APRS and trucking

Wondering who uses APRS while in a truck. I've heard of guys using it to identify others to call up while driving and being able to broadcast their freq for others to call them on. Monitoring www.aprs.fi in my area doesn't pull up many mobile tracks. Aprs radios are few and expensive. Aprs trackers can broadcast but not receive. I've looked at using an old android phone and the aprsdroid app hooked to a HT but I haven't been able to get it to process incoming packets. There are internet based apps that will send and receive but I would not want to tie up my phone on apps like iAPRS.

Thoughts?

Does anyone use this mobile?

Is it worth my time to bother with it?

 

I wish they had a version for the iPhone. I am hooking the old droid phone I have to a uv-5r for an rf aprs. It transmits and I've been able to get to hit a digitpeater but I need to rewire a connection to get to receive packets since the pin out for the speaker is different than a normal headphone jack. This works without a tnc on aprsdroid. Just need to adjust the vox setting on the ht. With a mag mount antenna I should get a better range. That'll be my next test once I have a cable rewired. A standard audio cable plugged from the phone to the mic input on the ht works fine for transmitting. Receiving rf signals you should be able to use the hub view to see local aprs transmitter info like you would see on a kenwood receiver.

 

IAPRS for my iPhone will transmit my location once I have an account created for it but it won't run in the background. It only connects when it open and displayed.

 

I think that is true in older versions of iOS but I have gps apps that will run in the background and give audio alerts when not up on the screen. Some apps give the option to run in the background. Perhaps the iAPRS app needs to be updated.

 

Waze for example will give audio alerts when I pull up another app. It may only work when the app is in the second position. In other words I try to only open one other app over top of the app I want to keep running. I do have one gps app that will quit (gives an alert that it's quitting) when another app is opened over it just like iAPRS does.

 

Got my pass code for aprs-is in email so I will try running that today to see how well it updates. Tomorrow I will take my radio setup and compare the two. I run the same route most days.

 

Found out something interesting about iAPRS and iOS. IAPRS will actually run in the background and update the aprs-is server. Apparently it doesn't receive in the background, which is why is shows "reconnecting" when you pull the app back up.

I got the aprsdroid app to hit digipeaters using a mag mount antenna connected to my uv-5r. I still need to rewire a cable to get the app to receive packets over the radio. The only reason I want this is to see incoming local info similar to the way one of the kenwood radios would display it. If I can get it to work I was looking at a cheap android tablet for the bigger display.