Verbose APRS clients

[Andrew P.]

Greetings, all.

I'm contemplating another enhancement to my YAAC program, and wanted to get some feedback before I started on it (in case there is no interest).

It seems I missed two APRS texting contacts during the Jamboree On The Air last weekend because I was paying attention to the voice radios and not to the (silent) APRS terminal. If it had made some noise, I might have noticed the incoming contact.

So I was wondering what people think of talking APRS clients. As far as I know, Xastir is the only client currently  with speech synthesis integration. Does anyone use that feature? Or is it just a cool feature that never actually gets used? Basically, is it worth implementing speech in YAAC? Or is a mere attention-getting beep sufficient?

I await your opinions.

Andrew Pavlin, KA2DDO 
author of YAAC 
http://www.ka2ddo.org/ka2ddo/YAAC.html

[Randy Love]

I would say configurable beeps/sounds for proximity alarms / messages /
bulletins / NWS notices.

Actually reading stuff out, never really used that.
UIV32 would read callsigns of stations first heard, but not messages.

Randy
WF5X

Post by Andrew P.
Greetings, all.
I'm contemplating another enhancement to my YAAC program, and wanted to
get some feedback before I started on it (in case there is no interest).
It seems I missed two APRS texting contacts during the Jamboree On The Air
last weekend because I was paying attention to the voice radios and not to
the (silent) APRS terminal. If it had made some noise, I might have noticed
the incoming contact.
So I was wondering what people think of talking APRS clients. As far as I
know, Xastir is the only client currently with speech synthesis
integration. Does anyone use that feature? Or is it just a cool feature
that never actually gets used? Basically, is it worth implementing speech
in YAAC? Or is a mere attention-getting beep sufficient?
I await your opinions.
Andrew Pavlin, KA2DDO
author of YAAC
http://www.ka2ddo.org/ka2ddo/YAAC.html
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[Keith VE7GDH]

Randy WF5XO wrote...

Post by Randy Love
UIV32 would read callsigns of stations first heard, but not
messages...

One of the many nice things that UI-View32 can do is read out APRS
messages to you, but you have to install MS Agent to make it work.
Very slick! It was (and probably still is) 10 or 20 years ahead of
its time.

[Stephen Black]

I for one would use it. I no longer use Ui-View and missed it. I have it
on Xastir and find it is useful and It might be helpful to blind hams.
My work bench is opposite my radio bench so it a good way to keep
abreast of whats going on. Steve KB1CHU

Post by Andrew P.
Greetings, all.
I'm contemplating another enhancement to my YAAC program, and wanted
to get some feedback before I started on it (in case there is no
interest).
It seems I missed two APRS texting contacts during the Jamboree On The
Air last weekend because I was paying attention to the voice radios
and not to the (silent) APRS terminal. If it had made some noise, I
might have noticed the incoming contact.
So I was wondering what people think of talking APRS clients. As far
as I know, Xastir is the only client currently with speech synthesis
integration. Does anyone use that feature? Or is it just a cool
feature that never actually gets used? Basically, is it worth
implementing speech in YAAC? Or is a mere attention-getting beep
sufficient?
I await your opinions.
Andrew Pavlin, KA2DDO
author of YAAC
http://www.ka2ddo.org/ka2ddo/YAAC.html
_______________________________________________
aprssig mailing list
http://www.tapr.org/mailman/listinfo/aprssig

[Keith VE7GDH]

Andrew KA2DDO wrote...

Post by Andrew P.
It seems I missed two APRS texting contacts during the Jamboree
On The Air last weekend because I was paying attention to the voice
radios and not to the (silent) APRS terminal. If it had made some
noise, I might have noticed the incoming contact...

UI-View32 has "new message alert" where it can play a wave file
when a message comes in. You can even record a custom wave file
for stations that you regularly receive messages from so it reads
out their (pre-recorded) callsign when you receive a message from
them. It is also capable of reading out the contents of incoming
messages if you install MS Agent. It also pops the message screen
up to the foreground.

It can also read out the callsign of every APRS beacon that you
receive, or just the call sign for new stations. This is done
with 26 wave files for the alphabet and of course dash and zero
to nine. These are in Roger G4IDE's voice (SK, author of UI-View)
or you can record your own wave files.

I hope this gives you some ideas that you might want to consider
adopting or adapting.