Notes on Installing and Using UI-View
Invalid & Changed Items In
Distribution File | Windows Vista-7-8-10
Issues | Add-Ons |
Installing and Using Precision Mapping with
UIview32 | Installing and Using PA7RHM Map
Server | Using MapPoint with UI-View |
FAQ
(Links jump to points further down on this page.)
All discussions below apply to the final 32-bit
release of UIview (Ver. 2.03). They DO NOT apply to the older and much more
limited 16-bit version (which will work with Windows 3.1 if anyone still
cares!). Note that confusingly, the 16-bit version has a seemingly higher
version number (2.39). Don't be fooled -- all the advanced plugins require the
32-bit Ver 2.03!
The 16-bit (Windows 3.x) version is totally freely downloadable and usable
as-is without registration. The 32-bit version requires registration to acquire
the key number needed to unlock install and run the program. The registration, once a USD $15
charge, is now completely free. See the UI-view.net
website for details. Many of the more advanced add-ons, including
Precision Mapping zoomable maps, will only work with the 32-bit version.
Note that the 16-bit version will not work at all with Windows Vista, Windows
7, or later. Along with support for the classic Windows .hlp help files,
Windows Vista and later have dropped support for any 16-bit programs. (This also includes many older supposedly-32-bit Win95/Win98 programs and
hardware device drivers, that often contained chunks of 16-bit code recycled
from their Windows 3.x predecessors.)
*** Important !!!
***
|
Roger Barker G4IDE, the author of
UIview, died abruptly of cancer in later 2004. At his request from
his deathbed, the source code for the program was destroyed, making
updates impossible.
The main UIview program has now remained unchanged for
NEARLY TWO DECADES. It is an "orphan" frozen in
time as of 14 April 2004
during the "Windows XP era". This is long before Windows Vista, 7, 8
and 10 appeared.
Even so, it is STILL the
most fully-featured APRS client, and one of the few that can provide
fully zoomable, scrollable dynamic mapping WITHOUT an Internet connection.
[The other two are
APRSpoint (Discontinued
due to it's dependence on Microsoft MapPoint which was discontinued in
2013), and
YAAC which is under current development.]
Uiview can be made to work
with Windows Vista, 7, 8.1, 10 or 11, either 32- or 64-bits, but it IS NOT a mindless "just run
SETUP and accept the defaults" undertaking. See Vista-Win7-8-10
issues below.
An increasing number of
out-of-the-box defaults and settings are outdated. Fortunately, many of these can be changed after
the initial install. Here are some of the
changes & updates you need to make after installing the program. |
Undertow Software's
Precision Mapping 9.0 (discontinued as of April 2014 with no replacement
apparent.) is widely used for fully scrollable zoomable street-level
maps of all of the U.S. and Canada inside UIview, using the Precision Mapping
Server 9.0 plug-in for UIview.
As of fall 2021, the Undertow Software website has
disappeared from the Internet - the company appears to be defunct.
Precision Mapping 9 can now provide scalable, zoomable maps OUTSIDE of North
America using vector data from external sources. Details
here:
PMapEuroMapSamples\index.htm |
IMPORTANT!
Undertow Software shut down the
RegisterMyApp.com activation
website as of 1 March 2020. You can no longer activate a
newly-installed copy of Precision Mapping 9.0.
If you only want to use
Precision Mapping 9.0 with UIview (not use Precision Mapping
standalone), activation is NOT required.
Just run Precision Mapping once
after install, dismiss the prompt to activate, and close the
program. It will now work with UIview and the PMap Server 9.
[This workaround
WILL NOT WORK with any older versions of Precision Mapping
such as Ver 7.0 (discontinued in October 2006), Ver 8.0 (discontinued in April
2009), and Ver 8.1 (discontinued in November 2011). ] |
Invalid & Changed Items in Ver 2.03
Distribution File
- The URL to register the program. The URL
referred to in the program help dialogs no longer exists. The URL for
registering UI-View32 and receiving an activation key is now:
http://www.apritch.co.uk/uiv32.htm. Despite the help system saying a fee
of USD $15 is required, the registration of the program is now free.
- APRS Server List Pulling
down "File, Download APRS Server List" tries to send you to the URL
http://ahubswe.net/APRServe.txt
to download a current list of available APRS Internet servers.
This address has been obsolete for over a decade.
One used to be able to replace this list with one downloaded from
http://www.aprs2.net/APRServe2.txt instead.
This link is now dead. The home page at
http://www.tier2.net now yields a placeholder page with no
information or links on it.
However http://status.aprs2.net
yields a comprehensive list of current servers for both the CORE and TIER2 aprs networks. This is NOT in the form of a simple text file you can
download and install into UIview. However, you can study the list, pick a
few servers of interest to you (presumably the ones closest to you) and
enter them as additions to the original list in UIview.
