-RATS run
directly on the Gateway machine... hmm, of course it would!!)...

Use it for file transfers as a repository, or maybe always "digipeat"
through it if the routing thing gets done...  Hmm.  Might be far more
useful than struggling with sending files direct between HT users that
are barely hitting the repeater.  All sorts of fun possibilities there. 
And it'd un-tie-up the voice repeater, and it'd "see" a lot of territory
around here... probably don't have room in the cabinet up there, nor a
good way to share an antenna, though... hmm.  Need to think about
"usefulness" vs. "pain in the assed-ness" on that one.  Kinda expensive
use of a rig, too... hmmmmm.

Nate WY0X
--
  Nate Duehr
  nate at natetech.com