New SMP Statistics page

Online Resources SOTA Mapping
1

How strange that just in the last few days a lot of people have been looking at, and presenting, some SOTA statistics in graphic or tabular form.

I myself was reading a post on this forum last week - I don’t remember the day - and was struck by the idea that a charting app for SOTA contacts might not go amiss. So I played around for a while and came up with this: http://sotamaps.org/stats.php which will show QSOs made by a particular activator (sorry, chasers, haven’t got round to you yet) in a yearly/monthly/daily/hourly fashion.

You start by choosing a callsign and year, and are presented with summaries of the QSOs made in that year, per band per month, and grouped by mode:

If you double-click on a month’s columns, that month’s data will be loaded into the month tab-page; this chart shows QSOs per band per day, grouped by mode:

Double-clicking on a day’s columns will load the day’s QSOs in the day tab-page; these QSOs are ordered by the UTC minute in that particular day.

In all three charts, colours represent different bands, and are the same as those used in the activations page. Navigation in the month and day charts are effected by using the Zoom buttons at the top, or the navigation bar at the bottom of the chart area. Mouse-overs give various levels of information in popup tooltips.

Data for this app, as with the SMP activations page, are derived from a data-dump from the SOTA database, thoughtfully provided last year by Andy MM0FMF. No data more recent than March 2014 are therefore to be found in this app. Hopefully, full access to the SOTA live db (or at least a useable copy of it) will be granted sometime this year…

Oh yes - as with the other SMP pages showing information pertaining to personal activations, you’ll have to login to this new page before you can use it. 'Cos that’s what the MT insists on, and that’s fine by me…

Hoping this appeals to somebody out there,

Rob

2 Likes
2

Hi Rob,
One small problem, I’m not in the list of activator callsigns that can be selected. DD5AM and DD5CF is there but no DD5LP.

Ed DD5LP.

3

Brilliant Rob.
Looks like a nice tool.
Unfortunately I can’t get it to work :frowning:
I can see other activations but none of my own…

All I get is:

Any ideas?

73

4

Hi Ed and Peter,

Just added a new note about the data - to recap, it’s the old data which is being used to populate the activations page. These data were kindly provided by Andy MM0FMF last year - we’re all just waiting for access to the live data to be granted.

So - sorry your own data can’t (yet) be presented, but you can still play around with the thing until then. As always, constructive criticism and ideas for improvement are always welcome.

Rob

5

I tried to register but the system wont let me. I tried different passwords, all with upper and lower case letters, numbers and at least one special character but the password strength meter would not change from zero.

6

Ooops! - Sorry David, forgot the password strength meter! - I’ll admit I hadn’t tested that part of the page… This has now been fixed.

Typical of me, throwing stuff together at the last minute :smile:

Rob

8

Why is a login required at all? The only valid reasons that occur to me are
a) you need to store persistent personal preferences
b) the data is covered by Data Protection legislation

9

Broadbandits.

2 Likes
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[quote=“gm8oeg, post:8, topic:10305”]
Why is a login required at all?
[/quote]Because it is a condition imposed upon me by the SOTA MT - as I’ve stated above in this thread, and in other threads pertaining to login requirements to SMP pages where activists’ or chasers’ data are presented.

As far as I personally am concerned, the login can go into the bin, but I have to respect the wishes of the SOTA MT as regards the use of their data.

[quote=“gm8oeg, post:8, topic:10305”]
That, coupled with a failure with the capcha thing and I gave up. … Did you previously work in online security for a bank?
[/quote]Well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it? But seriously, if a piece of software doesn’t appear to work, or doesn’t work the way you would like it to: you have a voice! Speak up, and I’ll fix it, or at the very least explain its’ idiosyncrasies. If you say nothing and walk away in disgust, then the problem persists for others.

This SMP project is - and I’m not exaggerating - immensely complex, and I simply don’t have the time, energy or resources to check every little detail in every file. You can avail yourself of this forum, or the SMP contact page, to berate me or to let me know what kind of problem the software presents to you, and I WILL attend to it, as quickly as I can manage, and to the best of my ability.

After having invested literally thousands of hours in developing and maintaining the SMP I have, frankly, little sympathy with users who give up within a few minutes. Rant over.

