Don’t know if it’s US only - but wouldn’t this allow Outernet users across the globe to communicate with each other using the APRS feed as a BBS? I understand that there are licencing issues and the message has to enter or exit as RF, but would this not be a case of the end user sending the message to the Outernet ID?
I am sure that someone could set up their own server, or if international sms rates were cheap enough, move away from APRS into just periodically sending all received messages as a filecast?
What I’m thinking is that anyone with even a basic mobile, and an Outernet receiver would be able to become part of a larger community.
On reflection, a bespoke solution might be better than APRS as I’m not shure they’d appreciate the chatter pollution - it shouldn’t be too hard to link something like Twilio for SMS receiving to a python script running on a Linux box to tie the messages together into a single package - presumably including some basic authorisation and sign-up procedure.
I wonder how many SMSs one can get into a 10kb zip file?
The problem would be that it is “public” and if access is “easy” you would be spammers and obscenities there very quickly!
The APRS system is “safe” to push though in “real time” as it is only accessible by licensed operators who value their licenses!!
I take the point, one could verify phone numbers and have a profanity filter though. Is APRS strictly safe though, couldn’t someone impersonate someone else? I’m just thinking about a way of adding an extra service.
It is, of course possible in APRS but not likely.
Everything on the back bone is visible ( like here https://aprs.fi ) The naughty person would need to know how to do it too. A profanity filter would mean that it can’t be “real time”, and adding a filter would be unnecessary, and 99% sure it will block stuff it should not e.g. They had to move a piece of internet infrastructure from the town of Scunthorpe in England because when that word appeared in email headers it was always blocked by the filters…
Ah, the Scunthorpe problem. As I say I’m just trying to think of a way to add extra utility.
Realtime is not going to be an issue anyway - I’d expect that any system created would batch posts up and then send them out as a zip file, at regular intervals, as they do with APRS on Outernet now.
I am not 100% sure that the posts are “batched” now… The APRS files arrive between the other files, and if the file that is being transmitted at the time has a lower priority then it send the APRS file straight away.
I have experimented with messages with the sent time in the text, and sometimes the message is in the outernet less than 2 minutes after I sent it…
You may see it as “batched” as the “lumps” of activity that occur when the ISS goes over a highly populated area means there is a burst of activity (outernet is monitoring ISS activity from the backbone) Also when there is no other activity it may see only my beacon that is sent regularly once an hour via HF
Note that I don’t know for sure that it isn’t batched, and currently I can’t see the outernet downloads as my receiver has gone offline ( I am remote from it ) @syed may be able to tell us if it is batched or not though.
e.g. They had to move a piece of internet infrastructure from the town of Scunthorpe in England because when that word appeared in email headers it was always blocked by the filters…