iPhone, PocketPacket, Baofeng UV5R and APRS

[WanderingBison]

Im New to APRS and have been searching tirelessly for a way top connect my FTM 400 to my iPad for Map tracking. Is there any way this will work with the data output jack on my radio? I dont want to switch to a windows tablet.

I have the FTM-400 connected to APRS.fi, the app, running on my iPad and iPhone using a Mobilinkd TNC (the most recent version as the previous versions don’t work with iOS).

Works really quite well, can display the data from the radio and the data from the internet together (handy if you want to see AIS ship info for instance). It doesn’t work as well offline as it uses the Apple cached maps when the app doesn’t have a data connection.

Totally doable and work very well.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[DaveInDenver]

I have the FTM-400 connected to APRS.fi, the app, running on my iPad and iPhone using a Mobilinkd TNC (the most recent version as the previous versions don’t work with iOS).

Works really quite well, can display the data from the radio and the data from the internet together (handy if you want to see AIS ship info for instance). It doesn’t work as well offline as it uses the Apple cached maps when the app doesn’t have a data connection.

Totally doable and work very well.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Do you happen to use the Mobilinkd to both send and receive packets?

I ask because Yaesu radios used (my FT-8800 and old FTM-350 anyway) to have an odd configuration in that they can dual receive but can't intelligently transmit from an external TNC. So when you hook a TNC to their data port you can hear stations on both sides (which is fine, one side is data the other voice).

But if your TNC decides to assert PTT it'll transmit on the side you have selected as primary. So if you're trying to run APRS on the secondary side and this happens everyone on the channel (like a repeater) gets serenaded to modem noise. I could leave the radio with the APRS side selected to prevent this but then you can't use the other side to transmit voice, only monitor. If the FT-8800/8900 could switch like the TM-V71 they would have been much more useful!

The internal TNC on a radio like the FTM-400 is smart enough to handle holding off the other side when it needs, just not from an external PTT.

So it's just kind of unfortunate that all the Mobilinkd usually does is glues the radio data port to a displaying device. You still would have to use the internal APRS functions like message composition in the radio, right?