Re: Announcing Trackulator, free open source web based APRS client

[Jeff Laughlin <jeff.laughlin@gmail.com>]

Hi Jim,

It's still in alpha, there's a lot of work yet to be done and a lot
functionality still missing. Eventually I hope it becomes at least as
good as, if not better than findu.com. I operate under the credo of
"release early, release often".

I went with PostgreSQL because
1) It's an extremely reliable and feature rich heavyweight multiuser
RDBMS system that takes care of problems like concurrency for me so I
don't have to and offers room for future growth.
2) SQL in general will give us a lot of flexability in the types of
queries we can perform against the database.
3) PostgreSQL has the PostGIS extension which adds data types, index
functions, and operators for complex geometric and geographic
operations. For example, with PostGIS it would be trivial to get a set
of all APRS stations within any polygon such as a range report, NWS
watchbox, or any other geographic area that can be described as a
polygon with any number of points.
4) Why NOT use SQL? It's the standard database query language. If
PostgreSQL is too onerous you could try to make it go with SQLite or
something.

On 8/24/05, James Washer <washer@trlp.com> wrote:
> When I went to your website and entered a call, I got a simple map of the current location. Perhaps I'm missing something, or there's more funcionality to be added later.. but why all the trouble of an SQL database, if we are only going to look at the last posit?
> 
>  - jim
> 
> On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 22:25:05 -0400
> Jeff Laughlin <jeff.laughlin@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > http://www.trackulator.com/
> >
> > Try it out at: http://www.trackulator.com/tracku.cgi
> > % is the wildcard although it currently will only use the first callsign found.
> >
> > Get it from https://sourceforge.net/projects/trackulator/
> >
> > Trackulator depends on Ham::APRS::Parser, get it from
> > http://sourceforge.net/projects/ham-aprs-parser/
> >
> > A few technical notes
> > I had to pare down the schema quite a bit, it had some nice features
> > in it originally but it was putting way too much load on my server.
> > Granted I'm taking a full APRS-IS stream, if you use a filter it will
> > be a lot less data. If you hook it up to your TNC and just use it on
> > your local APRS net the load on your computer should be negligible.
> >
> > I'm planning to incorporate PostGIS, I just haven't got around to it yet.
> >
> > Ham::APRS::Parser still needs some work, it's pretty ornery when it
> > comes to malformed APRS packets, or APRS formats that it's not yet
> > familiar with. I have to wrap calls to it in eval{} in case it dies.
> >
> > There's still quite a bit of functionality missing before Trackulator
> > will be competitive with findu.com but we can get there. The nice
> > thing about Trackulator is that if you wish you can hook it up to your
> > TNC and just use it to monitor your local APRS traffic, and query it
> > however you like using raw SQL if you want. Plus it's free, open
> > source, yadda yadda.
> >
> > 73 and enjoy de n1ywb
> >
> >
> > >From README.txt
> >
> > ===================================
> >
> > Trackulator v0.02
> > (C) 2005 Jeff Laughlin, jeff.laughlin@gmail.com
> > http://www.trackulator.com
> >
> > Trackulator aims to be a free open source APRS web client.
> >
> > THIS IS ALPHA QUALITY SOFTWARE! It's buggy and I know it. Please send patches,
> > not bug reports.
> >
> > Requirements
> >  * PostgreSQL
> >  * Perl
> >  * Ham::APRS::Parser.pm (Get from http://aprs.n1ywb.com)
> >  * DBI.pm
> >  * DBD::Pg.pm
> >  * CGI.pm
> >  * Internet connection (For google maps)
> >  * aprsistest.pl (In the Ham::APRS::Parser tarball)
> >
> > There are three main parts
> >  * trackud.pl
> >  * tracku.cgi
> >  * schema.sql
> >
> > trackud.pl is the Trackulator daemon. It reads raw APRS packets on stdin, calls
> > Ham::APRS::Parser to parse them, the inserts the bits into the PostgreSQL
> > database.
> >
> > tracku.cgi is the front end. It queries the database and maps stuff using google
> > maps.
> >
> > schema.sql defines the trackulator postgresql backend.
> >
> > To use Trackulator, first you need a working PostgreSQL installation. Then run
> >         psql -f schema.sql
> > to import the Trackulator schema into your postgresql database. If you have
> > problems with this command, please read the PostgreSQL documentation in it's
> > entirety and check your postgresql setup thoroughly before contacting me.
> >
> > Then start the trackulator daemon. In order to get the full APRS-IS feed into
> > the database, use this command
> >         perl aprsistest.pl | perl -I . trackud.pl
> > The -I tells perl where to look for the Ham/APRS/Parser.pm directory. You should
> > now be getting a rapidly expanding screen full of warnings and errors from the
> > APRS parser (this is alpha software after all). If you get errors from the Perl
> > DBI, please let me know. Otherwise, ignore the errors, I already know about
> > them. You can just redirect them to /dev/null or something, or do this:
> >         perl aprsistest.pl | nohup perl -I . trackud.pl &
> > Which will cause the daemon to run in the background and send all output to
> > nohup.out. Careful, nohup.out could get pretty big.
> >
> > I developed this with PostgreSQL. It might work with other RDBMS's but then
> > again it might not, I wouldn't know so don't ask, but if you have success with
> > another one please let me know about it.
> >
> > License:
> >
> > This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
> > modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
> > as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
> > of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
> >
> > This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
> > but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
> > MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
> > GNU General Public License for more details.
> >
> > You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
> > along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
> > Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301, USA.
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