IBCNU: First "Must Have" Ham iPhone App

IBCNU’s maln screen

First Take: IBCNU is the first amateur radio application that has really earned its place on my iPhone, by turning it into an APRS tracker and message terminal.

IBCNU—as in “I Be Seeing You”— sends position reports, beacons, and messages into the global APRS-IS network using the iPhone data connection. This makes an iPhone running IBCNU a good way to send your location and messages into Internet-based APRS displays, such as aprs.fi.

aprs.fi display of my IBCNU tracks

Because it does not use RF (not on amateur frequencies, anyway), an iPhone running IBCNU will get an APRS packet into the network wherever a data connection is available.

You can also send packets as often as you like, up to once a minute, providing close tracking of a moving user.

The downside is that since you aren’t using 144.390 or some other APRS frequency, you won’t show up on the displays of stations that use ham frequencies for APRS.

Here are about half the settings on the IBCNU settings screen.The lack of connectivity between IBCNU and users on the local RF network may or may not be a show-stopper, depending upon your application.

(Maybe there is some way to get local APRS networks to retransmit packets received over the Internet from nearby stations—it would be a useful feature—but I am not aware of it being available).

Thus, a mixed network of RF-based and IBCNU trackers would only be visible on a computer. I have tried using an iPhone and aprs.fi for this, but have been unhappy with the results. Using aprs.fi on a laptop, however, works quite well and the speed with which an update appears on the Web site after being transmitted onto the RF network is impressive.

(Be aware that the link between the RF network and Internet requires iGates which may not be available in all areas. If it possible to use iGates to receive frequencies other than 144.390 and send those position reports to the Internet, which might be useful if you are running an event on a different frequency).

The program costs $1.99 at the App Store (search on IBCNU). Do not be concerned about negative reviews for earlier versions of the product. Including the ones where I suggested the author should remove the product from the App Store until it was fixed.

The current mapping feature is pretty useless. To get to this display of my location I had to zoom in about five levels.There had been a problem with some combination of iPhones and operating system releases that kept the program from working on many handsets, including mine. It would work for a few moments and then become unable to connect to the APRS servers. That has been corrected with the newest version and my current review in the App Store gives IBCNU four stars.

Why not five stars?

The program will send and receive text messages with APRS stations, including those on the RF network. That is wonderful, I suppose, if you want to use APRS as an SMS or instant messaging replacement. I don’t, so the feature is fairly useless to me.

IBCNU does not offer any mapping support for incoming packets, which I see as a huge opportunity. It would be nice to be able to use the iPhone as an integrated APRS transceiver and map display for received position reports, albeit using packets received from aprs.fi or some other online source.

That is not a major failing, but it makes the program much less useful for emergency communicators than it might be.

Another useful feature would be the ability to drop icons (EOC, helispot, etc.) onto a map and periodically transmit what would amount to a map of an entire incident to the APRS Internet servers.

I’d happily pay extra for such features and will contact the developer to see if it might be possible to get them added.

Documentation for the program is available online at www.ibcnu.us. It takes about five minutes to learn to use the program, thanks to the simple interface. It is, however, important to learn what the buttons do and the icons are telling you.

IBCNU is a great product that does what it promises. It is easy to use, the price is right, and if you already own an iPhone, IBCNU gives it Amateur Radio functionality that many hams would otherwise lack. On that basis, I think it is fair to call this the first “must have” iPhone application for hams.

Comments

[Kevin, K0KDS]

The owner of an IGATE can indeed retransmit packets from APRS-IS to RF. The owner must edit their IGATE.ini file to allow certain callsigns to pass from APRS-IS to RF. I believe you can also use wildcards in the file.

A local IGATE owner in my area is allowing any beacons from my home TCP/IP APRS station to pass through his IGATE since my home station isn't using RF but I still want my packets to show up on the displays of mobile APRS stations (eg: D710). This also allows my club bulletins to be gated to RF.

[David Coursey, N5FDL]

Kevin:

Is it possible to have the iGate look at the packets and retransmit based on distance? And is it smart enough NOT to retransmit packets from RF back to RF from the Internet?

Thanks!

David

[Kevin, K0KDS]

I'm not really sure. Haven't looked that far into it, but I doubt that's possible without rewriting code, at least as far as UI-View is concerned. Internet to RF is probably used so little that it's a low-priority feature kind of thing. That would be a good idea though. I'll have to play with it and see what happens.

[brennessel]

Oh wow that's great! I haven't used this but now after reading this post i think i could have this one.Thanks for sharing.

brennessel

[Kb0efq]

I cannot get aprs.fi maps to run on my iPhone it was working until awhile back what happened?