Or you can use one of the virtual servers that randomly assign you a real
server. Add one of these to the original server list in UIview and
check it. Go to "Setup, APRS Server Setup" and press the "Insert" key. Then
enter one of the server names below:
rotate.aprs2.net:14580 (randomly assigns a server anywhere in
the world)
noam.aprs2.net:14580 (randomly assigns a server in North
America)
soam.aprs2.net:14580 (randomly assigns a server in South
America)
euro.aprs2.net:14580 (randomly assigns a server in Europe)
asia.aprs2.net:14580 (randomly assigns a server in
Asia)
- APRS Server User-Defined Filter Port 14580
All APRS servers offer this user-defined filter port that can limit the
volume of data sent to your APRS program from the Internet. For example, only stations
within a certain distance from your station, or only stations in a certain
rectangular region bounded by certain lat/long values. The F1 Help
screens available during the "APRS Server Setup" dialogs include a text file,
filter.txt , describing the filter port options. This file is now
outdated. Additional filter port options, including exclusions as well as
the original inclusions have been created since. The current version 3.0 of
the JAVaprs filter port instructions and options are available at:
http://www.aprs2.net/wiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FilterGuide
Here on the WA8LMF website at:
JAVaprsFilters.htm
a version of the
JavAPRS Filter Guide has been reformatted from the original raw text to HTML for easier readability
and search.
The new JavAPRS filter exclude options are especially useful if you want to prevent maps
from being flooded with thousands of non-ham "CWO" (Citizens Weather
Observer) stations that share the APRS Internet system with licensed ham
stations. Simply add filter -p/CW to the "Extra log-on text" field in the
"Setup,
APRS Server Setup" dialog.
You may wish to use a plain-text version of the webpage above
to update the local version of this information inside the UIview help system. The " filter.txt
" file is downloadable from the WA8LMF website at:
http://wa8lmf.net/miscinfo/filter.txt
Save the text-formatted web page as "filter.txt", and copy it over the original "filter.txt"
located in the subdirectory " \DOCS
" located under the main UIview program directory. The internal F1 help system in UIview
will then produce the current and correct information on filter ports.
- Displayed APRS Symbol Set a.k.a "Icons"
There have been numerous changes and updates to the APRS symbol set since
UIview became "frozen". Fortunately, the APRS symbols used by UIview are
contained in a pair of Windows BMP graphics files that can be easily replaced
(overwritten) after the program is installed. Replacement current symbol sets
for UIview (and for the MapPoint add-on "UI-Point"), are located here:
Revised
APRS Symbol Set .
Important to note: APRS symbols are NOT transmitted
over-the-air as little pictures. Only a two-digit alpha-numeric code is
transmitted, that causes a symbol to be selected from the other party's stored
symbol set. Changing your graphics WILL NOT make other people see
the new symbols. They must update their own software. Conversely,
if YOU don't replace the original symbol set in your copy of UIview with the
updated version, you will often be seeing the WRONG symbols from other
stations. (Many existing symbols have been moved to different code points.)
- UI-Webserver Maps If you
activate the UI-View Personal APRS Webserver built into UIview, the page that
displays details for an individual station attempts to draw 3 maps, at varying
scales, centered on the selected station. This map display no longer works.
The maps were provided by the now long-gone website "MapBlast!" operated
by Vicinity Corp. About the time Roger passed away, Microsoft purchased
Vicinity, and proceeded to cut off free access to the site which was renamed
"Expedia Maps", and then "Bing Maps".
F5VAG wrote a
replacement site for
these UIview inset maps that worked by calling Google Maps and forwarding them
to your UIwebserver as HTML "iframes". The code changes for implementing
these changes to the UI-Webserver is shown below. This replacement
site has now also stopped working, after Google introduced new and
more restrictive procedures and rules for calling their map images from
within other programs. The information below is of only historic
interest.
This will require editing HTML
pages in the "UI-Webserver" directory under the main UIview
directory. Complete details, including copy-and-paste code snippets WERE available here:
http://f5vag.nerim.net/ui-view32/uiws_maps/
The essence of the information on the now-missing page above was to edit the
pages info_call.html,
infomobile_call.html and
infowx_call.html located in the "\Special
Pages" subdirectory of the UIwebserver directory with a text editor
or HTML editor in code-view (not WYSIWYG) mode. Locate the block
of code on each of these pages:
p align="center"><img width="600" height="350" border="1"
alt="Large scale map of ##CALLSIGN##'s location" src="##MAP_LARGE_SCALE##"></p>
<p align="center"><img width="600" height="350" border="1"
alt="Medium scale map of ##CALLSIGN##'s location" src="##MAP_MEDIUM_SCALE##"></p>
<p align="center"><img width="600" height="350" border="1"
alt="Small scale map of ##CALLSIGN##'s location" src="##MAP_SMALL_SCALE##"></p>
and replace it with
<p align="center"><font face="Verdana"><iframe src="http://f5vag.nerim.net/maps/gstatmap.php?call=##CALLSIGN##&posit=##LOCATION##&sd=##SYMBOL_DESCRIPTION##&range=1000"
frameborder="0" width="600" height="400" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0"
marginheight="0"></iframe>
</font></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Verdana"><iframe src="http://f5vag.nerim.net/maps/gstatmap.php?call=##CALLSIGN##&posit=##LOCATION##&sd=##SYMBOL_DESCRIPTION##&range=50"
frameborder="0" width="600" height="400" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0"
marginheight="0"></iframe>
</font></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Verdana"><iframe src="http://f5vag.nerim.net/maps/gstatmap.php?call=##CALLSIGN##&posit=##LOCATION##&sd=##SYMBOL_DESCRIPTION##&range=2"
frameborder="0" width="600" height="400" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0"
marginheight="0"></iframe>
</font></p>
The easiest way to to do this is to select & copy the replacement code above
from your web browser to Windows Notepad. This will remove the web display
HTML formatting. Then copy the raw ASCII text code from Notepad and
paste into the open page in your editor.
