Concept of Dynamic Objects

Don't you wish you could have APRS Objects without trackers move around the way tracked stations do? Sure, you can manually move the Objects, and the move will be transmitted to other stations, but then the Object is just sitting there in the new location. Dynamic Objects is a concept of having locally-created APRS Objects such that, instead of requiring being moved manually every time their position changes, automated logic will update the position based on a pre-specified bearing or route and speed of motion along that route, periodically updating the Object's position so that retransmissions of the Object will show its new position on the course.

The Dynamic Objects plugin provides two types of dynamic moving Objects:

  1. Objects with a configured speed and compass heading (relative to True North, not magnetic North) that will proceed in a straight line on the specified course.
  2. Objects associated with a specified route (which can have any number of curves, corners, and other direction changes) which travel forward along the route at a specified speed. Such Objects' instantaneous course will be whatever the direction the route is going at the point where the Object is located.

The user of YAAC still has the option of manually updating the Object's position on the map by either dragging it or selecting another map object that the Dynamic Object is co-located with. The Dynamic Object will then proceed upon its course from the new position. The user may also adjust the speed of the object to change the rate at which the Object proceeds along its course.

The path that the Dynamic Object takes can either be a compass bearing from its current position (useful for mobile weather-dependent objects such as balloons or thunderstorms and hurricanes), or a route plotted from a GPX, KML, or CSV file loaded with an ordered sequence of lat/lon points. In the latter case, the Object will move at its configured speed from vertex to vertex, stopping at the last vertex unless the route is configured to be a circular route and continued "lapping" is enabled.

Several Dynamic Objects can be created, along with several routes. There can be routes without Objects, and Objects without routes (in which case they will use bearings). Objects can be moved from one route to another. They can also "snap" to the nearest point on a route if the user doesn't drop them accurately enough.

The routes are plotted similarly to polylines in the Draw overlay of the map, but in a separate OpenMap™ layer created by this plugin so they can be managed with their associated dynamic objects.

Dynamic Objects also appear in the Local Objects table view; manipulations from there and the tables created by this plugin will be coordinated.

The View->Dynamic Objects window is where all dynamic objects are managed.