[drats_users] Possible Who Is Online feature request

[Dan Smith]

> 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.

Right, I understand the principle :)

I'm saying that it's difficult to know where it starts and stops, and
if the start/end markers get blown, then it's hard to calculate the
error rate.  If you assume a quiet channel and a coordinated "I hit
receive, now you hit send" sort of scenario, then that helps.  It's
still kinda ugly.

The other thing I can do is have the new echo ping try to inspect
received echo packets even if the checksum fails (assuming the
packetization markers survive) and calculate the error rate of the
contents...  It would require some layering violations in my current
stack though... :)

> 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.

But, if you just care about how many were received intact, then it's
exactly like a ping.  If my "connectivity test" has the ability to
send, say, 10 packets of very small size (32 bytes perhaps) and show
you how many come back, is that good enough?

> I wish they'd publish how to get real-time data from the
> rigs... like the IC91/92 programming software does.

Well, it's not that hard to decode and there are some partial
references around.  CHIRP implements just the bits of it necessary to
read/write memory locations.

> 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?

Well, on a 91/92 you could, yes, but it would get ugly and wouldn't be
fast enough to really do carrier-sense in the way that would be
helpful for multiple access.  The radio does that itself, where it
won't transmit when the busy indicator is lit.  Even still, it isn't
fast enough and regularly steps on other stations.  The repeater makes
it worse because there's 2 seconds of delay at times and you can't
hear the other stations.  So you think the channel is free for a
second and start transmitting, but another station has already been
keyed for a while.  It's hard :)

> 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.

The 880 and 80 will not have rig control and none of the other mobiles
have it.  Only the 91, 92, and ID-1.

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

Ah, okay, that's part of what I have planned.

> 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!!)...

Yep, I really want to do something like this.  Since you can push and
pull remotely, you can just use a regular D-RATS instance as a
file/message server as-is.  We've done that during drills and training
and it works well.

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