This changes the map server on these pages from Microsoft Expedia to Google
Maps. Note that this still depends on a middleman (F5VAG.nerim.net) to
generate the iframe with the map. This middleman could disappear at any time.
- UI-Webserver QRZ Callsign Data Lookup
The detailed map for individual stations, referred to above, also lets you
click on the callsign to do a QRZ.com lookup for station address and other
details. The exact URL to access this information at QRZ has changed
since UIview became "frozen in time". Locate the folder "Special
Pages" located under the "UI-Webserver" folder inside the main UIview32
program folder. Locate the three files
info_call.html
infomobile_call.html
infowx_call.html
Open each file with Windows Notepad or a similar
text editor. Locate the string
qrz.com/detail/##CALLSIGN
Change detail in each to
db . The revised
line should look like:
qrz.com/db/##CALLSIGN
Save each file and restart the UIwebserver.
- SA Map Grabber UIview
includes a utility (on the "File" pulldown) for capturing static (non-zoomable)
maps from Delorme Street Atlas for use with UIview. This utility, (of
use to American users only), only works with the "classic" old-style
versions of Delorme Street Atlas ending with Ver 9.0 discontinued in late
2001. It WILL NOT work with any later versions of Delorme
products (now all discontinued and out-of-print) using the "new-style" Delorme interface (i.e. TopoUSA, Street
Atlas Deluxe, Street Atlas Road Warrior, Street Atlas 2004 and later, etc.).
The Map Grabber feature is now totally useless; the program files and .XTR
files related to it in the main UIview folder can now be deleted to reduce
space waste and menu clutter.
- North American users of Kenwood D700 and TH-D7
The TNC initialization files for these radios attempt to leave nothing to
chance and totally automate the setup of the radios. Besides
initializing the TNC itself, these files also command the radios onto the the
correct radio frequency for APRS. As distributed, the initializations are correct
for the U.K. and Europe where the APRS frequency is 144.800.
For use in North America, you must edit the initialization file and change the
frequency to 144.390 .
After selecting the Kenwood D700 or THD7 tnc type during the "Setup, Comms
Setup" dialog in UIview, click the "Edit" button. Locate the
strings
;Set the frequency to 144.800.
FQ 00144800000,0!FQ 00144800000,0
Carefully change these to
;Set the frequency to 144.390.
FQ 00144390000,0!FQ 00144390000,0
and then save the file. Be sure the total
number of digits in the numeric strings are not changed! The changes won't
become effective until you exit and restart UIview.
- Any user of the Kenwood TM-D710 APRS mobile rig or
TH-D72 handheld with built-in GPS ( pictures
here) The newer
Kenwood APRS radio arrived long after UIview became "frozen in time". As a
result, no TNC initialization files are included with UIview for the D710 or D72.
A collection of TNC init files including ones for the TH-D72, the TS-2000 and two versions for the TM-D710 can be
downloaded from this website
here .
Further, note that the GPS data pass-through feature (that allows both
received APRS data and local GPS data to be sent over a single serial
connection to the computer) only works when an EXTERNAL GPS is used.
It does NOT work when the built-in internal GPS is used. You will
still see other peoples' positions on your map, but you will not be able to
beacon your own position and you will not see the GPS cross-hairs that show
your own location on the map. Unless, of course, you connect an external GPS
to either the dedicated GPS port on the radio, or directly to a second port
on the computer.
- Any users of the Yaesu APRS radios (hand-held or
mobile) Basically, you are out of luck. All the earlier Yaesu APRS
radios, both mobile and hand held, suffer from what I consider a fatal design
flaw/oversight: You CAN NOT access the internal TNC from an
external device for full transmit/receive operation. The SINGLE serial port on Yaesu radios is used either to
program the radio's memories, or for the optional GPS. There is NO access to
the internal TNC's TX/RX data at all; i.e. you cannot connect a computer running
APRS software to the Yaesus. NOTE: Some of the later Yaesu models do
provide a rudimentary listen-only monitor function through the serial port,
but they still lack full transmit/receive access to the internal TNC.
- Users of KPC3 Plus TNCs
There is a serious known bug that plagues KPC3+ TNCs (but not the original
KPC3). After running for several days, a KPC3+
operating in KISS mode will start randomly delaying the passing of
received packets to the attached computer, sometimes by several minutes.
(KISS is the preferred mode for UIview and is mandatory for using UIview's
advanced
digipeater features.)
