In reply to N7UN:
Haven’t looked to see if any of these cluster programs are open-source
since re-inventing the wheel would be painful. Lot’s of cool
functionality (band, time, country filters, for instance) with these
programs.
I’ve done a bit more research and noodling on this topic. I think that there is a relatively easy way to create a scalable and highly reliable SOTACluster that includes all the usual DXCluster functionality without reinventing any wheels.
AB5K has already created the scalable and highly reliable AR-Cluster v6:
http://www.ab5k.net/Home.aspx
Per his SysOp Manual, the software can be configured to receive spot inputs from a variety of external sources:
“The Client I/O allows you to connect to other nodes or skimmer devices. Sample connections are provided to the Reverse Beacon Network, popular skimmers, IRC channel, ARC6 node connections, ARC4 Active Node connection, ARC4 Passive Node connection, and other Telnet connections.”
http://www.ab5k.net/ArcDocsVer6/SysopManual/AR-ClusterServer.htm
This means that the only new piece of software we would need to provide is a middleware piece that would read spots from SOTAWatch and then output them on a telnet port in DXCluster format. The middleware piece need not be scalable, it will only be servicing a single connected client (the AR-Cluster v6 software).
See the posts above, we are very close to having this middleware capability already via two possible methods:
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Andy’s basic server that provides a telnet interface to SOTAwatch spots. It may be sufficient as-is with no more development time required.
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I could add a telnet output to SOTA Spot Monitor as described in my post above. This actually isn’t very hard to do. SOTA Spot Monitor and RBNGate share the same code base and RBNGate already has telnet capabilities (for reading spots from RBN).
If the intent were also to allow people to spot SOTA stations via this SOTACluster and have those spots be replicated over in SOTAWatch, this would take additional effort and it is trickier than it seems. There are a number of issues that would need to be carefully thought through and addressed (e.g., handling dupes, preventing infinite spot loops, etc.). Since it doesn’t appear that anyone is looking for this type of bi-directional spotting functionality, I won’t bore you with further discussion of this aspect.
73,
Eric KU6J
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Free SOTA Spot Monitor Software + RBNGate FAQ:
http://www.ku6j.com