APRS Client Applications for Android

For us Amateur Radio peeps that have Android phones and wish to play with APRS without the need for a radio or if you are just interested in what it’s all about, then there are currently two applications that will achieve this. However both of them are not currently included in the Google Market so you will need to visit the respective sites to get them…

They are called APRSDroid & U2APRS

APRSDroid:

This has a simplistic terminal like display when in the foreground and has a task icon when active (icon visible in the last image)

The map view (accessed via the menu) uses Google Maps to plot both yourself and heard stations from the APRS-IS feed.

If you are already familiar with configuration for a PC based APRS client, then setting up is quite straight forward

The main thing to note you must have a valid APRS Passcode for your position to be gated into the APRS-IS

Menu button pressed showing options available

APRSDroid in action!

U2APRS:

Has a tabbed main screen allowing quick change without the need to access the menu. However this doesn’t currently support landscape mode! (not critical)

Message screen can be set to display messages just to you or can be set to accept all or be filtered to a specific area.

Map screen uses aprs.fi to render both you and nearby stations.

Configuration is all in one screen (accessed viz the menu key) Some of these items could be consolidated into categories (just my opinion!)

There are two types of beacon modes, Manual & Automatic

Summary:

Both applications do the job of reporting your position and passing it on to the APRS-IS, the one benefit that U2APRS has is that it supports messaging. I currently have both installed so I can select if I want to be able to message or not (to me not an important feature for a phone tracker) The set up options for U2APRS could do with a little clean up. Also as both of these apps are not in the main Android Market you will need to regularly check the respective web sites for updates as neither have an update function check, but if they one day both go into the market then that will no longer be a problem. I must say that I was two versions behind on APRSDroid, the version I had installed didn’t have map support or the task icon when active!

So depending on what your preferences are I’m sure that one of these apps will cover what you want…  🙂

Note: I’m using the HTC Desire (A8183) and Oxygen ROM 2.0.1