Passing such long-delayed packets to the APRS Internet System (or digipeating
them) can cause them to appear many minutes AFTER more recent position reports
have been processed by other digipeaters and/or igates. This causes
forward-backward-forward-backward "hyper-jumping" of moving stations on other
users' maps. [The APRS Internet System considers any
packet arriving within 30 seconds of the previous one, that contains the
identical payload, to be a duplicate, and automatically rejects it. An old
packet, even if it is a duplicate, arriving MORE than 30 seconds later
WILL be passed.]
This bug affects all firmware revision levels of the KPC3 Plus. It can be
temporarily cleared by resetting the TNC or by cycling it's power OFF and then
back ON. In the case of UIview, exiting and than restarting UIview
clears the problem. If you are using a KPC3+ TNC, set the built-in
UIview Scheduler to EXIT and then RESTART UIview once a day when traffic is
likely to be very low. (For example, set it to EXIT at 3:00 AM and
RESTART at 3:01 AM.)
- APRS DESTINATION & PATH Confusingly Combined in
Setup Not a changed standard but a
quirk that confuses many newcomers to UIview. Unlike every other APRS program and
Kenwood TH-D7/D700 radios, UIview combines the destination
(normally APRS ) and the digipeater path (normally something
like WIDE2-2) into a single string in a single field labeled "Unproto
Address" in the "Setup, Station Setup" dialog.
It's very easy to overlook
erasing the leading "APRS" while editing this field during setup. This
string must look something like
"
APRS,WIDE2-2 " or "
APRS,WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 "
(mobile) or
" APRS,WIDE2-1
" (fixed station) .
The entries must be delimited by commas. No spaces are
allowed.
At run time, the item to the left of the first comma is taken to be the
destination. Subsequent items to the right of the first comma are interpreted
as steps of the path.
If the leading "APRS" is left out, the program will try to transmit to a
destination of "WIDE2-2" (or whatever is in the first position) instead.
Since APRS applications and digipeaters normally only respond to a destination
beginning APxxxx (and a very few other prefixes), you won't be seen on other
peoples' programs. And you won't be digipeated.
Note that this combined destination and path entry is strictly a UIview
setup-screen idiosyncrasy. (This is actually a carry-over convention from
classic connected packet operation, not observed by other APRS programs and
devices.) All other APRS programs and APRS devices provide separate fields for destination and path entries. No matter how it
is prompted for during entry, all programs transmit this information
over-the-air in the same format.
- Quirky Way of Delimiting Degrees and Minutes in
Latitude/Longitude Entries Like most APRS
applications, UIview requires that latitude/longitude entries for positions be
expressed in Degrees, Minutes and hundredths of Minutes. You
cannot use Degrees-Minutes-Seconds or Degrees and decimal Degrees. [ DD MM.mm
is the default format of NMEA GPS data, and is also the default format for
APRS. ]
However, unlike NMEA, UIview uses two periods to delimit
the string instead of one. For example, latitude data output from a
standard NMEA GPS receiver, for 33 degrees 45.14 minutes north, would look
like:
3345.14N
UIview requires that this be formatted as:
33.45.14N
- Right-click QRZ.com Callsign Lookup feature needs changes.
One
of the choices available when right-clicking on an icon on a UIview map is " www.qrz.com " which sends you to that website for an FCC database
lookup. As of late August 2009, the QRZ website has changed their
interface, breaking this convenient right-click lookup.
To fix this, you will need to edit the
UIVIEW32.INI file, located in the main UIview program folder.
Shut down UIview, if it is running. Open
UIVIEW32.INI with a basic text editor like Windows Notepad, and
search for "[RIGHT_CLICK_URLS]"
. Immediately below this heading, you should see:
&www.findu.com="http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/find.cgi?$CALL"
www.q&rz.com="http://www.qrz.com/database?callsign=$CALLNOSSID"
Edit the lower line to read
www.q&rz.com="http://www.qrz.com/db/$CALLNOSSID"
instead. (The easiest way to do this is to copy and paste the
string from this webpage over the existing one in UIVIEW32.INI .) Save the
changes; then restart UIview.
- UI-NWS feature requires server name change, and additional files to be
downloaded. The UI-NWS feature under the "File" pulldown allows U.S.
National Weather Service weather warning areas to appear on top of UIview maps. (This feature is of interest ONLY to users in the U.S.
or Australia) The URLs for downloading these files mentioned in the
UIview Help System are now invalid Click Here for
the current URLs and more information on downloading & using the NWS "shape files".
As of mid-July 2009, the "virtual igate" WXSVR
that injected the NWS alerts into the APRS Internet system to make the
NWS feature work was shut down. A replacement server, AE5PL-WX, is now providing this service. Shapes and symbols
for severe weather WARNINGs should appear on maps just as before.
Note that the volume of traffic provided by the
new server is far, far less than the old one. AE5PL-WX only
transmits WARNINGS (servere weather actually in progress)
but not the ALERTS and WATCHES sent by the old server. As a
result, you will never see the yellow ALERT areas and orange WATCH areas
that formerly appeared on UIview maps; only the red WARNING shapes will
appear. |
-
UI-NWS "Finger" function requires
server name change. Right-clicking
entries in the UI-NWS watches & warnings lists offers the option "Finger
NWS Server" to retrieve the full
text of NWS bulletins. The original "factory" settings no longer
work.
