IBP Button to track beacons

VE3SUNVE3SUN
in KiwiSDR Discussion
I hacked a new button to track the IBP beacons by modifying openwebrx.js

Any of of the IBP beacons can be selected from the list. The receiver will follow that beacon through the band changes. If it was muted, it will mute until the next cycle. The cycle option will check all IBP beacons on all bands over 15 minutes.

If you want to try it, you can run the mod on any receiver as shown at http://ve3sun.com/OpenWebRX/ without changing the main distribution.

If it is of general interest it can be pulled from the git or downloaded directly.


Just playing around... It is useful for me to check the beacon transmissions from different locations.

73
Peter

WA2ZKD

Comments

  • mimosamimosa
    Nice ;)
  • jksjks
    Peter's IBP scanner is now a built-in extension in the v1.123 release.

    VE3SUN
  • VE3SUNVE3SUN
    Awesome John! I was planning to get around to that one of these days.

    You have saved me the trouble. Now I can work on extending that extension.

  • G8JNJG8JNJ
    edited September 2017
    Hi Peter,

     I just tried the extension in v1.123.

    Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work for me on my iPad Mini running Chrome as the extension pop out box on the left hand side of the screen (where all the other extension pop out boxes normally are seen) isn't visible.

    However I tried it on my desktop Win7 pro running Chrome and the the pop out box is visible and I can select a beacon, which is great.

    However once selected the extension doesn't immediately change the frequency to track the selected beacon, it just remains on the same frequency until that particular beacon's time slot on that particular frequency has finished before moving to the next frequency in the sequence. Would it be possible to tune immediately to the correct frequency / time slot for the chosen beacon ?

    Suggestions - It would be nice if the extension could build up a list or graph of S/N ratios (or similar) in the extension window, so that the extension could be left running and a visual representation of propagation conditions be generated over a period of time (a bit like Faros).

    Ultimately this data could be periodically uploaded to a central website and the composite data presented in graphical form.

    Please keep up the fantastic work :-)

    Regards,

    Martin










  • VE3SUNVE3SUN
    edited September 2017
    > However once selected the extension doesn't immediately change the frequency to track the selected beacon, it just remains on the same frequency until that particular beacons time slot on that particular frequency has finished before moving to the next frequency in the sequence. Would it be possible to tune immediately to the correct frequency / time slot for the chosen beacon 

    That is what it is supposed to do. If the chosen beacon is not transmitting, it doesn't change the frequency until the beacon is transmitting. The beacons only transmit in their given sequence. With the extension, you can mute the receiver and only listen when the beacon is transmitting. And when the beacon changes bands, the extension follows, so you can listen to the beacon on all 5 bands, if there is propagation. Try W6WX or 4U1UN which have receivers within ground wave range.

    If you want to listen to a particular beacon frequency, use the Select Band button in the main window and choose the IBP buttons to tune to the frequency and listen to each beacon in sequence. The sequence is shown at http://www.ncdxf.org/beacon/index.html

    Or select cycle in the extension and listen to all the beacons on all 5 frequencies over a 15 minute period.

    >  iPad Mini running Chrome but the extension pop out box on the left hand side of the screen isn't visible

    interesting. This may be one for John.

    > build up a list or graph of S/N ratios (or similar) in the extension window

    That is the plan. Something like this from a project I did in 1993. http://www.ncdxf.org/beacon/abeacon/BeaconObserver.html

    image

  • G8JNJG8JNJ
    edited September 2017
    Hi Peter,

    Ah OK, I thought it would go to the frequency the chosen beacon was currently operating on rather than waiting, but I understand better now - looks really good :-)

    Regards,

    Martin - G8JNJ
  • VE3SUNVE3SUN
    > I thought it would go to the frequency the chosen beacon was currently operating on

    I suppose you could say that it does - as the chosen beacon is not transmitting at that time :). I guess there is a chance that it is transmitting, so maybe I should add that - for now it waits for the next full cycle which starts on 20 and works its way up every ten seconds. My use case is checking a beacon after receiving a report that it is not working properly, so I want to listen to the same beacon on all bands through several cycles or even all day.

    Each IBP beacon transmits for 50 seconds out of every 3 minute cycle. This page shows which one is on what band in real time:





  • G8JNJG8JNJ
    Hi Peter,

    My misunderstanding - I thought that all of the IBP sites were constantly transmitting and cycling through the beacon frequencies.

    I now realise that they don't transmit all of the time and have a substantial 'off' period until it's their turn.

    Regards,

    Martin - G8JNJ
  • jksjks
    Problem with IBP_scan extension not appearing on iOS will be fixed in today's release (welcome to the world of cross-browser compatibility Peter, lol)
    Also formatting improvements for Windows browsers.

  • VE3SUNVE3SUN
    > (welcome to the world of cross-browser compatibility Peter, lol)

    You haven't seen all the if < IE9 ... statements at the top of my html pages?

    Thanks for taking care of it. I saw a couple of cosmetic issues like the extra down arrow in the select button to take care of later... Was also thinking that the beacon frequency list in the main band selector could be moved to the extension to shorten that long list and keep all the beacon stuff together.


  • jksjks
    Sorry, I expressed that incorrectly. It was meant to convey my constant disillusionment with the state of HTML/JS/CSS/Web-framework development, which I am fairly new to. I spend 20 times the amount of effort dealing with Web/UI issues than the underlying functionality and it's completely frustrating. There is so much I want to do with this platform and it's essentially impossible.

  • VE3SUNVE3SUN
    It was so much simpler in 1993.

    But you wouldn't have been able to do any of it back then. Just HTML and Mosaic. ... Until people like me started writing add-ons to make it more complicated.

    The problem is that we all want to use the new great features and they aren't distributed equally among the browsers. And then some major releases have introduced bugs (or new interpretations about how to display) that breaks pages that were working.
  • WA2ZKDWA2ZKD
    So when a station name pops up in the logging window/area that means it is TX but not necessarily heard (?)
  • VE3SUNVE3SUN
    There is no monitoring in the extension yet. So what you see is the currently transmitting beacon on the given frequency.

    Monitoring will appear above the fold, similar to the Integrate extension when I get around to it.

    Round tuits are in short supply at my local store, though.


Sign In or Register to comment.