Digipeater or I-Gate - APRS Forum at eHam.net

eHam.net Forum : APRS : Digipeater or I-Gate

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Digipeater or I-Gate	Reply
by W5MPC on May 13, 2008	Mail this to a friend!
Our club is working on getting more APRS activity in our area and most of us are fairly new to APRS. Right now there is little to no activity at all, no digipeaters, no igates. We plan on using APRS for ARES/SKYWARN activities. We recently received a grant to purchase the needed equipment. We have a Kenwood D710, Hustler dual band vertical, Davis Weather Station, computer, and a 24/7 internet connection. The location we have is on top of a building on campus that would put the station at about 580'. What I'm wondering is this, do we set everything up as a digipeater or an igate or both? Our main goal is for mobile and portable stations to be able to access the APRS system. Thanks for any help. Mike W5MPC

RE: Digipeater or I-Gate	Reply
by KC7ZRU on May 13, 2008	Mail this to a friend!
An I-gate provides a 'hop' for a station to reach another station. Often, but not always, that 'other station' is an I-gate. Many consider the goal to be to get their mobile station's information into the APRS-IS. So, no real point in running the only I-gate in the area as a digipeater. UNLESS there are other RF stations your users are trying to reach and getting into the APRS-IS isn't their primary goal. It's up to you, but until you get more activity in the area - more stations running on RF - I'd suggest starting with an I-gate and build up as activity develops. Remember - it's 'good practice' for every RF station to also run as a digipeater. Since this sounds like it may well be an un-attended station, choose your OS and software for reliability and remote access.

RE: Digipeater or I-Gate	Reply
by W5MPC on May 14, 2008	Mail this to a friend!
OK that makes sense. Thanks. But I guess leads me to another question. In reading about paths that get used to connect to APRS how should the path be set at the IGate and RF stations that act as digipeaters? Should only home based RF stations be set as digipeaters? What path would mobile stations use? Thanks

RE: Digipeater or I-Gate	Reply
by WW5AA on May 14, 2008	Mail this to a friend!
I see you as -10 on APRS. You are in an area that could really use both a digi and Igate. I am in a low river area here which was hard for low power mobiles to get to our big digi (LTROCK). I set my station up so that I could get my mobile on and suddenly a lot of folks who considered it hopeless have been getting on. You may be surprised! I'd give it a Shot. 73 de Lindy

RE: Digipeater or I-Gate	Reply
by KC7ZRU on May 15, 2008	Mail this to a friend!
Well, three's the "old" way and the "new" way. Me? I setup my digis the "old" way. We're in a fairly low traffic area and this way I know that however anyone is setup, so long as it's "APRSish", it'll work. If we ever get busy enough where problems show up - we'll shift to the "New" pathing. Setup so your digi will digipeat via "RELAY, WIDE, WIDEn-n and TRACE, TRACEn-n". BUT!! If you're in a 'high traffic' area where the infrastructure needs to 'limit' hops a bit - use the "New" way of only responding to "WIDEn-n" paths. Bob has all the skinny on his Annapolis web site. http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/aprs/fix14439.html Oh, and I mis-typed in my earlier reply, when I said, "An I-gate provides a 'hop' for a station to reach another station." That should have been 'digipeater' - not I-gate. A digipeater provides a 'hop' for a station to reach another station. What happens when I type faster than my mouth, I guess... 73

RE: Digipeater or I-Gate	Reply
by KA1MZY on May 31, 2008	Mail this to a friend!
Sounds like you got some good funding to do what you need. I would not however use a D710 for an APRS DIGI/IGATE. That's a lot of radio, in my opinion wasted on a APRS station which dosent need a 600$ radio. A better option would be a low cost (200$+/-) TNC with a simple 2m radio such as a Yaesu 1802($119) connected to the TNC and computer with UiView. Save that D710 for a mobile application or cross band repeater. The TNC/Uiview can control all the DIGI function. I would setup the IGATE in conjunction with the DIGI. Since your area has neither, you should setup both if you have the equipment to do it. It's not difficult however assistance will be necessary if you are new to the setup and Uiview. The IGATE setup is very easy on UiView. There's plenty of help online for sure. You can email me at KA1MZY@yahoo.com, and of course the online forums are very helpful as I used them to setup my system.

RE: Digipeater or I-Gate	Reply
by KC7ZRU on May 31, 2008	Mail this to a friend!
Take a good look at http://www.tnc-x.com/ $50 for the TNC part - $20 for the UIDIGI add on module - toss in any ol 2m rig and away you go. Say some kinda $10 hamfest left over missing a few buttons, dead back-light or something - even a rock-bound rig at 144.390 would do well. Nice deal and solid tech behind it.

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