Thanks to the work of AE5PL and KF0ED,
this function can now be restored. Editing the two files
UIview32.INI and
UINWS.INI
, located in the
main UIview program folder, re-enables this feature with the present
server.
- Shut down UIview.
- Locate the string
FQDN=WxSvr.net in each file, and replace it
with FQDN=wxsvr.ae5pl.net
.
- Restart UIview.
NOTE:
Do not confuse UI-NWS with the NWSget add-on
discussed below.
UI-NWS is a standard part of UIview and will work with any map (that
covers part of the U.S).
NWSget automatically downloads color pictures of Weather Service radar images,
similar to the ones on TV weather reports. It then
displays them underneath the roads and other details in UIview. NWSget
is a separate download, and only works with Precision Mapping and the PMap server
plug-in for UIview. NOTE: NWS-GET is now "abandonware".
Further, this never-updated orphan
works very erratically in Windows 7 and later.
**** Vista/Windows 7/8/10 Issues
****
UIview32 "died" in March 2004, in the middle of the "Windows XP era", long
before Vista or Windows 7 were released. No explicit patches or
updates for Vista, Windows 7 or later exist. Revised versions of UIview will never
be offered for these versions of Windows. Uiview CAN be made to work
with Vista, Win 7, and later, but it IS NOT a mindless "just run
SETUP and accept the defaults" undertaking.
Three major issues exist
running UIview on Windows Vista-7-8-10:
1) Windows UAC
(User Account Controls) very aggressively defends the "\Program Files" folder
tree, where most programs install by default. The constant questioning
of actions by programs unknown and "unblessed" by Microsoft causes problems
both installing and running older programs.
You
must run both the
installers, and the programs after install, with elevated "Administrator"
privileges. If you are NOT logged in to an account with administrator
priviledges, you must right-click the installer programs and choose
"Run As Administrator". If these programs are to be run from a normal
user account after install, you must edit the options in the short cuts that
launch them. Right-click the short cut and exercise the option to
"Run As Administrator".
Windows Vista-7-8-10 enhanced (some say paranoid) security
prevents applications from writing to their own program folders under
\Program Files or
\Program Files (X86) after installation.
(This is a security precaution to prevent malware from attacking or modifying
existing programs.) This makes it impossible for programs to alter their own
log files, .ini files, save user settings, etc, if they are located in the
program's own folder.
[Correct programming practice for Vista and
later require that these types of files
be placed in the
\Documents & Settings\Application Data hierarchy instead.
However this doesn't do anything for older programs like UI-View that are
"hard-wired" to write back to their own program directory.]
You can
avoid these problems by installing UI-View and PMap Server 7
into non-protected directories directly off the root of the drive during install
instead of accepting the proposed default locations; i.e. install to something
like:
C:\UIview32
and
C:\PMapServer9
respectively.
2)
Starting with Windows Vista and continuing
through Windows 7, 8.x and 10, Microsoft quietly dropped support for the
traditional Windows .hlp
Help File format, rendering UIview's extensive help system unusable, along
with those of thousands of other older programs. The file "WinHlp32.exe"
must be downloaded from Microsoft, and installed into Vista or Win7, before
these older help systems will work.
(Microsoft is now trying to get programmers to write help systems in "compiled
HTML" .chm files that can be displayed in Internet Explorer, rather
than the old .hlp format that requires the specialized WinHelp.exe
"player".)
Quoting from the Microsoft web site:
"Microsoft stopped including the 32-bit Help file
viewer in Windows releases beginning with Windows Vista and Windows Server
2008. To support customers who still rely on legacy .hlp files, the Microsoft
Download Center provides WinHlp32.exe downloads for Windows Vista, Windows 7,
Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 R2."
Microsoft only provided Winhelp installers for Windows Vista, 7 and 8.x.
They have never offered one for Windows 10.
However, the installer below, archived on this website, will work with any
32-or 64-bit flavor of Windows from Vista through Win 10.
http://WA8LMF.net/miscinfo/RestoreWinhelp32.exe
This self-extracting zip file installer
is based on the excellent work of by Komeil Bahmanpour. He
figured out how to work around the thicket of Windows UAC file protection
and privileges to force install of WinHelp32.exe. Information is posted on
his blog at
http://www.komeil.com/blog/windows-help-program-winhelp-winhlp32-exe
3) The plug-in
UI-Point 1.22 allows UIview to pass received positions to Microsoft
MapPoint, either the North American or European version, for display.
The "official" installer for this plugin on the UI-view.net website will not
run on 64-bit versions of Windows. A repacked version of this program
installer, built with the ClickTeam Install Creator, (that will run on
64-bit systems) is located on this web site .
Click Here
4) For
US/Canadian users only, the Precision Mapping Server plug-in (a.k.a. "PMap Server") for UIview
is required to use
fully-scrollable/zoomable maps from Undertow Software's Precision Mapping
software.
