Release Notes / Changelog

Feature requests under consideration

  • Port mobile App code to .Net MAUI in preparation for open-sourcing.
  • Add security via time-based per-callsign hashing of code space.
  • Add QSO Logging functionality built specifically for SOTA and POTA
  • Update documentation and training videos
  • Document server-side code and donate into escrow for SOTA Org and/or POTA org

Released Changes

2023-04-23 – New SOTAmat skimmer WSJT-X Plugin (beta)

  • Run your own home SOTAmat skimmer and help activators using the SOTAmat app get heard! The best way has always been to use the SparkSDR software with a compatible SDR receiver. However, most people don’t have that special hardware. Now you can help test a Beta release of the new SOTAmat WSJT-X plugin that allows any WSJT-X instance to skim (monitor) for SOTAmat messages. You don’t even need your own radio as you can use public radios over the internet (via WebSDR.org). The plugin filters messages received by WSJT-X and forwards any potential SOTAmat messages to the SOTAmat server for processing. It goes direct and bypasses the normal route through PSK Reporter which can shave off up to 5 minutes of delay!

2023-04-09 – New YouTube Video

  • New Getting Started YouTube video added based on the new V1.1 (build 46) version of the mobile app.

2023-03-05 – Server improvements

  • Added additional debugging code to the logs
  • Improved Health Check code to test for more conditions
  • Added more automation for newly registered users. The server automates validation of the user and looks up their statistics. Some users get automatically approved based on results, and emails are automatically sent. Other users get put into a holding bay for administrator review.
  • Added code to offset a nasty tendency of iOS “auto-correct” where it removes spaces from what you type when auto-complete is followed by punctuation, such as a SOTAmat comment delimiter. The server now sees the syntax error and tries to undo what iOS does. This helps with Garmin inReach users.

2023-02-22 – Mobile app V1.1.0-46 (build 46) Rolling out to App Stores

Build 46 of the mobile app has been submitted to the various app stores as follows:

  1. Production:
  • New feature: you can now login to your SOTAmat account on your mobile device, and click a button to load your configuration. No more need to work with messy “Configuration Blobs” unless you are a very advanced user with an odd set of requirements (the old functionality still exists, but has been moved since most people do not want it or need it). Everyone else can just login and click! Done.
  • New (optional) feature: you can choose to download the entire SOTA Peak and POTA Park databases so they are stored locally on your device for use offline. This data can be displayed on the SOTA Spot and POTA Spot pages so you can see information such as recent activations, points, etc. This also lays a foundation for future features.
  • Several tweaks were made to improve the user interface.

2023-02-11 – POTA Fixes

  • The POTA APIs are not documented nor official. The organization is working to build a public facing and well documented API with authorization tokens. SOTAmat depends on the original undocumented API’s that were reverse engineered by trial-and-error. As POTA has been making server changes in preparation for a public API in the future, they have made breaking changes to the old API used by SOTAmat. This update fixes recent issues and things should be working again. But of course, they may break as the POTA organization continues their development. I’ll try and keep up!

2023-01-26 – server side update

  • POTA Spotting – server updates
    • On the web site POTA “Locations” page, the table has a new parameter “Spot As (optional)” that allows you to provide a special callsign that will be used to post your spots/alerts on POTA.app. This is helpful when you are required to post with a prefix or suffix such as “/P” for portable, or a country prefix when operating outside your home country. For example: “VE/KA2VYS/P".
    • The existing mobile app will work fine with the new feature, but you must reload an updated configuration blob from the web site into the mobile app (in the “setup” tab). An updated mobile app has been built, but is not yet released: all it does is display the new information about what callsign will be used when posted.
    • The server now knows how to decode these new custom “Post As” callsigns.

2023-01-18 – server side update

  • SOTA Spotting / Alerting – server updates
    • On the web site “Regions” page, the table has a new parameter “Spot As (optional)” that allows you to provide a special callsign that will be used to post your spots/alerts on SOTA Watch. This is helpful when you are required to post with a prefix or suffix such as “/P” for portable, or a country prefix when operating outside your home country. For example: “VE/KA2VYS/P".
    • The existing mobile app will work fine with the new feature, but you must reload an updated configuration blob from the web site into the mobile app (in the “setup” tab). An updated mobile app has been built, but is not yet released: all it does is display the new information about what callsign will be used when posted.
    • The server now knows how to decode these new custom “Post As” callsigns.

