joergschultzelutter / mpad

Multi-Purpose APRS Daemon (MPAD)

mpad

Multi-Purpose APRS Daemon (Gollum might also call it My Precious APRS Daemon)

Python implementation of a multi-purpose APRS daemon (WX/METAR/TAF/CWOP reports, satellite & other celestial data, find the nearest repeater to my position, user coordinates & distance etc. ...)

Supported features

• Worldwide daily/hourly weather forecast for address / zip code / lat,lon / maidenhead / ...
• METAR/TAF data for IATA/ICAO codes or the nearest airport to a user's position
• CWOP data for a given CWOP station (or the nearest one)
• Sunrise/sunset and moonrise/sunset for a given callsign (or the station's callsign)
• Extensive position data for your own callsign or a different callsign (human readable address, MGRS, Maidenhead, UTM, DMS, distance between the two users, altitude)
• Satellite transit data (provides e.g. the next transit of the ISS, based on the callsign position of the transmitter). Can distinguish between visible and non-visible passes.
• Finds the nearest repeater to your position with optional query parameters on band and mode, e.g. 2m/70cm, c4fm/dstar
• Provides uplink/downlink frequencies for a specific satellite
• Find a place of interest nearby, e.g. fuel station, supermarket
• Send a message to a DAPNET user
• Magic 8 Ball predictions
• Send an extensive APRS position report for your call sign's location to an email address via SMTP
• Radiosonde landing predictions
• Deutscher Wetterdienst WX warning broadcasts (for German users)
• Can be easily extended with additional functions and keywords

Program specifics

• Very low cpu/traffic footprint thanks to APRS filters and local data caches.
• Pretty printing of APRS messages. Rather than splitting up the content after a max message len of 67 bytes, the program tries to split the text in a readable way which will keep the logical context of the message intact.
• Human-friendly parser that supports both keyword and also non-keyword commands
• Auto-detection of the user's system of units. Callsigns from the USA, Liberia and Myanmar will receive their data in imperial format (Miles, Fahrenheit, Feet etc), while for the rest of the world the metric system is preset. This auto-setting can be overriden with a separate keyword.
• Supports APRS msg acknowledgments, beacons, etc.
• Automatic detection of incoming duplicate / delayed APRS message requests
• Full UTF-8 support for incoming messages. For outgoing APRS messages, the configuration can be set to either 'plain ASCII' (default) or UTF-8. Email messages are not affected by this restriction

MPAD on YouTube

Thank you Jason/KM4ACK for your kind video review!

Sample dialogue with MPAD

Usage and command syntax

Usage information and the command keywords:

• Action commands

• Date settings

• Daytime settings

Example requests and responses

see EXAMPLES

Dependencies and external data sources

see DEPENDENCIES

Install your own MPAD instance

see INSTALLATION

Add your own keywords

see EXTENSIONS

Technical Details and known issues

see TECHNICAL_DETAILS

MPAD Live Instance

(also known as 'I just want to use the damn thing')

My MPAD instance runs on a Raspberry Pi 4 which also hosts my Pi-Hole server. I have tested MPAD on other less-performant Linux-/Mac-based hardware. If you are a tad patient, you can even run MPAD on a Raspberry Pi Zero W.

The fine print

• If you intend to host an instance of this program, you must be a licensed radio amateur. BYOP: Bring your own (APRS-IS) passcode. If you don't know what this is, then this program is not for you.
• Some program routines borrow logic from KI6WJP's WxBot, whose source code was immensely helpful in getting a better understanding of how to process an APRS message. If the code works, give Martin kudos. If it doesn't work, I'm the one who screwed up.
• APRS is a registered trademark of APRS Software and Bob Bruninga, WB4APR.

mpad's Issues

METAR: new link to //aviationweather.gov

Hi,

Looks like the new link is https://aviationweather.gov/cgi-bin/data/metar.php?ids=EDDL&hours=0&order=id%2C-obs&sep=true

Add sat frequency information

Source: http://www.ne.jp/asahi/hamradio/je9pel/satslist.htm

Parse data, merge with TLE data and build a proper JSON object

Bug with make_pretty_aprs_messages

Function fails if the very first element that is to be inserted into the list has a length of exactly 67 chars. In this case, the list will contain two elements (first element = '', second is the inserted string)

add 'top2...top5' parameter support to the 'repeater' keyword

Overlapping keywords for 'when' and 'when_daytime'

Avoid overlapping keywords. e.g. 'nite' keyword auto-sets the day to 'today' which is incorrect.

METAR request causes crash

I started up an instance on a Raspbery Pi (named mpad2 in case you see the traffic) and a buddy was helping me test it. He requested METARs and the script died. I fired it up again, and was able to replicate the issue with a different METAR request.