Ver 7.07 of this essential plug-in will NOT install directly into Vista or Win 7
if you use the standard-release install file for PMap Server 7, offered at
UI-view.net and many other sites on the Internet. (The PMap Server installer version-checks the OS, and detects Win7 as
an unknown unsupported OS and refuses to run - not surprising since Vista & Win7 didn't exist when
the PMap
Server 6, from which PMap Server 7 is derived, was written in the early 2000's!)
Note that this plug-in install issue is now irrelevant, since these
versions of Precision Mapping are now impossible to activate, due to
Undertow Software and it's activation server disappearing from the
Internet.
(This problem only exists for the PMap Server 7 used with the
now-discontinued, versions 7 and 8 of Precision Mapping. The PMap Server Ver
9 for the most-recent (but now also discontinued) Precision Mapping Ver 9.0 installs directly into
Windows 7 and later with no problems.)
5)
Finally, if you don't want existing Windows 7 or Windows 8.x installations
exploited by Microsoft's coercive, misleading hard-sell campaign to upgrade
to Windows 10 (that involves the stealth theft of up to 6 GB
of your hard disk space, and in some cases actual un-requested installs of
Windows 10) read this information on my website:
http://WA8LMF.net/Windows10_Info
NOTE: You can sidestep a lot of hassles
with a lot of older software in Vista, Win7 or later, by creating a
virtual machine running a Windows 2000 or XP installation inside of Windows Vista-7-8-10.
Virtual machine software (such as Virtual Box or VMware) creates an entire second
simulated computer running in a window on your Vista-7-8-10 desktop. The
virtual PC is contained in a file on the host machine's hard disk, including
space for the simulated machine's hard disk. The virtual machine "steals"
RAM from the host machine's RAM pool. When first installed, the
virtual machine is like a brand-new home-made PC with a blank hard disk; i.e. no
operating system. You can install any OS on the virtual machine --
Windows 95, Win98, Win 2K, Win XP, even DOS or Linux! You temporarily borrow the
host's CD/DVD-ROM drive or USB flash drive to run a setup CD for the OS of your choice just as
you would on a "real" computer.
I suggest using Windows 2000
(or the "MicroXP" or "MicroServer2003" distributions floating around the
Internet) in the virtual machine since it can run the
UI-View "suite" (UIview 2.03, Precision Mapping and the PMap Server) in
about half the disk space, and with about half the RAM, required to do the
same thing in a normal full Windows XP install. Win 2K will run this bundle decently in 256 MB
of RAM compared to 512 MB minimum for XP, especially if you use the shareware
program LitePC to strip the
unneeded features out of the Windows installation after the initial install.
(During setup, you specify how much RAM and how much disk space the virtual
machine should "steal" from it's host.) Further, you can do any number
of installs from a Windows 2000 CD without the hassle of Win XP's "product
activation" and CD keys.
UIview Related FAQ
A useful FAQ (Frequently Ask Questions) for UIview is located on M0CYP's
website here:
http://www.apritch.co.uk/faq_uiview32.htm
UI-View Add-Ons
Although the main program is unchangeable, Roger
provided and documented an API (Applications Programming Interface) that allows
external programs to exchange data with UIview. Details on this
interface and code samples are located in the subdirectory \DEVELOP, located
under the main UIview32 directory. As a result, add-ons for UIview to continue to be developed. Some
examples are:
- Precision Mapping Server
Versions 7.07 and 9.0
Released several months after Roger's death, this add-in allows Undertow Software's Precision Mapping Streets & Traveler
Ver 7.0, Ver 8.0, Ver 8.1 or Ver 9.0 to be used in UIview32 as a
seamless continuously zoomable and scrollable street-level map of all of the
United States and Canada. A newer version 9.0 was released in
December 2011 for use with the latest Precision Mapping 9.0 that was also
released in December 2011.
Details on configuring PMap Server 7 for use with the now-discontinued
Precision Mapping
7.0 are HERE.
Details on configuring PMap Server 7 for use with the now-discontinued
Precision Mapping
8.0 or 8.1 are
HERE
Details on configuring PMap Server 9 for use with the now-discontinued
current
Precision Mapping 9.0
, released in December 2011 are
HERE
- NWS-Get [Note that this
program is now orphaned "abandon-ware" no longer under development. Further,
it never "played nice" with Windows 7 or later. System will randomly lockup
after several hours of operation.] NWSget automatically
downloads US National Weather Service color weather radar images from Internet
servers, and converts them for display as underlays for Precision Mapping maps
in UIview. The radar image actually appears underneath the roads, county
boundaries, state lines and APRS symbols instead of the usual background
shading. NWS-Get used to be Downloadable from
http://billdiaz.dynip.com/nwsgetdetails.htm [This site has long
since disappeared from the Internet.]
If you really want to struggle with this buggy abandon-ware,
I have repackaged NWSget as a full Windows installer that creates
directories, shortcuts, etc. Download this version here:
NWSget-2.91-SETUP.EXE (466KB
EXE file)
- Weather Station Integration
UIview does not directly support any electronic weather stations for
APRS weather reporting. Rather, it only reads a standard-format file
called wxnow.txt . This file
must be generated by an external application compatible with the weather
station in use. A very versatile freeware application that can generate this
file and that supports many common weather stations is "Cumulus". You
can download it here:
http://sandaysoft.com/products/cumulus
-
UI-Aloha Computes and
displays Aloha range circles (the standard measure of reliable APRS coverage
range, based on number of other stations on the air) on maps displayed inside
UIview.
