Wednesday, August 10, 2011

APRS2Twitter v9.0 update information

Just a little update.
I have a working prototype to auto-checkin to foursquare, I still need to work out how to tell if you have really stopped moving or if you are moving before triggering the auto-checkins. But the basic script and idea does work.

I have decided that geoloqi.com will be a great way to distribute some of the information that I didn't know how to distribute before. IE: traffic information, geocache, and gas prices (if any ever get posted to the mygasfeed.com site)

I've cleaned up some of the v8.0 code, I still randomly get a couple of the $checksum2 errors, still not so sure why that is going on.

Passing/Near on my end still isn't working, I am not sure why some users of the script get the passing, and others just get the near (I'm one that just gets "near")

A couple of things I need to figure out still, because I don't want to over whelm the geonote system on geoloqi -> So I need to figure out how to keep duplicated notes from going into the system.

I think at least for putting geonotes about traffic, something like the method I used for the repeaters and wifi would be good - Circles, maybe even circles for gas prices.

The geocaches - I am thinking about, circles may not be the way to go with those...not sure yet.

- I found a old script that I wrote to use posterous - It still works, I need to clean it up a bit, and change a few things but this can be used as a replacement for tumblr, or for another part of the script.

I am working on making the script simpler to setup. That includes using a couple of sites that use oAuth2 - if twitter ever starts using oAuth2 then it will be even easier to setup.

I am planing on writing a script that will ask you the questions, or direct you to the right website to get some of the information the script needs. That should really simplify setup.

Toying with the idea of including a script that I wrote that looks at a RSS feed of echolink users and sees if a given callsign is listed and then posts that information to twitter. A few issues with that would need worked out.

With Version 8 there was some confusion as to what goes on with some of the scripts:

APRS.PHP posts your location (hopefully grabbing a business name,street address, or as a fall back just the lat/lon) to twitter IT used most of the scripts that were included in the archive. It was the main script.

Currentwx.php - would post to twitter just the current WX conditions for a given zipcode -> IT would attempt to get the zipcode of the City you are in using APRS, if it could not - it would fall back to your home zipcode - IT used USERSETUP.PHP and Variablesetup.php AS long as usersetup.php was setup correctly you can run Currentwx.php without ever having to run APRS.php - it will just always use the home qth zipcode. But otherwise the script if fully functional without APRS.php

Forecastwx.php - This posts a WX forecast to either 140plus (140plus then posts a link to the forecast on twitter), or posts a bunch of shorter "forecasts" to twitter (I would recommend using 140plus as it's a much nicer cleaner look and easier to read) This script also uses usersetup.php and variablesetup.php - the script uses or attempts to use the zipcode from APRS if not it falls back to your home qth zipcode - APRS.PHP is not needed to run this script as long as usersetup.php is setup

msg.php - This script checks for messages to you on the aprs system and posts those messages to twitter or will send them to you via sms, or both. In version 8 - this scrip only required usersetup.php to be setup. V9 of the script is making a few changes to how this script works (In fact most of the scripts will have some changes to how they work in v9) Msg.php also will write a msgcheck.txt file, which will stop (hopefully) duplicated messages from being posted to twitter
so the script needs read/write access to the directory it's in.

wxalert.php - This script sends WX alerts to twitter, again APRS is not required to run this script, simply variablesetup.php and usersetup.php - it will use or try to us the zipcode from APRS, but will fall back to your home qth zipcode. WXalert.php also needs sms.php because it will sms you the alert if you have it setup.

So basically with with version 8. if you don't want to post your location you don't have to.
If you are just interested in the WX information you can run just the wx scripts as long as usersetup.php is setup.



Version 9, not much will change with respect to the idea of not having to run APRS.php if you don't want to, what will change will be the interactions between some of the scripts. I realized that I was repeating code a lot in many of the scripts. I make a "functions.php" that handles all or most common code that is used in all the scripts. SO that script will be required.
I've also moved some of the scripts back into the "parent" script in attempt to make it a little less confusing about which script does what.

Something that I added in v8, but only a handful of people have is a script called comment.php - I have yet to decide how I want to use this. It will post the beacon comment to twitter. Which may be of interest (My beacon is usually saying what other freq I am monitoring)

That may get included into the main aprs.php script on v9 I've not decided and kind of looking for input.

That is about it for the update. I am still working on an update, I am making progress on it.




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