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End Date optional

The "End Date" is now optional.

As in, if you want to see all your spots from until you can just leave the End Date blank.

This is useful for bookmarking when you don't already know the end date of your new flight and want to keep checking in on it or share the link.

When End Date is blank, the auto-update feature of the dashboard will always look for new spots, forever. When you have an End Date set, the auto-update feature only looks for new spots when the End Date is in the future.

For me, I update my bookmark when a flight ends to have a precise End Date. This update means I can start my bookmark with no End Date in mind (always optimistic my flight lives on for months!).

Thanks Kevin for the idea.

Thanks.

Jump between map and data

This entry is based on a converted groups.io post, put here for any documentation value.

Hi, a few new features to mention.

It's all about page interactivity.

Focus the map from the graph

When you hover over a graph, you see a tooltip showing you the date/time of where your cursor is.

Now, when you click any graph at a given time, the map will center on that spot and pop-up the info dialog.

Focus the map from data

A new "Map" column has been added with a link per-row.

Click the link, and the page will jump to the map, and the map will center on that spot and pop-up the info dialog.

Jump to data from map

A new "jump to data" link is visible in the map spot pop-up.

Click the link, and the page will jump to the data.

Generally

The idea is that it can be hard to look at data and find the corresponding map location, and vise versa, especially when looking at long flights.

Hopefully this makes exploring the data a little easier.

Example long flight:

https://traquito.github.io/search/spots/dashboard/?band=20m&channel=315&callsign=KN4IUD&limit=2000&dtGte=2023-09-09&dtLte=2023-12-09

Thanks.

Doug

GPS-based speed calculation

This entry is based on a converted groups.io post, put here for any documentation value.

Hi, another update -- GPS location used to calculate speed.

You will now see new columns of data.

You will also see that data graphed on the speed graph, blue is the telemetry, green is the location-derived speed.

Example flight: https://traquito.github.io/search/spots/dashboard/?band=20m&channel=185&callsign=KD2KDD&dtGte=2023-11-11&dtLte=2023-12-10

The GPS location data is smoothed (averaged) and only calculated in some circumstances.

The data is calculated only between adjacent 6-char maidenhead grids which are consecutive 10-minutes apart.

The data is then smoothed with a rolling 3 to 5 sample average, where the current value is averaged against a minimum of two of its neighbors or their neighbor's neighbor.

The reason for the averaging is because the data was very spikey otherwise, even 6-char grids are pretty imprecise, and a left-to-right move is much smaller than a diagonal move.  This would cause aliasing and the visual appearance of dramatic changes in speed, even though we know that's not really what's going on.

The change, of course, works for all historical flights as well, so feel free to check them out if you have any old favorites.

Thanks.

Doug

Map auto-updates

This entry is based on a converted groups.io post, put here for any documentation value.

Hi, new feature on the website.

Auto-Update

The page will now automatically search for and display new spots for you.

The page does not "refresh," instead, a background query is done, and new data is added to the graphs and map.

So, you don't need to refresh the page anymore.  It will just have the latest data if there is any.

Enabling

This feature is automatically enabled when the "End Date" is today or in the future.

Update Indication

A new status has been added to indicate the latest time that an update was performed.

Update Frequency

Every 10 minutes, aligned to your specific channel "start minute."

The page aligns to 5 minutes after the start of transmission before getting the latest data.  This accounts for the 4 minutes of transmit time, plus another minute since it takes a while for that data to make its way through the various databases.

Regardless of when you load the page initially, the page logic will "snap" to align to that time.

The specific refresh time is calculated as:

  • Start minute + 5 minutes
  • Plus another 7 seconds since 5 minutes sometimes isn't enough
  • Plus a random number of seconds between 0-5 (to ensure not all pages re-query at the same time)

eg channel 227 has start minute 2, so 2+5=7 minutes each 10 minute slot, plus between 7-13 seconds.

Data for 227:

Automatic update:

Map Behavior

The map will keep its current center and zoom, and simply add additional spots to the map.

That is:

  • The map will not re-center on the new spot
  • The map will not go back to the default zoom.

The effect of this is that new spots will show up, off-center, possibly out of the current view.  This is an intentional decision (as opposed to re-centering automatically).  Happy to discuss whether this is the right behavior.

Graph Behavior

The graphs will not keep their zoom level, they will be zoomed all the way out.

Stats Behavior

Stats will update automatically.

Data Table Behavior

Data will update automatically.

What about non-channel-query behavior?

Also works.  Updates every 2 min on even minutes (plus 7 sec and randomness).

Thanks.

Doug

Better and new graphs, more flight info

This entry is based on a converted groups.io post, put here for any documentation value.

Hi,

Minor updates to the website, mostly about graphing.

Graphs are easier to zoom in/out:

Just put your mouse over the chart, scroll up to zoom in, scroll down to zoom out, click+drag to pan left or right.

The x-axis automatically adapts to the zoom level.

Graphs show tooltips with both metric and imperial (and no more double-lines):

Experimental Graphs (only one for now):

Underneath the regular graphs is a new expandable section.

At the moment it has a user-configurable scatterplot that lets you (say) compare the temperature to reported voltage.

You can compare any measurement to any other measurement, however, and the graph just updates its view.

Here are two searches that have relatively long histories that may be interesting to look at:

I didn't want to burden the typical page viewer with too much information, but happy to take feedback about what is/isn't useful to see.

The graphs are much faster to load and snappier to use.

Can't take a screenshot of that but the page hopefully feels even zippier.

Info section has more info

A few additional stats got added.

Flight duration just does the math for you by looking at the earliest and latest spot in your search and working out the difference.

Thanks.

Doug

No search limit, spot counts, grid4 promotion, map spot colors

This entry is based on a converted groups.io post, put here for any documentation value.

Hi, instead of starting a new thread for feature updates, I'll just reply to this.

A few changes I made worth noting:

1. No more "Limit" input

Now the page does "the right thing" and you can stop guessing what number to put in there.

2. Now you get a count of the spots found with your search

3. Grid4 promotion

In some cases, it is useful to map the grid4 value despite not having a full grid6.

These cases are defined to be:

  • the first spot

  • any gap between spots where the grid4 lands on a different grid not already covered by either neighbor

  • the most recent spot, provided enough time has gone by that the encoded telemetry should have arrived already

4. Grid4 colored differently on the map

The blue marks are for grid6, and orange for grid4.

Can be helpful for sporadic reception where interesting locations were passed over but only grid4 received.

Can also be a little unhelpful if the spot is clearly not lined up with the trend.

The mode of the page which only uses grid4 is all orange.

5. Popups

Now you can click on any spot and see a cut-down selection of data available about that spot.

Grid6 points have more data available than grid4.

Thanks.

Doug