-
UI-PHG Computes and displays coverage circles of individual
stations (if they are transmitting the Power-Height-Gain
information in their beacon) on maps.
Both of these add-ons used to be available at:
http://www.activeham.com/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=22&Itemid=51
This site has now disappeared from the Internet. Copies of these two
plug-ins are now archived in ZIP files on this site:
Click to
download UI-PHG
Click to download UI-Aloha
- UI Instant Messenger (Improved APRS
Messaging Client) UIview does include APRS messaging
but it doesn't support the decaying retry algorithm that yields the most
efficient use of the APRS channel. This external add-on does. As a
bonus, this program can operate completely independent of UIview directly over
an Internet connection.
-
UI Height-Track Draws track lines for selected stations on
any map displayed inside UIview (i.e. won't work with external maps such as
MapPoint). Track lines can either be specific colors for specific
stations, or can be color-coded based on altitude data (if transmitted).
-
UI-XTR Files with the extension .XTR (eXTeRnal)
placed in the main UIview program directory determine which add-ons should
start automatically when UIview is started. UI-XTR provides a convenient
"control panel" located in the UIview "File" pulldown to individually enable or
disable each of the growing collection of UIview add-ons.
These (and many other UIview add-ons) are located at:
ff
-
UIsounds.exe (located on this website to
download)
Makes UI-view beep like a D700 when your own call is
digipeated and sound like an AOL Instant Message when a message is received.
- PA7RHM Mapservers
Older version downloads map images from the online Microsoft Expedia map server, and
optionally captures them as calibrated static maps for off-line use.
The newer "UIview MapServer" version downloads and captures maps from the
online Open Street Maps project. Details on setting up and using these add-ons below.
These are only a sample of the add-ons available for
UIview. Many more are described and linked from the main
UI-view.net website.
- Reducing Distorted Appearance of Maps UIview and Precision Mapping both use a simple
rectangular plot of latitude and longitude that make the North American
landmass look oddly stretched. The distortion is due to the simple
non-projected display of map data used by UI-view. UIview assumes that
latitude and longitude lines on any map form a simple rectangular grid instead
of the converging curved lines that they are in real life. Further, it
assumes a degree of latitude is exactly the same distance as a degree of
longitude (only true on the equator). This makes calculating where to place a
given lat/long report on the map extremely fast and simple -- no spherical
trig or involved coordinate transformations needed! The rectangular
deviation from curved isn't that obvious in a small area such as a city. It
becomes much more obvious as you zoom out to a state-level or continental
display.
Precision Mapping provides a way of tweaking the aspect ratio of the displayed
maps. Although it will remain a Mercator-like rectangular display with
longitude lines that remain parallel (instead of converging at the poles). the
display will have more "normal" proportions.
-
- Exit UIview
- Locate the directory where you installed PMap
Server.
- Open the file MapPro71.cfg with a basic ASCII text
editor such as Notepad.
- Search for the paragraph heading "Modules" .
- Somewhere in this paragraph you should see the
entry "ASP=1.00" (This means aspect ratio of lat vs long is 1:1 )
- Change this entry to something like "ASP=.800 "
- Save the file. Be sure the file gets saved with
it's original extension of .cfg .
- Restart UIview.
The continental US and southern Canada should now have
more reasonable and pleasing proportions. This will do nothing to correct the
gross distortion in Alaska and northern Canada where the longitude lines are
severely converging.
This only affects PMap Server displays within UIview. It does not affect
the display in the stand-alone Precision Mapping program.
Using The PA7RHM Mapserver for UIview
Chris van Gorp's PA7RHM mapservers automatically capture
and calibrate maps from online mapping services for use
with UI-View. The PA7RHM Mapservers are downloaded from PA7RHM's
website at:
http://pa7rhm.nl/
The actual download page for all his programs is:
http://pa7rhm.nl/index.php?menu=Software&submenu=Downloads
An older version of his mapserver captures maps
from the Expedia website. The appearance
of these maps is almost identical to images produced by the local Microsoft programs
Streets&Trips, Automap or MapPoint. (Expedia is essentially the
on-line version of MapPoint.) It produces street-level detail in North
America and Europe. Elsewhere in the world only basic outlines of national borders and provinces
show, with even large cities shown as simple
point objects. No roads or hydrographic features show. This older map
server is downloadable at:
http://www.pa7rhm.nl/downloads/setup_pa7rhmsvr1014.exe
The latest version of his mapserver, released at
the end of 2014, captures maps from the Open Street Maps project. This improved
server can produce detailed down-to-street-level maps nearly anywhere in the
world. More information on the new mapserver is here:
http://www.pa7rhm.nl/downloads/Howto_Install_Use.pdf
Warning: Direct link to a PDF file. You may want to RIGHT-click
and "Save as" a local file on your computer rather than open it in a web
browser.
