An interesting thought…. Although this might be old news to some of you there is a way I found to link up the APRS Network to Twitter and its easy enough that even I could do it…
Its fairly easy even for someone “Technically Challenged” like I am when it comes to some of this so called Hi Tech Stuff…
From your APRS rig send out a text message to “73s” and in your path include a routing that will get it into a igate which in turn will sent your text message into the internet.
The computer at the 73s website will pick up the text message and relay it out to Twitter. Its as simple as that.
Now for this to work whoever you want to get the message via Twitter has to be following 73s but if they do that then all is good.
I have used it in the past to send out Tweets to my family members when I have been out in the field where there was No Cell coverage so I could not get them via my cell phone.
I also understand that there are now some applications that do this in a more efficient way but as I have not needed to do this yet I have not learned how to do it. For the few times I need to do this the way I have described is fine for me…
For more info on this check out the 73s website. And the 73s website is a pretty interesting place to visit so you should enjoy your time there.
73bob
Tags: 73's, amateur radio, APRS, Twitter
December 9, 2009 at 1:00 am |
Bob,
You’re right that 73s.org does not send the message to your own twitter account, so when I send the message it is not seen by the people following me on twitter since they don’t follow 73s.org, and they don’t want to because if they did they would receive every message sent by every ham not just my messages – and some people pay to receive tweets on thier cell phone.
So how do you send APRS messages to your *own* twitter account so that your friends and family see them without having to follow 73s.org?
Well I figured that one out and I’ve been doing that for a couple of weeks now. My solution also sends twitter traffic the other way – from the people I am following to my VX-8r over APRS.
It’s not ready to release yet but I fully intend on doing so. Furthermore if any amateurs want to use my server they just need to send me thier twitter account and password (and trust that I won’t abuse it!!) – or install the script on a spare PC or linux machine, then no need to send me the password just tell the script on your local machine.
Again before doing this I need to add a few features (rate limiting fand ack support for example, don’t want some spammer sending me a bunch of tweets and clogging up the APRS network!).
I do this with a perl script which connects to both the APRS-IS backbone and the twitter web servers via twitter’s REST interface.
Will let you know when it’s ready for the prime time
(If you want me to add your account to the prototype just send me your twitter username/password then any messages you send to ‘TWITTR’ in APRS will appear in your own personal twitter stream).
- Martin.
December 10, 2009 at 3:48 am |
Correction:
73s.org will post your APRS messages to your Twitter account if you add your Twitter credentials to your 73s.org Account Profile. This is a new feature that we added several months ago. Check it out at http://73s.org
73s,
Chris Matthieu
http://73s.org/n7ice
December 11, 2009 at 2:25 am |
Chris,
Thanks for the correction, it wasn’t obvious that capability existed.
Does 73s.com send traffic the other way too, from twitter.com to APRS? If so then it’s exactly what I’m developing my script to do so I can use 73s instead.
Great job by the way – great site!
- Martin.
December 10, 2009 at 12:54 pm |
Thanks for the correction Chris… And you being the person who runs that fantastic site (73s.org) would know. I guess I’ll have to check in and update my info and go from there…
Thanks again for commenting and also giving us 73s.org
73bob
August 6, 2010 at 7:01 pm |
I took a slightly different approach – I send my APRS location to twitter, the script I wrote, will also SMS me my aprs messages, SMS me repeaters that are nearby if I am traveling, and do a few other things. Can use position reports that come from sources other then APRS (Instamapper, and Google Latitude are the two written in the script, others can be added) Supports multiple call signs, Grabs WX reports, and WX alerts are posted to twitter, Will update tumblr as well. It was written in PHP, requires Curl extensions, is fairly easy to setup, runs from the command line – if you are running a web server you can run it from that as well. – Works with Windows Vista or better, and Linux (Testing was going on under Mac OSX, but the results were less then good)
For a look at the output – http://kd8bxp.tumblr.com or http://hamohio1.status.net or http://twitter.com/kd8bxp
for a look at the code – (It is still a work in progress) – http://code.google.com/p/aprs2twitter
Feel free to grab the code, use it, love it
Questions… kd8bxp (at) hamohio.com
LeRoy, KD8BXP