C4FM/Fusion, APRS-like data on data port?

[KD7RJC]

Hey All,

I'm looking at a digital mode for both voice and location for simplex operation. Basically the goal is to get everyone in the house licensed so when we go four wheeling, hiking, or camping we can use the location features for meeting-up if we don't caravan-up to the campsite or for safety if the group splits up for activities.

The older APRS mode looks interesting but it requires leaving one channel in APRS mode full time, and it also looks like it's more oriented towards wider data collection for services like aprs.fi. It's not that this is entirely unappealing, but it's not the principal purpose I have.

My question, is any data transmitted out of the DATA port RS-232 pins on a radio like the FTM-200D, FTM-300D, or FTM-500D when operating in C4FM, similarly to the data transmitted out the DATA port on the RS-232 pins when in APRS mode? Ideally I'd like to be able to take that data and bring it in to a phone or tablet with offline maps for locating purposes, rather than being limited to bearing/distance like System Fusion displays on-screen on the radio. And I'd much rather let the radio itself handle TNC functions, with the radio just spitting-out packets by RS-232. I'm not looking for any of the fancier WIRES-X features that the external modules like the HRI-200 offers, I'm not looking for "rooms" or picture reception or using voice from the attached phone or tablet, just the position data.

And of course if another digital mode from another manufacturer does do this, I'd love to hear about it. I've liked Yaesu since I got into ham radio back in the early noughties but I'm by no means a purist.

 

[KD7RJC]

Okay, I tried to find more information generally. Maybe this will help others.

In a nutshell, it appears that Yaesu's digital codec is a semi-walled garden, they don't really go for mapping-out trackers through the C4FM-equivalent to APRS. It is possible to switch from distance-vector information on-screen to lat/long info on-screen, but one doesn't get to just send that information out the serial port or through some kind of of other method without using the rest of their suite like WIRES-X. A shame, it would be really nice if that data could just sent out locally live. Also they seem to mostly orient their system towards repeaters and Internet connectivity, which again isn't what I'm looking to do. The Yaesus can do APRS, but requires putting the radio specifically into an APRS mode. I have not yet looked up doing APRS simply station-to-station, as opposed to using the national APRS simplex frequency. I assume that it's possible even if it isn't something widely discussed, but again issues with complexity make it a bit of an annoyance.

DMR can apparently beacon GPS, but like Yaesu, it doesn't look like radios are really set up to simply offload that information readily to local devices like tablets. It does look like there are some more options for setting up groupings where that sort of information is kept to those who've configured to participate in that grouping, but that doesn't mean that the information remains in a readily exportable state. I will need to look further though, to see if any sort of bluetooth or serial method may exist.

Icom's D-star seems the most versatile in that their Android application directly ties in to maps, but it doesn't look like D-star is really oriented towards simplex phone operation. That doesn't mean that it can't do it, but it looks like again they intended it for repeater operations rather than simplex. And frankly it looks both somewhat complicated to initially get going on D-star, and that in my area it's not very popular. I found what I think is D-star's repeater list and it has a list of stations that it's had contact with per-repeater, and more than half of the repeaters don't have any contacts within the allotted time frame. Some may be offline, not sure.

The VGC-VR-N7500 "headless" radio looks like it's designed around a cell phone or tablet application and it seems to have beaconing made to be easily configured and used heavily with their own on-device maps, but it doesn't actually do digital voice. I haven't yet fully figured out how it does the beaconing, if it's just normal APRS, or if it's sending digital information on the same frequency that one is tuned-to for analog FM operations. There's an HT that looks like it might participate too, but most of the demos show operators connecting their tablets or phones to the Internet in order to increase the feature-rich nature of using the system, and this to me feels somewhat contrary to why I got into amateur radio to begin with, since it is now relying on an infrastructure that I can usually get through other methods anyway.

So I'm admittedly annoyed. I would really like it if a digital codec that was popular had the mapping/tracker/beacon capabilities along with Android integration and strong popularity, but so far that doesn't appear to be where the market is. I frankly don't care about 'rooms' or the like, and if I wanted to use the Internet as my primary thing I'd ... get on a PC or get on a smartphone and get on the Internet.