2024-04-09 20:34:42,236 aprs_listener -INFO- {'latitude': 32.42417, 'longitude': -97.35533, 'altitude': 0.0, 'lasttime': datetime.datetime(2024, 3, 2, 15, 33), 'comment': None, 'when': 'today', 'when_daytime': 'day', 'what': 'metar', 'units': 'imperial', 'message_callsign': 'S', 'users_callsign': 'KI7JOM-10', 'language': 'en', 'icao': None, 'human_readable_message': None, 'date_offset': 0, 'hour_offset': -1, 'satellite': None, 'repeater_band': None, 'repeater_mode': None, 'city': None, 'state': None, 'country': None, 'country_code': None, 'county': None, 'district': None, 'address': None, 'zipcode': None, 'cwop_id': None, 'street': None, 'street_number': None, 'users_latitude': 0.0, 'users_longitude': 0.0, 'number_of_results': 1, 'osm_special_phrase': None, 'dapnet_message': None, 'mail_recipient': None, 'force_outgoing_unicode_messages': False}
2024-04-09 20:34:42,236 output_generator -INFO- Running output worker generate_output_message_metar()
2024-04-09 20:34:42,848 inet -ERROR- APRS Packet: b'KI7JOM-10>APSAR,WIDE2-2,qAO,WWU::MPAD2    :metars bli{06'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/chris/mpad/src/./aprs_listener.py", line 584, in <module>
    AIS.consumer(mycallback, blocking=True, immortal=True, raw=False)
  File "/home/chris/.local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/aprslib/inet.py", line 185, in consumer
    callback(self._parse(line))
  File "/home/chris/mpad/src/./aprs_listener.py", line 306, in mycallback
    success, output_message = generate_output_message(
                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/home/chris/mpad/src/output_generator.py", line 107, in generate_output_message
    success, output_list = generate_output_message_metar(
                           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/home/chris/mpad/src/output_generator.py", line 322, in generate_output_message_metar
    success, metar_response = get_metar_data(
                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/home/chris/mpad/src/airport_data_modules.py", line 198, in get_metar_data
    pos = meintext.find(icao_code)
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
TypeError: must be str, not NoneType

Did I break it, or was it broken when I pulled it?

Add Position's age to whereis/whereami messages

Implement 'new' ack/rej logic

http://www.aprs.org/aprs11/replyacks.txt

Deprecation of OpenWeatherMap 2.5 API

Details: see https://openweathermap.org/one-call-transfer

❗ V2.5 API gets deprecated in June 2024

Add email support

Send APRS message to EMAIL-2.
Message content: http://aprs.fi/<users_callsign>

IGNORE message responses from EMAIL-2. We will receive (and acknowledge!) them but won't do anything else here and need to ignore them as MAPD would interpret these as commands.

Once the initial message has been sent to EMAIL-2, we will void any positive or negative responses from EMAIL-2; meaning that the ACK/NAK mail from EMAIL-2 will not trigger an additional message to the user.

Message examples:

Outgoing:

[email protected] http://aprs.fi/DF1JSL-3{19

Incoming:

Email sent to [email protected]{832

Repeaterbook.com integration

• see https://github.com/kk7ds/chirp/blob/master/chirp/sources/repeaterbook.py for details

OSM "near x km/miles" searches are not supported

Potential alternative: Overpass API.

Add TAF reports

via https://api.met.no/weatherapi/ ?

Geocode migration to pygeodesy

Streamline code and check if migration to https://github.com/mrJean1/PyGeodesy.git makes sense

Enhance METAR / TAF logic

• By default, reduce the METAR keyword's output to METAR data only
• Introduce a new keyword (e.g. FULL) which enhances the output with TAF data and/or create a separate TAF keyword

Add static map image to outgoing posmsg

Add static map image and position marker to outgoing posmsg mail

Add OSM categories as a search criteria

• https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search?format=jsonv2&q=fuel%20near%2051.82467,9.451&limit=1
• https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim/Special_Phrases/EN
• https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/lookup?osm_ids=N1595558282&format=json
• https://nominatim.org/release-docs/latest/api/Lookup/

Simplify input parser and split it up into multiple small parser modules (based on topic)

Technically invalid messages come with training content

Example: 'hello world{0q}RB'

0q = msg id

Check if parser ignores trailing 'RB' content after msg id

Prototype: Migration repeater data from current data sources to repeaterbook.com

Awaiting feedback from Garrett KD6KPC wrt availability of new API after the server migration has been finished.

Input parser needs update on CWOP-by-id parser update

Current code cannot be reached

APRS Foundation Discord for Software Devs

Hi Joerg,

I develop another Python APRS bot backend and found your code during my development. It was very helpful to have an example to look at, and I learned a lot about APRS messaging by looking at your code.

The APRS foundation has created a discord, and on it, there's a section for APRS Software devs to collaborate. I wanted to invite you because I think we could collaborate on APRS software in the future!

The discord link is https://discord.gg/8E3ftmwP

Bugfix: program crash w incomplete Skyfield data 'riseset' command

Check if UTF-8 message content can/should be processed

Feedback from Hessu:

APRS message content is UTF-8 encoded Unicode and many software packages support UTF-8 unicode messaging just fine (aprs.fi, aprsdroid, aprsis32 at least). http://www.aprs.org/aprs12/utf-8.txt

Demo: https://twitter.com/aprsfi/status/1241699428903378946

https://github.com/hessu/aprsc/blob/master/doc/IGATE-HINTS.md has some more hints on character encoding and corruption issues, although it is igate-centric.