Search Wikipedia via APRS?

Great! Sorry for not wording the original post more clearly…

I’ll have a look at the grep/ sed stuff to get a search term turned into a html file…

Think I’ve just had an idea …

In certain countries the use of “tactical” callsigns is authorised. Here in the US you will commonly hear hams participating in an ARES event using such calls. “Medical, this is Mile Post 5. Please send an ambulance to my location.” “Mile Post 5, this is Medical. It’s on its way. ETA 3 minutes. Medical out. K9ABC.” “Thanks Medical. Mile Post 5 out. K9XYZ”

Per the US licences rules stations are only required to identify at the end of and every 10 minutes during a conversation. So you see how the callsigns were left off the communication until it was over?

If Syed were to start a “club” station at the office and float an APRS station under it’s callsign with the tactical call of OUTNET RF based hams would be legally able to send APRS requests to him without falling foul of the Broadcast rule.

From a technical perspective, it does not have to be anything fancy or even connected to Outernet proper at all. the rest of the APRS network would handle the connection to and deliver the message just in the same way it has been doing.

I had better go and lie down now. I’ve come over all peelywalley :slight_smile:

1 Like

I have a question about this approach, but before getting into the broadcast-issue (does it even apply in this case), am I not forbidden from setting up an APRS station, since I have a pecuniary interest in the success of OUTNET?

1 Like

Read this sentence from the WINLINK FAQ carefully

WINLINK

Quote"
Message Content
There is no privacy over amateur radio. Anyone who is properly equipped can read messages handled by Winlink.

Are you ANYONE, because if you are anyone I assume the same rules apply to RECEIVING APRS messages.

I don’t see why it’s necessary. People could just send messages to Syed at his callsign?

[Edit - can now see it’s better if sent to a third party, just to avoid any possible implication of this being for-profit]

Don’t get me wrong–I’m all for this. I just want to make sure that I’m on the right side of the amateur radio regs:

Hi @Syed

Sorry my comment was aimed at Marks suggestion of setting up a tactical callsign.

For the sake of argument let’s assume you don’t have a ham licence.

Could you go to Messages of OUTNET – aprs.fi - live APRS map search Wikipedia for the contents of one of the messages eg aaaaaaa and broadcast the resultant Wikipedia page (if any) on your Outernet service?

It seems like you don’t need a radio licence to do that?

It seems entirely incidental that you happen to have a ham licence, as you don’t need it to search APRS messages that have been posted to the internet, or to send Wikipeda pages over your service.

If you were sending APRS messages that would be a different question, but getting information from the internet and using it to construct Wikipedia search queries doesn’t seem to require any kind of licence. Therefore the terms of any ham licence don’t enter the equation.

There’s a fine line here between “amateur” and “professional”. SInce Outernet is a professional outfit it too is prevented from using ham radio. In turn Syed would likely loose his ticket.

[quote]Could you go to Messages of OUTNET – aprs.fi – live APRS map search Wikipedia for the contents of one of the messages eg aaaaaaa and broadcast the resultant Wikipedia page (if any) on your Outernet service?

It seems like you don’t need a radio licence to do that?[/quote]

Sam’s correct. If you simply poll available Internet services for your results then you don’t need a licence at all.

That still leaves the issue of the RF based “broadcast” APRS packets.

1 Like

But the recipient of the message is irrelevant in some ways,

2016-11-29 20:27:21 GMT: LA1HSA-12>LA3HQ: wiki en some-search-term
2016-11-29 20:27:23 GMT: G3RTD>G4FKH: wiki en some-search-term

Would be functionally equivalent to a script that’s just using whatever text appears after ‘wiki language-code’

So it’s just a generic $free offer to return Wikipedia results for APRS strings that contain ‘wiki en/fr/es etc as a prefix’

No the recipient is NOT irrelevant. The rules are the rules. The “payload” is usually not the issue.

Your packet would would look like this …

2016-11-29 20:27:21 GMT: G7LTT-12>OUTNET: Your wiki payload here

Who is OUTNET? What callsign is that?

The message does need some arbitrary recipient, but it doesn’t have to be Syed or anyone connected with Outernet, that is my point.

I’m not sure who did the Outnet thing, I think It may have been Bob Bruninga, APRS OUTNET Concept

So are you saying the rules prohibit sending a message with the text ‘wiki’ in it? I’m still unclear which rule you think we’re breaking here?

Sam, Your situation with requesting Wikipedia articles by APRS is EXACTLY the same as Ham radio operators at sea who send a APRS message or a WINLINK Email message to request a weather Grib file. Some of the grib fie providers are commercial entities.

Ham radio radio sailors requesting gribs would be the same situation for APRS Wikipedia requests.

The second issue is if Outernet “scrapes” the APRS message data from a physical APRS server in Georgaphical USA then British Ham radio rules may not apply.

1 Like

Thanks @Seasalt

I’ve yet to hear a convincing argument this is not allowed.

On ham radio
Can a ham user ask ‘what’s the population of Rio’ to another ham user - yes this is allowed
Can a ham user send a APRS packet saying ‘what’s the population of Rio?’ to another ham user - yes this is allowed
Can a ham user send a APRS packet saying ‘what’s the population of Rio?’ to ‘outnet’ a channel set up by another ham user - yes this is allowed
Can a ham user send a APRS packet saying ‘wiki en population of Rio’ to another ham user or ‘outnet’- yes this is allowed. Neither the sender nor the recipient has any pecuniary interest in this message.

On the internet
Can Outernet use the public data on Messages of OUTNET – aprs.fi - live APRS map and use it to search Wikipedia - yes this is allowed, and does not require a ham radio licence.