2023-01-08 – server side update

  • 2-Way Commands
    • Fixed bug with “sotaspots“, ‘potaspots‘, and ‘sotaalerts‘ commands when there are no spots/alerts available that matched the criteria in the 60 minute time window. Now it returns a message telling the user rather than staying silent and keeping the user guessing.
    • Fixed a bug with responses to the Garmin inReach: the Garmin messaging API can’t handle certain characters in the message such as ‘<‘ and ‘>‘. Replaced with ‘{‘ and ‘}‘ until I discover a way to escape them.
    • Improved the error message when the user makes a typo and provides an unknown command. It now provides more information on the error.

2022-12-28 – server side update

  • Implemented support for sending pre-defined eMails from 1-way HF commands. Previously it only supported sending SMS. This can help with international users who don’t have SMS support for outbound SMS messages. Plus eMail is essentially free while SMS costs money.

2022-12-20 – builds 40,41,42 (platform dependent)

  • First Production Version 1.0.0 released:
  • Development builds:
  • Updated attribution page with new libraries used for FT8 audio generation. I ported a bunch of FT8 C code to C# to make it work.
  • Updated some of the in-app text and instructions.

2022-12-16 – build 37

  • New: FT8 audio generation built-in! No 3rd-party app needed.
    • A play audio button added: auto counts down to proper FT8 15-second window
    • Audio automatically repeats for up to 4 FT8 15-second transmissions
    • Added an option on the Settings tab for audio frequency to increase at 51Hz steps for each repeating transmission to try an avoid interference
    • Added an option on the Settings tab to target a specific Audio frequency. Default works well for most cell phones.
    • Added a volume slider. Note that your device must not have the hardware “mute” switch activated. Note that the volume slider in the app is multiplied by the device’s master volume (the hardware volume controls). Normally you should set the system volume at maximum and use the in-app volume slider to get a repeatable known volume percentage (after you calibrate for your radio. Read the FAQ).

2022-12-04

  • 2-Way (SMS/eMail/Garmin inReach) Services
    • Added support for POTA Spotting with the new command “PotaPostSpot“
    • Added a new option to “maxblocks” called “full” that allows far more verbose responses (in length and detail) when using eMail as the response channel (since eMails are designed to have long responses compared to SMS or Garmin inReach, etc.).
    • Improved the weather command to take advantage of “maxblocks full” verbose mode.
    • Many internal server-side improvements.
    • Bug fixes to how the “login” and “logout” commands work over SMS.

2022-11-30

  • Mobile-app:
    • Both iOS and Android apps were updated to version 0.1.0-37. The prior version was 0.1.0-29.
    • New field-notes reference documentation for the new SOTAmāt 2-way services (SMS, eMail, Garmin eMail).
    • Improved handling of Configuration-Blob to ignore characters that are not part of the configuration before and after the blob. Allows for less-precise copy/paste
    • Spelling mistake corrected in mobile-app Setup page, where the configuration-blob goes.
    • Very minor bug fixes.
  • 2-Way (SMS/eMail/Garmin) Services
    • Improved Weather command and syntax greatly. Updated documentation.
    • Fixed issue with DNS.

2022-11-20

  • Bug fixes
    • When sending an eMail command, better error messages if the login failed (bad PIN, etc.)
    • Changed how DNS works to (hopefully) increase reliability.
    • Tweaks to the Weather command
    • Documentation fixes for SMS/eMail/Garmin 2-way commands
  • Improvements
    • Added POTA stats to the CALLINFO command (SMS/eMail/Garmin 2-way)
    • Added POTA Park ID support to the WEATHER command (SMS/eMail/Garmin 2-way)
    • Compressed (even more!) the text output from WEATHER to better fit on Satellite devices (Garmin, etc.)
    • Improved WEATHER and how the initial time stride sync’s to midnight over a day boundary. The new way has Weather sync to midnight on a day change. Change the valid values for HourStepSize to be anything evenly divisible into 24 hours (1,2,3,4,6,8,12,24). These comments likely don’t make sense to you. Don’t worry: Weather is just smarter than it was before!
  • New Features
    • Added support for PARKINFO (similar to SUMMITINFO) to return stats on a POTA park (SMS/eMail/Garmin 2-way)

