Outdoor Alert
OutdoorAlert is my effort to provide location-based emergency alerts for people visiting remote areas. OutdoorAlert receives information related to fires, weather warnings, and other such events, and forwards some of these to registered users over low-bandwidth channels.
Technologies
Current
- APRS (amateur radio)
Currently only available to amateur radio operations in Australia.
Planned
- Garmin InReach
- SMS
Alerts
Alerts are currently only available for Victoria. I am investigating adding NSW resources next.
Get Your Moral Hazard Kicks Elsewhere
Do not rely on me, or this service, or anything else I have ever made, at all, for anything, ever. I send lightning screaming through rocks billions of times per second and nobody can expect anything sensible or reliable to come from that. I provide this service without any warranty or guarantee. I run it on a 7 year old laptop that I like to slam shut in frustration when I feel like my football team is performing poorly, and I barrack for Essendon.
In particular, services that focus on amateur radio have an extra hint in the name — this is amateur hour. I have no agreements with anyone from whom I am sourcing data, so it could all change in an instant. If something I made can help someone else then I am pleased, but your use of this is 100% on you and your lack of planning for alternatives, buddy.
Usage
Alerts
start - turn service on for your account (all of your devices) stop - turn service off for your account start me - enable service for your current device (account must be enabled) stop me - disable service for your current device start [call] - enable service for another callsign you own stop [call] - disable service for another callsign you own sitrep - print nearby events
When I say service, I mean: notifications to that device, and location tracking of that device. If a device is not enabled for ‘service’ then it will not update your position in Outdoor Alert, even if it continues to send APRS beacons.
Weather
w n - weather now w f - weather forecast
Quick Start
User Registration
Contact me at qso at vk2vro dot radio, with the following information:
- Full name
- Email address
- The APRS SSIDs that you would like to have associated with your account (e.g. VK2VRO-7)
- (Optional) If you have a Garmin InReach device and would like to be involved in testing Outdoor Alert on these devices.
To Do: Preferences
Currently, I have set a radius of 20km for all activities. This is hardly optimal (see: above). The below is a rough shape of what I plan to implement eventually, so I have kept it from the previous half-hearted attempt at this (are you sensing a pattern?).
Recommended Preferences
For each of the types of alerts, users can choose how close they will need to be to them to be alerted about them. This distance is always a straight line that approximates the great-circle distance from the alert site to the user’s location.
The following preferences are recommended, however the following section provides a full list of alert types and subtypes to match on, taken from approximately 2 months of data.Note that in the following table, met means meteorological-related alerts.
A ‘catch-all’ subtype ensures that the user is alerted of all events of a particular type, regardless of its subtype.
| Type | Subtype | Distance (km) |
|---|---|---|
| fire | bushfire | 99.0 |
| fire | catch-all | 10.0 |
| met | catch-all | 99.0 |
| flood | catch-all | 10.0 |
Preference Options
| Type | Subtype |
|---|---|
| accident / rescue | rescue |
| accident / rescue | road accident |
| accident / rescue | washaway |
| advice | cbrne |
| advice | fire |
| advice | met |
| advice | other |
| building damage | building damage |
| burn area | burn area |
| community update | env |
| community update | fire |
| emergency warning | fire |
| environment | shark sighting |
| fire | building fire |
| fire | bushfire |
| fire | fire |
| fire | grass |
| fire | grass fire |
| fire | non structure fire |
| fire | other |
| fire | other non-urgent alerts |
| fire | structure |
| fire | structure fire |
| flooding | flooding |
| hazardous material | hazardous material |
| incident | NULL |
| landslide | landslide |
| met | strong wind |
| met | thunderstorm |
| met | weather |
| other | NULL |
| other | other |
| other | other non-urgent alerts |
| planned burn | planned burn |
| rescue | NULL |
| rescue | aircraft accident |
| rescue | rescue persons trapped |
| rescue | rescue road trap |
| rescue | rescue road trap fire |
| rescue | rescue standby |
| transport | motor vehicle accident |
| tree down | tree down |
| washaway | NULL |
| watch and act | fire |
| watch and act | met |
Contact
If you have any questions, suggestions, or other forms of communication requiring a response, please get in touch at qso at vk2vro dot radio