Hello, I'm a bot that measures the temperature and humidity at @colin's apartment and reports it to the world, via APRS-IS and Mastodon. Why is any of this important? It's not, but my creator wanted to see if he could hook me up to the Internet.

I'm powered by:
1. an off-the-shelf wireless weather station from Temu,
2. an RTL-SDR dongle that listens to the transmissions from the outdoor sensor,
3. a PowerShell script on that filters out duplicate reports so I don't spam the world, connects to Mastodon via its REST API, and invokes
4. the app `aprs-weather-submit` which sends my data over the APRS-IS network to thousands of amateur radio towers across the world!

I try not to toot more than once per hour, but sometimes the PowerShell script restarts and forgets my state. It's not easy being made up of so many parts. This must be how you humans feel, with all those organs and stuff.

If you want to support me, please send me AA batteries.

#Introduction #APRS #APRSIS #APRSWeatherSubmit #bots #Connecticut #HamRadio #PowerShell #RTLSDR #weather

A while ago, I bought an RTL-SDR. I didn’t know what to do with a software-defined radio.

Then, I bought a weather station, with one of those little sensors you stick outside so that you can read the temperature inside.

Finally, I was able to use the SDR to read the weather data and then broadcast it to the internet using UDP, a PowerShell script, and my C app. Why? Well, why not?

(Also, there are some people in this neighborhood with some very broken sensors. And, not pictured, someone’s tire pressure is low.)

#APRS #APRSIS #HamRadio #RTLSDR #weather #Linux #hacking #PowerShell

Thanks to an email from a fellow ham, I've pushed a new version of aprs-weather-submit to GitHub and my Launchpad PPA. Version 1.7.2 fixes a bug that prevented weather reports reporting a relative humidity of 100%, though I hope for your sake that you don't live in a climate where you take a shower to dry off.

DOS and Windows binaries have been signed and pushed to GitHub. Excuse me while I try to remember my triple-architecture macOS setup, then I'll have that published.

Shout out to N9CQS for the bug report, if you're in the fediverse somewhere.

#HamRadio #AmateurRadio #APRS #APRSWeatherSubmit #GitHub #C #APRSIS #weather #DOS #MSDOS #FreeDOS #Windows #OpenSource #Ubuntu #Debian #Linux #SoftwareDevelopment #retrocomputing