2022-11-15

  • Automated 2-way commands (using SMS +1-601-SOTA-MAT, or eMail)
    • Added support for Garmin InReach where the InReach user sends an eMail message to the SOTAmāt automated system, and the reply is returned directly via an undocumented Garmin API. This avoids using SMS since Garmin randomly blocks SMS to non-physical phones (such as automated systems using virtual phone numbers like SOTAmāt and the SOTA SMS Gateway). The undocumented Garmin API is used for the reply message back to the InReach device since Garmin doesn’t support eMail to InReach (as that would allow spam messages to create huge satellite charges!).
    • Added support for inbound and outbound eMail.
    • Added (experimental) mountain weather forecasts
    • Added “callinfo” command to get info on a callsign
    • Added “summitinfo” command to get info on a Summit ID
    • Added Login / Logout / MaxBlocks
    • Added ability to Post a SOTA Spot
    • Added ability to Post a SOTA Alert
    • Added intelligent parsing to reduce typing for many commands
    • Added intelligent remembering of login state, last summit referenced, etc. to reduce typing
    • Added new fields to the Web Site’s “user profile” page to allow users to add a secret PIN and a cell-phone-number for automatic login.
    • Added a bunch of NEW DOCUMENTATION for the SMS/InReach features

2022-10

  • SMS Inbound (+1-601-SOTA-MAT)
    • Added support for SOTA Alerts
    • Added support for POTA Spots
    • Updated behavior of SOTA/POTA spots: if the same callsign has several spots only the most recent one will be shown. Other (older) spots for that callsign are not returned, which allows more useful information to be shown. For example, if you specify a “count” of 5, and if callsign AB6D has changed frequencies 6 times recently, in the old scheme you might not see other callsigns reported. Now you will!
    • Updated behavior: there are now defaults for all the parameters and command shorthand synonyms. For example:
      • “SotaSpots” = “spots” = “Sspots” = “ss” (case insensitive, case shown for clarity only)
      • “SotaAlert” = “alerts” = “Salerts” = “sa”
      • “PotaSpots” = “Pspots” = “ps”
      • “commands”

2022-09

  • Web Site
    • Added error checking to the Configuration page to make sure the user has fewer than 1 million suffix combinations. If they are over the limit, the page gives the user a warning message and will note provide a configuration-blob (and thus can’t load a bad configuration into the mobile app).
    • The https://SOTAmat.com/activity page so now displays additional information about reception reports for your own callsign (the table at the top of the page). The table at the bottom of the page is unchanged (which has reception information for all callsigns). Added fields:Duplicate reception reports in addition to the first-reporting-station
      1. Receiving station callsign
      2. Receiving station gridsquare
      3. Receiving station signal to Noise ratio

2022-08

  • Released iOS V0.1.0-29
  • Released Android V0.1.0-29
  • Headline features:
    • POTA Spotting,
    • SOTA Alerting,
    • Mobile app Reference Pages,
    • Backend Timestamps to keep server and mobile app in sync if the SOTA management team adds new peaks.
    • iOS app moved to Open Beta in Testflight
    • Bug fixes
  • Web-site
    • New page to select pre-defined POTA Locations (similar to SOTA Regions)
    • Updated “Preparation” page to include computing total combinations with POTA parks
    • Updated Configuration Blobs
      • Display configuration blob “pull-time”
      • Store per-user pull-time
    • Added a new “Mode” type in the Frequency/Modes page table allowing for “Alerts-CW”
    • Added a new “Mode” type in the Frequency/Modes page table allowing for “Testing”
    • Bug fix: handling of case where there is a 0 Hz step size. [For single step entries]
    • Bug fixes
    • Prevent duplicate Regions / Locations / FreqModes in Blob page
  • Server-processing
    • Database changes for POTA
      • POTA Program database added
      • POTA Locations database added
      • POTA Parks database added
      • POTA-synchronizer service pulls Program/Locations/Parks database changes from the POTA API server on regular intervals
    • Updated Configuration Blob Json to include:
      • POTA Location selections,
      • Database pull time (timestamp)
      • POTA Park ID deltas per POTA Location. This is different from how SOTA Summits work since POTA parks are not sequential within a Locaiton the way SOTA Summits are sequential within a Region. Delta’s allow the client to compute which park ID’s are valid, but still compress well in the Blob.
    • Support for handling a new “Mode” type of “Alert-CW” where it will post an Alert and use the “My Comments” field in the SOTA Alert comments (which can be picked up by RBNhole to adjust Alert time window. For example “S+12”).
    • Support for handling a new “Mode” type of “Testing” where the server will post to SOTA Watch a mode of “Other” and a comments of “Testing Ignore”.
    • Bug fixes
  • Mobile apps
    • iOS changed from Apple TestFlight “Closed Beta” to “Open Beta”. Link pasted on homepage.
    • Bug fixes, performance improvements, code cleanup.
      • Better handling of 0 Hz step size, single step frequencies
    • New Frequencies reference info page
    • New Services reference info page
    • Support for POTA Spotting (new tab)
    • Configuration blob support for POTA, Timestamps