Rob

1 Like
11

Apart from anything we may have asked Rob to do regarding data, the very best reason to have a login is it frustates automatic 'bots on the internet.

On the database we used to have a bandwith limit. When you only get so much bandwidth/month and you see scumbag sites from Russia/China/Asia/S.America banging on the database downloading the same data over and over then you tend to do something. The first call was entries in robots.txt but that only works with well behaved 'bots. True scum 'bots like Yandex and Baidu just ignore it and leech away all your bandwidth. There is code in the database that checks the user agent and has a list of scum that get redirected back to themselves. These alone saved something like 35% of the bandwidth we were using. We now have unlimited bandwidth but there’s no value in removing limits to sites which will abuse you.

There are some pages on the databas where you can get to see other peoples logs without being logged in. These are examples of me dropping the ball and they are on the list of things to fix. However, the main activator logs and chaser logs are protected. Anyone can create an account and see that data. But they have to create the account and login before they can and 'bots don’t do that. The logs are not secret but they are restricted in a way so that real people have to do something that shows they are not a 'bot before they can see them.

I’ve seen spammers start creating accounts on the database. We have an issue with spammers posting links to cheap junk from China on SOTAwatch and there have been some measures put in place to make it harder for them to do. Someone created 8 accounts in the last 2 weeks that were likely to be used for something underhand. I get notified of all new accounts as they are created and I can perform judgement on whether the accounts are real or not.

Just to give you some scale, we had 101 genuine signups in the last 30 days. At this rate that 1200 new accounts a year on the database, 1200 new chasers and activators. So anything put in place to make it harder for the spammers and wasters makes my life easier.

1 Like
12

I though I was the only one to find that Captcha characters were getting so twisted that this human couldn’t recognize them!

13

Those captcha characters are every bit as twisted as the fellow wot programmed 'em! :smile:

14

I can see why my 2003 activations don’t show up, but why not the one on 09th January 2015? I can see one for the summit that I activated for 15/02/2015 by someone else, but not mine…

15

I detest them!

How’s this for a couple?
First the possible, then the impossible…

(This prevents all registrations)

1 Like
16

I’d imagine the second one would present some difficulty to those not fluent in Klingon!

17

Hmmm. Well, there are unfortunately no records at all for 2015 in the data available to the stats or activations pages (I just double-checked), so I’m at a loss to understand how an activation for 15/02/2015 can be found there. Send me a screenshot or some details off-list, and we’ll take it from there…

Rob

18

Hi Rob.
That’s what I’d assumed.
However there is data from April 12 to March 13 for my callsign which can be viewed on the activations tab.
This does not show up in any searches on Stats.
Is that correct or is there a bug in the search engine?

Pete

19

I’m so tired right now I can hardly keep my eyes open… OK, I see where the problem is: when you say “my callsign”, you mean not only G4ISJ, but also GI4ISJ, GW4ISJ, and what do i know, GWALKINGMYDOG4ISJ, and any other catchy combination of letters thrown in there when one takes a stroll down some country lane in Great Britain. What a perfectly crazy callsign system! I can get away with saying that, 'coz I’m a Brit, AND I’ve never possessed a UK callsign!

I remember now I forgot to include a section in the SQL code to cater for these interesting combinations. Let me get a good night’s sleep, and I’ll attend to it ASAP.

Rob

20

OK, I’ve a screen shot if needs be, but here’s the location and date…

On the Main List on Main - list and display SOTA summits on map - sotamaps.org for G/CE Central England
G/CE-004 Bardon Hill - Latest activation on 2015-02-15 Points = 1 Activation Count 160 Tracks 1 and I can quote the callsign in full if it helps, but it starts M0 and the activation is definitely after my activation.

My activation is listed on the SOTA database as 09/ Jan /2015 G/CE-004 Bardon Hill Call used G0DJA/P QSOs = 7 Points = 1 but if I search on activations using my own callsign for all dates 2008 until now it says that I have no records.

Hope this helps in tracking down the bug.

Dave (G0DJA)

21

Mine is listed under G0DJA/P as that’s what I was. It’s still inside my country.

Without wanting to get into the argument about GM0DJA/P. GW0DJA/P etc., here’s the screenshot of the February activation - It looks like they logged it using a /P?