NeoAPRS
APRS client for Windows, macOS, Linux and the Raspberry Pi. Any KISS TNC on VHF, and APRS over HF with the Mercury modem built in.
Project page: neo.oh2gba.eu, with screenshots and downloads.
NeoAPRS shows the stations you hear on a map, sends and receives APRS messages with acks, and sends your beacon. Run it as a desktop app, or as a service on a Raspberry Pi next to the radio and open it on a laptop, tablet or phone. Your radio comes first: stations from APRS-IS can be added to the map with one tick, and nothing from the internet is ever sent on the air.
New: APRS over HF. NeoAPRS is the first to carry APRS over Rhizomatica's Mercury modem: an SSB radio with a sound card, stations 1000 to 2000 km away, messages with acks, and nothing extra to install.
Read more: the article, the one-page summary, the technical note and the first test on the air.
Download
- Windows: NeoAPRS-Setup.exe (no administrator rights needed; SmartScreen may warn about an unsigned installer: More info, Run anyway)
- macOS (Apple silicon, macOS 14 or newer): NeoAPRS-arm64.dmg: drag NeoAPRS to Applications; the first time, right-click it and choose Open (the app is not signed by Apple)
- Linux: NeoAPRS-x86_64.AppImage: make it executable and run it
- Raspberry Pi, Debian, Ubuntu: the
.deb of the latest release: sudo apt install ./neoaprs_<version>_arm64.deb (amd64 for a PC), then neoaprs service install --linger
Each carries its own Python and the Mercury HF modem: nothing else to install.
Then run neoaprs open, or open http://127.0.0.1:7303/; a setup guide of four steps (call, position, symbol, radio) starts. Nothing is transmitted until a call is set. No radio yet? The radio type Dummy makes up VHF traffic to try NeoAPRS with, and the Dummy HF radio makes up distant stations and plays the modem through the speakers. Installing, updating and removing: the manual.
What it does
- A map of the stations you hear, with their trails and the route of each packet, on a street map kept on your disk; a station's card says what it runs and where its antenna points, and several open side by side
- Messages with acks, reply-acks and retries on the specification's schedule, and the delivery chain of each message hop by hop; bulletins and group messages; email through the APRS gateway; an alert on the desktop and in the browser
- Weather stations with their readings and 24 hour and 7 day graphs
- Nearby: digipeaters, iGates, voice frequencies and the stations heard direct, nearest first, with the range of a digipeater drawn on the map; frequency objects, storm data and signposts decoded; a QRU server for your objects
- Your beacon: fixed, or following a GPS (gpsd or a serial port) with SmartBeaconing for a car, a bicycle, a walker or a boat; receive only with one tick
- Skeds: a board on neo.oh2gba.eu where stations post when and on which dial they will be on the air, so that two of them can meet on HF; join a sked of another station with one button
- Objects and items of your own, placed and moved on the map and sent on the specification's schedule, each on FM, on HF or on both
- APRS over HF with the Mercury modem, a second radio beside the FM one or on its own: an SSB radio with a sound card, the modem inside NeoAPRS, the sound card and the keying picked for you, Tune and a keying Test, no path (every frame goes direct), the beacon at 30 minutes or more; one map and one station book for both radios, with an FM or HF tag on every station
- A fill-in digipeater and a receive-only iGate, both optional; the stations of APRS-IS on the map with a tick
- A page for a phone, a tablet and a desktop, over the home network with an access key and optional https, in English, German, Spanish, Finnish, French, Italian, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese
- The packet log, every frame with the radio it came on and the path it took; APRS queries from the station menu (position, status, heard direct, trace)
Radios
On VHF: Kenwood TH-D7, TM-D700, TM-D710, TH-D72, TH-D74 and TH-D75, Mobilinkd TNC3 and TNC4, NinoTNC, TNC-Pi, TNC-X, Kantronics KPC-3+, TNC-2 clones, LoRa APRS (CA2RXU firmware), Bluetooth radios such as the BTech UV-PRO, PicoAPRS, and any radio with a sound-card interface (Digirig, SignaLink) through Direwolf or UZ7HO's soundmodem; a GPS through gpsd or a serial port. The radio guide has the setup of each and says which are tried on the air.
On HF: an SSB radio with a USB sound card or an interface (a DigiRig, a SignaLink, the radio's own USB audio) and the Mercury modem that comes with NeoAPRS. Only stations on the same modem and frequency hear each other; the meeting frequency is 7.0541 MHz USB on 40 m, a proposal until it is confirmed on the air.
Getting help
In the page, Settings, Help, Send feedback / logs sends your words and the logs to the project with one press (Getting help). Nothing is sent before you press Send.
Feedback and ideas: GitHub issues (preferred) or [email protected].
More
Project page · Manual · Radios · Changelog · Development · Roadmap · Issues
Written in Python (asyncio, Tornado, SQLite) and Vue, with a Qt window for the desktop app. Licence: GPL-3.0-or-later (LICENSE). Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors via Protomaps; APRS symbols by Heikki Hannikainen OH7LZB; device names from the APRS device identification list by Hessu, OH7LZB (CC BY-SA 2.0); the HF modem is Mercury by Rhizomatica (GPL-3).