On Outernet
Can Outernet send Wikipedia data over their non-ham service - yes this is allowed, and does not require a ham radio licence.

NO this is NOT allowed.

Communications have to be from one ham to another. There is no such callsign as OUTNET. There is also no such tactical callsign as OUTNET. Therefore this request becomes both a broadcast and a communication with an unlicensed station.

1 Like

So these users are already breaking the rules?

It seems it would be useful if someone did just set this up as a tactical channel. I now understand your previous comment…

Martin_Nile
3m

WxBot is an APRS auto responder which provides weather forecasts and other information in response to APRS messages. I have updated the program to support sending the reply to the Outernet APRS feed.

We need to get Martin in this discussion about Wikipedia searches over Aprs.

1 Like

When I put OUTNET in APRSdroid as the address, that’s where my message goes.

Yep. 2 of those stations would be Seasalt and myself :slight_smile:

And yes, I think that floating a tactical call that’s not at all physically connected to Outernet itself might be the way around this. For the NYC Marathon we loaded a bunch of APRS trackers onto the buses that delivered runners from the Library on 5th Ave to Fort Wadsworth . The trackers had tactical callsigns like “BUS1” etc. We were able to add a comment in the beacon to reveal the actual call of the devices used eg:

BUS1>APRS:@164428h4029.84N/10427.34WO234/038/A=092748
BUS1>BEACON:WC2OEM NYC Marathon Bus Tracker #1

1 Like

Yes it does. There is no call sign checking. How could there be? There are over 2.5 million hams the world over. How would APRSDroid know if the ham with the funny callsign was not really a ham?

1 Like

Callsign:
Clear
< previous
Show:

Found over 50 packets. 6638 seconds between packets on average during 338537 seconds. Lookup took 0.011 seconds.

APRS messages are stored for 14 days. It is possible to search using wildcards (*?) after a prefix.
2016-11-26 10:32:03 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test3 02.16 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 10:48:03 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test3 02.16 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 11:47:14 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test4 03.46 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 11:48:44 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test4 03.46 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 11:50:45 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test4 03.46 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 11:54:45 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test4 03.46 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 12:02:45 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test4 03.46 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 12:18:46 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test4 03.46 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 14:08:53 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test5 06.08 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 14:10:23 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test5 06.08 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 14:12:24 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test5 06.08 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 14:16:23 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test5 06.08 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 14:24:23 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test5 06.08 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 14:40:23 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test5 06.08 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 15:07:11 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test6 07.08 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 15:08:42 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test6 07.08 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 15:10:41 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test6 07.08 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 16:10:55 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test6 07.08 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 16:10:56 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test7 08.08 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 16:12:26 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test7 08.08 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 16:14:31 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test7 08.08 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 16:20:23 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test7 08.08 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 16:29:28 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test7 08.08 GMT Syed
2016-11-26 16:46:12 PHT: KW4QB-5>OUTNET: Outernet test7 08.08 GMT Syed
2016-11-27 09:19:29 PHT: NI2O-5>OUTNET: 20161122-1707est
2016-11-27 09:19:29 PHT: NI2O-5>OUTNET: Hello Outernet gang!
2016-11-27 09:19:29 PHT: NI2O-5>OUTNET: aaaaaa
2016-11-27 09:20:59 PHT: NI2O-5>OUTNET: 20161122-1707est
2016-11-27 09:20:59 PHT: NI2O-5>OUTNET: Hello Outernet gang!
2016-11-27 09:20:59 PHT: NI2O-5>OUTNET: aaaaaa
2016-11-27 09:22:59 PHT: NI2O-5>OUTNET: aaaaaa
2016-11-27 09:22:59 PHT: NI2O-5>OUTNET: 20161122-1707est
2016-11-27 09:22:59 PHT: NI2O-5>OUTNET: Hello Outernet gang!
2016-11-27 09:26:59 PHT: NI2O-5>OUTNET: aaaaaa
2016-11-27 09:26:59 PHT: NI2O-5>OUTNET: 20161122-1707est
2016-11-27 09:26:59 PHT: NI2O-5>OUTNET: Hello Outernet gang!
2016-11-27 09:34:59 PHT: NI2O-5>OUTNET: Hello Outernet gang!
2016-11-27 09:34:59 PHT: NI2O-5>OUTNET: 20161122-1707est
2016-11-27 09:34:59 PHT: NI2O-5>OUTNET: aaaaaa
2016-11-27 09:50:59 PHT: NI2O-5>OUTNET: Hello Outernet gang!
2016-11-27 09:50:59 PHT: NI2O-5>OUTNET: 20161122-1707est
2016-11-27 09:50:59 PHT: NI2O-5>OUTNET: aaaaaa
2016-11-27 10:11:51 PHT: NI2O-5>OUTNET: Another test
2016-11-29 01:59:51 PHT: KU7PDX-1>OUTNET: Hello from windy outer space!
2016-11-29 02:01:22 PHT: KU7PDX-1>OUTNET: Hello from windy outer space!
2016-11-29 02:03:22 PHT: KU7PDX-1>OUTNET: Hello from windy outer space!
2016-11-29 02:07:23 PHT: KU7PDX-1>OUTNET: Hello from windy outer space!
2016-11-29 02:15:23 PHT: KU7PDX-1>OUTNET: Hello from windy outer space!
2016-11-30 07:56:49 PHT: WXBOT>OUTNET: Ashland OR. Wednesday,Rain Likely 70% High 45F
2016-11-30 08:34:20 PHT: WXBOT>OUTNET: Mount Shasta CA. Friday,Sunny High 44F