Twitter made a change to the format of their query API’s output data, and that change broke SOTA Spot Monitor. No new spots will be displayed if you are running v1.05 or older.
I just compiled a new version that corrects the problem. To get this new version, go to my web site (address is below) and click on the “Download v1.06 Upgrade” link that is in the Downloads section of the page. Unzip that file, copy the new SOTASpotMonitor.exe file over your existing file of the same name, and new spots will once again appear.
73,
Eric KU6J
===========================================
Free SOTA Spot Monitor Software + RBNGate FAQ: http://www.ku6j.com
It turns out that the issue with the Twitter feed is much larger than I had thought. While running in debug mode to try and determine why even my v1.06 was periodically missing new spots, I saw this message come back from the Twitter API instead of the expected spots:
Yikes!! This was not good news. There are a variety of reasons why migrating to their new API v1.1 is not feasible at this time, and may never be feasible. Fortunately I have a Plan B: read spots directly from SOTAWatch’s RSS feed instead of via Twitter. I have implemented that plan B in a new v2.03 version of SOTA Spot Monitor and it is now available for download at my web site (link below).
For this upgrade, everyone will need to download the entire setup package again (not just the EXE file) and run the Setup program just as if you were installing the software for the first time. Bill W4RK has tested this new version on two of his computers and it installed and worked without any issues. I haven’t seen any issues on my computers either. Hopefully the same is true for everyone else.
When you run this new version, you’ll notice that there is no longer any data in the Summit Name, Pts and Operator columns. This is because that data is not present in Sotawatch’s RSS file, but was present in their Twitter feed. I may remove these columns in a future version. This new version also includes the RBNGate functionality, but this is disabled in your copies (we only need one instance of RBNGate running and I run it on my computer). You’ll see a blank RBN Gateway tab, blank sections in the Settings tab and various settings that are disabled. You can ignore all of that.
If you choose not to upgrade and continue to run SOTA Spot Monitor v1.x, there will be periods of time in which no new spots will be listed and no alerts will sound. When Twitter eventually turns off their v1 API for good, SOTA Spot Monitor v1.x will cease to function entirely. Therefore, you should download and install this new version at your earliest convenience.
73,
Eric KU6J
===========================================
Free SOTA Spot Monitor Software + RBNGate FAQ: http://www.ku6j.com