The Yaesu feature where I can at least view location info along with being fairly popular might well mean that it's the system I end up going with, since I'll get decent simplex station-to-station communication through clear-sounding digital codec that doesn't require full integration with WIRES-X or repeaters, and if I have a tablet with offline maps I should be able to just type in coordinates if I really need them, but I'm admittedly mildly sour on it not just working with good integration.

 

[AK9R]

I have not yet looked up doing APRS simply station-to-station, as opposed to using the national APRS simplex frequency.

You can operate APRS on any frequency that packet is allowed to operate on. There's no restriction to only do it on the "national APRS frequency". Any APRS radio can decode APRS beacons directly from another APRS radio.

 

[ko6jw_2]

Yaesu radios with GPS built in will automatically send this information in C4FM mode. This is not the same as APRS in the sense that it is imbedded in the digital information being transmitted and does not require a separate frequency. Yaesu radios with GPS can also beacon to APRS digipeaters by setting the appropriate menu items on a dual band radio. Used with a conventional APRS system which is connected to the internet they will show up on systems like APRS.fi. The data port on my FT5 can be connected to an external GPS receiver for receiving only. I don't think that the data can go the other way.

As a practical matter, if you are out in the back country away from a digipeater you won't be able to beacon your position with APRS and have it tracked anyway. Although the C4FM information is not plotted on a map, you can receive it if you are in range of another unit. Also, there will be some battery advantage since you will not be beaconing as you would with APRS. You can always resort to old tech and carry a topo map to locate other stations or input position data on Gaia GPS which can work offline.

By the way Yaesu has an advanced APRS manual which can be downloaded for FT5 on the website. Also other models I think.

If anyone has figured out a way to get position data and interface it to a smartphone or tablet I'd like to hear about it.

I think that the original poster has basically got all this under control but I agree with him that the Yaesu radio could be more useful in this regard.

 

[KD7RJC]

Thanks to both of you.

One thing I haven't yet figured out is if I enable traditional APRS as a protocol on another frequency, if I can use the radio for phone by just keying-up, and likewise if I use APRS that way, if I can use tone to hear FM/phone but not have to listen to APRS modulation through the speaker. I'll have to look up the advanced manual to see if it has enough information.

It's funny, on Youtube there are literally dozens of videos on setting up traditional APRS on 144.390MHz and beaconing, but they're all covering the exact same thing. No one talks about quasi-private use of APRS on other frequencies, or the weird still-listed OSCAR reservation that straddles the de-facto APRS standard frequency, or how it might work off of 144.390 if one also wants to use phone on FM. There's more information on proprietary GMRS data for GPS than there is for this topic on the amateur service.

 

[AK9R]

As I previously stated, you can use APRS on any frequency where that modulation type is allowed.

You can use the same frequency for APRS and voice. In fact, that's why the Mic-E encoding was developed for APRS. The thinking was that APRS and voice would be transmitted on the same frequency and the APRS beacons would be sent when the microphone PTT was released. Mic-E encoding reduces the size of the normal APRS position report so that it can be transmitted in a brief data burst. I'm not aware of any radios that were produced with this feature of "send an APRS position report upon release of PTT". At one time, TAPR produced Mic-E encoders that could be added to radios modified to accept the encoder.

You can set up pretty much any 2m amateur radio produced in the past 20 years to both encode and decode a CTCSS tone. However, in the scheme that you seem to be suggesting where voice and APRS data are transmitted on the same frequency using the same radio, both voice and APRS would be sent with the same tone. The result would be that radios set to decode that tone would also open their squelch for the APRS data burst. I'm not aware of any radios that can be set up to transmit voice and APRS data on the same frequencies using different CTCSS tones.

As for the "OSCAR reservations", I'm not sure what's weird about them. There are still amateur satellites being used. However, those "reservations" are gentlemen's agreements that I don't believe are codified in the FCC's rules. I don't recommend intentionally annoying the satellite ops, but I do recommend following the rules.

 

[KB3KBR]

Not sure about the mentioned radios as I only have the 350, 400 mobiles, and vx-8 and ft1d portables. With the mobiles you can set the bottom/side band as aprs and run voice on the other side, they also have different memory banks on each side so your top/left side can be voice with tone and run aprs on the other side with no tone. As Bob stated you can run aprs on any frequency. If you don't care to be digipeated or gated to the internet. Just be aware that if you are rxing voice on a separate 2m freq from the aprs freq that if your radio beacons it will mute the voice channel. If you run split band ie voice on 440 and aprs on 2m you will be fine as they have separate receivers.

