Where do I begin with QRPSPOTS?

Before we begin: This document needs your help. Please note corrections or suggestions for improvement and send them to n7un@arrl.net. Thanks in advance.

Background: The initial goal was to receive and send “spots” while away from an internet connection using your cellphone. In particular, using the standardized SMS (Short Messaging Service protocol …see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS for more detail) or “texting”, could a ham radio “spot” message be sent via your cellphone and have that “spot” message delivered to subscribers on their cellphones? If so, this would enable any “field operator” to interact with the internet via the SMS texting network and receive “spots” from other field operators from their cellphone. So I can now share information, i.e. “advertise”, my transmitting station frequency with others who might be interested thereby facilitating a contact. So how is this accomplished?

Twitter, please standup! Ok, what’s Twitter? Twitter (see http://twitter.com/ )is a texting phenomenon raging within the social networking frameworks of the internet. It is being called “micro-blogging” for very short messages. Twitter allows you to send one message to your account and the service distributes that message to all your friends, i.e. all those who are “following” your Twitter account. You can then link your cellphone to your Twitter account and consequently send and receive “tweets” (Twitter messages) on your cellphone via the SMS texting application.

Twitter has a limitation however. It only allows for a single-hop of a message. In other words, my message to you can only go from my Twitter account to your Twitter account and no further. So Twitter does not have any “groups” feature. But the Twitter folks provide an API (Application Programing Interface…see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Api for a detailed definition ) and some enterprising programers have developed “group” functionality as an adjunct to Twitter, effectively providing a means for my message to be distributed or “reflected” to many other Twitter accounts. So now I setup a Twitter account…say QRPSPOTS, send my spotting message to it, and all followers of QRPSPOTS will receive that message and if their cellphone is linked to their personal Twitter account, the message will be forwarded to their cellphone. So we now have a cellphone-based spotting network service!

Ok, this is great. Now what do I do?

Here’s a list of steps to take to setup your account on Twitter:

1) Go to http://twitter.com/ and click on the “Get Started Join” button.
2) As prompted, fill out the basic information. Important: You must use your radio amateur callsign as your Username. Any of your messages will be from your callsign which is critical to the spotting network. When finished click on the “Create my account” button.
3) Now sign into your account using your callsign username and password.
4) After the basic info page, you will be prompted to “look for your friends” in any email accounts you might have on your system. “Skip” this unless you want a lot of “clutter” messages in your Twitter account. Also skip the prompt to set up “following the most popular accounts.”
5) Once your account is set up, login and click on the “Settings” link in the upper right hand corner of your home page. Complete the profile information and select the correct time zone for your location. When completed, save your settings and return to your home page.
6) Write down your Twitter username (easy if it is your callsign) and password. You can’t forget this data.
7) In the upper right hand corner under your username, click on the link called “following”. A window will popup stating “You follow 0 people. Invite more!” Click on the “Invite More” link. A new window appears and click on the tab.
8) Enter QRPSPOTS into that field. Click on the “search” button. When QRPSPOTS is found, click on the “follow” button. Any messages in QRPSPOTS will be sent to you, since you are now “following” the activity of QRPSPOTS.
9) An email message from Twitter will be send to the QRPSPOTS administrator (currently N7UN) who will approve your request to then will “follow” your account. This will connect you to QRPSPOTS and allow any of your originated spot messages to be forwarded to QRPSPOTS.

So now the two-way message links are setup. Any messages received by QRPSPOTS will be forwarded to your “callsign” account and likewise, any messages originating from your “callsign” account will be forwarded to QRPSPOTS and reflected to other followers of QRPSPOTS.

Here’s the steps to link your personal cellphone with your “callsign” Twitter account:

1) After logging into your personal Twitter account, go to the “Settings” link in the upper right hand corner.
2) Select the “Phone & IM” link on the Settings page.
3) Enter your cell phone number including your area code in the “Mobile Phone Number” to receive updates on your cellphone from Twitter. Check the box “It’s okay for …to apply”. If you are outside the US, precede your phone number with “+” and your country code.
4) Wait for Twitter to send you a text message saying “That worked….”. This may take some time so go watch TV for a while or until you receive your Twitter confirmation.
5) If you don’t receive a confirmation message from Twitter, say in an hour, repeat this process.

Now your cellphone is linked to your Twitter account and you will receive Tweets on your cellphone whenever a message comes to your “callsign” account. You can turn this feature off either from you Twitter account or by texting “OFF” to 40404. Be aware, that standard text messages rates apply for all Twitter updates, both sending and receiving based on your cellphone carrier service plan. Text "ON" to 40404 to turn on the cellphone link.

So let’s send a “Spot” message

On your Twitter homepage there is a very good help file for using Twitter with your cellphone. Read it first, in fact, print it out for future reference before following the below steps.