Depending on the distance between your members of the group and the local infrastructure it may be better to stay on the Nat Freq to be digi'd and get a larger distance.

The portables can mute the aprs beacons but can not transmit a tone with them. But again you can set a tone on the voice side to mute the beacons.

 

[KD7RJC]

I think I'm going to go with the Yaesus. I had an opportunity to check out both the Icom ID-5100 and the Yaesu offerings, and I think that even without being able to directly offload the data like on the Icom, the Yaesus are going to be the easiest to live with for daily use and will offer more potential if I did decide to get in to other uses for digital. Plus Yaesu digital-capable radios seem to come up on craigslist and offerup more often than digital-capable Icoms do, so if I want to pick up additional radios I'm probably better off going with Yaesu. I had also considered the IC-7100 but on reviewing the features, it lacks GPS and mapping out to the application, if Icom's website is accurate. The 7100 would have been interesting for the extra bands but if it lacks native GPS. There are additions to put GPS capability into it but they aren't along the lines of an internal board,they're an entire external device that connects via RS-232.

Plus admittedly I like the knobs and buttons.

 

[AK9R]

Maybe Yaesu digital-capable radios appear on the used market because people buy them and then find that the radios don't meet their expectations or the radios don't suit their needs. I've owned many Yaesu handhelds since 1989. I find the user interface to be often perplexing and sometimes frustrating. I also own a few Yaesu mobile radios. Sadly, the UX on their mobiles is also perplexing and frustrating. As for Yaesu's digital features, there's a lot of potential in these radios for passing data, but all Yaesu gives us is the ability to see the other station's location and the ability to pass low-resolution images.

Correct, the Icom IC-7100 does not have an internal GPS receiver. I suspect that Icom left that out because they don't expect that the bulk of the purchasers will use the radio while mobile. True, Icom does not have a GPS receiver accessory, but a GPS "puck" receiver and a cable like the Byonics GPAIP will get GPS data into the radio. Many IC-7100 users recognize that the radio is getting a bit "long in the tooth" and are hopeful that Icom will update the IC-7100 with a color display and a few other features.

I have not experimented with this (so many toys, so little time), but there's an application called D-RATS will let you use the "DV Data" feature of D-STAR to pass text messages, small files, and view maps of received position reports. On the IC-7100, you can configure the radio to pass the lat/lon received in D-STAR transmissions to a PC using the USB interface. Here's a link to a "getting started" document for D-RATS:
http://www.dstarinfo.com/Data/Sites/1/media/getting-started-with-d-rats-(ga).pdf The document doesn't talk about the mapping feature, but I found some discussions of it in the D-RATS groups.io group: d-rats groups.io Group

 

[16b]

I realize you're looking for an all-in-one solution that does voice and position reporting in a single radio, but IMO going with separate devices for data/position reporting and voice would be a better approach. APRS is a simple, solid system with wide software and hardware support. It does exactly what you need (w/r/t position reporting aspect), and as others have mentioned you can run it on any frequency you want. Hardware is relatively inexpensive. A couple of options off the top of my head:

• All-in-one APRS tracker like this: NEW AVRT5 APRS VHF with GPS/Bluetooth/Thermometer/TF Card Support APRSdroid | eBay. This device combines a VHF radio, GPS receiver, and TNC with Bluetooth into one package. You can connect to the TNC with an Android phone via Bluetooth and run APRSDroid with offline maps and see positions of other stations completely off-grid. If there is anyone in the group who doesn't want to view the map on their phone, the tracker functions just fine without a smartphone connection. Disclaimer: while I do own one of these trackers (or at least a similar one), I have never used the bluetooth smartphone connection, so I can't vouch for how well that part works.
• Mobilinkd Bluetooth TNC: Mobilinkd | Highly mobile packet radio. This device does everything the above all-in-one tracker does except for the VHF radio part; you have to supply your own. Can be a cheap Baofeng or just about any other portable radio with the right cable. Offers a bit more flexibility, and the Mobilinkd TNC is a very nice product. I have an earlier version of the one shown on the site.

I realize when you're out hiking you don't want to carry any more weight than necessary. But I don't see any of the current digital voice solutions getting you anywhere close to the functionality that you would get from a dedicated APRS setup. Of course you also get the nice side benefit of being able to use whatever you want for voice communications.