1) Twitter has a number of “short codes” to facilitate addressing your text message. For US cellular networks, the Twitter short code is 40404 for the address. Easy to enter. For Canada, the short code is 21212 (note that this only works for Bell Mobility customers in Canada). Enter the short code in the address/to field for the text message.
2) For our spot messages, we are going to use the following syntax for sending direct messages to QRPSPOTS: D qrpspots {call freq time comments} . Example: D qrpspots n7un 7040.5 1830 utc SOTA W7/CN-001 Then send the message. You must send the message as a direct message ("D") to qrpspots. Otherwise the message will not propagate through the network.
3) When you send a spot message, you will get a copy of your message sent back to you from QRPSPOTS. This is a confirmation that your spot has been sent to all “followers” of QRPSPOTS.
4) Messages can be turned off on your mobile device settings page in your online Twitter account. Or if you send OFF as cellphone text message you can remotely turn off messages. So the syntax would be: USA message address: 40404 . Text message: off . You will get an acknowledgment message that your SMS messages are "off". To turn them back on you would send a text message: on .

What if I have an unlimited data account but I have to pay for SMS messages?

No problem, you can use Twittermail! Twittermail is an “Email to Tweets” interface that allows you to both send and receive Tweets via email. To setup Twittermail do the following :

1) Point your web browser at http://www.twittermail.com/ . You need to specify your Twitter “callsign” ID as well as your Twitter password and then click on “Get your Twittermail Address”. Twittermail will then provide you with a Twittermail email address that looks something like xyzzy@twittermail.com. Write this information down. You can then select your preferences or come back later and change them; you just need to remember your Twitter account information.
2) To send a Tweet simply compose a email to your Twittermail email address (i.e. xyzzy@twittermail.com) with the same syntax as you would have used for an SMS message:
D qrpspots {call freq time} . Example: D qrpspots n7un 7040.5 1830 utc Then send the email message. Note that depending on the options you selected for your Twittermail account the actual message can be in the Subject of the email or in the body of the message.

3) Unfortunately the mechanism to receiver Tweets is pull rather than push (i.e. you have to send an email to request the latest Tweets; they don't get sent to you automatically). This is accomplished by sending an email to your Twittermail email address i.e. xyzzy@twittermail.com with the single letter message f (this is short for Friends) . Twittermail will then send you back an email response (to whichever email address the request was sent from) with the last 20 Tweets that will look something like:

From: Twittermail.com <noreply@twittermail.com>
To: <your_email_address>
Date: Tue, Mar 31, 02:40 PM
Subject: Twittermail - Friends timeline

Hi there!
this is an automatic response from http://www.twittermail.com/ with the last 20 messages of your friends:

via @ve3wmb: ve3wmb test 3333 twittermail from work email acct
QRPSPOTS - 21 hours ago

via @ve3wmb: ve3wmb 2222 test twittermail
QRPSPOTS - 21 hours ago

via @ve3wmb: ve3wmb 1111 test from Fring on iPod touch
QRPSPOTS - 22 hours ago

via @N7UN: N7UN 2 038PM EDT
QRPSPOTS - 3 days ago

via @wu2s: wu2s test 8888 20090325 21:47
QRPSPOTS - 5 days ago

You can still post Tweets via SMS but you now have the option to use an email interface as well. Note that some carriers allow free reception of SMS messages but charge for each SMS messages sent. In this case you can opt to receive Tweets via SMS but send your Tweets using email.

Current Observations of the QRPSPOTS “System”

After 3 years and as of late March 2011, we have over 300 users "following"QRPSPOTS and participating with the system. Martin/VA3SIE, has added some significant additional functionality including:

1) Participant "TweetSpots" are forwarded to http://www.qrpspots.com .
2) Spots posted on http://www.qrpspots.com are forwarded as a TweetSpot to followers of QRPSPOTS.
3) APRS users can send a message to "QRPSPT" and it will be reflected as a TweetSpot and also sent to http://www.qrpspots.com .
4) TweetSpots and APRS QRPSPT messages will be sent to the FISTS "QRPSPOTS" page at http://obriensweb.com/k3uk3.html Future enhancements include forwarding SOTA TweetSpots into the SOTA "spot" webpage.

The following are some observations however:

1) Performance may be a constraining or limiting factor. Some messages propagate very fast in the Twitter network but can be “delayed” up to tens of minutes in the SMS network. This may be a condition of the interface between Twitter and the cellular carrier network or it may be a congestion issue in the carrier network itself.
2) We have also observed that propagation delays occur more predominately in late weekday afternoons and early evenings. We hypothesize this is due to a spike in use by the teenage population.

Welcome!

This is the start of a documentation blogsite for the use of the Twitter social network and Twitter Groups for QRP spot message distribution to the group membership. Twitter facilitates a SMS message (140 characters or less) from/to a cellphone....an ideal network for originating or receiving QRP spots from your cellphone! Thus it is possible to spot yourself from your cellphone using the text messaging service of your cellphone service provider.

Twitter Groups receives messages from "spotters" and then distributes those messages to group members, effectively duplicating the internet-based spotting networks. Now you can receive "spots" while in the field on your cellphone, provided you have cellphone coverage of course.

We are in the "testing and debugging" stage of this service. More information to come.