Page 36 of the February 2015 "QST" magazine has a
detailed write-up on the new mapserver.
Operation with the older mapserver on a live Internet connection, is very straight-forward. Just
install the program from the downloaded setup file, and then select "Map Server
by PA7RHM" from the UIview "Load A Map Dialog." Configuring it
to capture maps for use off-line (i.e. without an Internet connection) is a bit more involved.
The mapserver saves captured maps in UIview's optional "Extra Maps Directory".
It won't save any maps until you define such a directory in UIview. The
original intent of this optional directory was to allow the storage of large
archives of static (non-zoomable) maps on a CD-ROM instead of filling up the
UIview "\maps" directory on your hard disk. For application with the
PA7RHM server, this directory has to be on a hard disk (or other writable device
such as a USB flash drive) since it needs to be writable.
- From the Windows File Explorer, create a directory
for additional maps. It can be located under the main UIview directory, or
somewhere else you prefer on your hard disk. Since you will want to edit files
in this directory and delete unwanted views, it may be convenient to place
this directory directly off the root of the drive instead of nesting it inside
many layers of subdirectories.
- In UIview (not the map server) pull down "Setup,
Miscellaneous Setup" and locate the "Extra
Maps" box at the bottom of the screen. Click
the "Browse" button and navigate to the directory you created above .
- Every time you zoom or scroll the PA7RHM server
screen, a new pair of files (GIF image and INF file) with matching
random-looking alphanumeric-string base file names will appear in this
directory. These random-looking names will now show up in UIview's "Load
A Map" dialog after you do "Map, Refresh Map
List".
- The names that show in "Load A Map" are not the file
names. They are text strings contained INSIDE the .INF file for each map. Open
the .INF file with Notepad or other basic text editor, and edit the third line
to something more descriptive such as "Denver Metro Area" or "Westside -
Street Level". The string is completely arbitrary and can be anything
you like. When you refresh the map list, you will now have more meaningful map
titles.
.
- You can quickly accumulate hundreds of maps, since
you get a new map-and-inf pair every single time you zoom or scroll. You
will probably not want to leave the "Save Map Copies" mode left turned on in
the PA7RHM server very long. You will also probably also want to select just a
few views to keep, and delete the rest. Use an image-management
thumbnail-and-viewer utility such as
IrfanView to preview and delete files. Or as a last resort, open the GIF
images in your web browser for a quick view.
- To use the stored maps, you don't run the server at
all. Once they are captured and stored, the maps are just like any other
static map, such as the ones that came with UIview. Just do "Map, Load A
Map" in UI-View and select one of the stored static maps. If you have captured
several maps that cover adjacent areas with some overlap, and UIview is set to
track a particular station, UIview will automatically try to select the map
with the best view of the station's current location as the station
moves.
- The Expedia maps, like maps generated by MapPoint,
are projected on a non-rectangular grid to minimize distortion when the
earth's curved surface is displayed as a flat image. The
disagreement between UIview's simple rectangular x-y grid "non-projection",
and the curved, projected view generated by MapPoint, is insignificant at
city, county or district level. You WILL see significant error in the
placement of APRS symbols, away from the map center, when the map is zoomed
out to beyond 75 miles (120KM) or so.
- An alternative to the 'RHM server, that WILL produce
rectangular-grid "non-projected" maps that align perfectly within UIview,
is the Universal Maps Downloader tool
reviewed here on my web site.
This program can capture satellite or street maps from Google Maps, Yahoo Maps,
Bing Maps
or Open Street Maps at a wide variety of scales. Note that you
WILL have to do some simple math to convert the coordinates produced by this
program in degrees-and-decimal-degrees to the degrees, minutes and decimal
minutes format used by UIview.
(A separate tool that converts between all three coordinate formats is
downloadable from my website.)
Using Microsoft MapPoint with UI-View
UIview can pass
it's received position reports to Microsoft MapPoint (either the North American or
European version) via the
UI-Point
"middle-ware" plug-in. Launching UI-Point
from the "File" menu inside UIview causes an application that is actually
MapPoint minus some of it's toolbar buttons to appear. This modified version
of MapPoint, with all of it's normal menu pulldowns replaced with new ones,
operates along side of UIview. Note you must have MapPoint
installed before UI-Point will work.
MS Streets & Trips or Autoroute will not work with UIview.
Click here for more information and details about
MapPoint.
IMPORTANT: As of December 2014 Microsoft has DISCONTINUED
MapPoint. However copies of the final 2013 edition are still available in
many places, including the BitTorrent file sharing networks.
The maps displayed in MapPoint are
independent of any maps running normally inside UIview. UI-Point plots
standard UIview icons on the MapPoint display, but alphanumeric overlay
characters that appear on top of the base icons on maps inside UIview don't
show on the MapPoint display. None of the other UIview plug-ins
or enhancements that add track lines, range circles, weather alerting zones,
overlay objects, etc to maps inside UIview will have any effect on the
UI-Point/MapPoint display.
Note that APRS position reports received from the APRS Internet system (rather
than off-the-air from a radio/TNC) don't appear by default. Pull down
"Options, Traffic Filter" from the UI-Point menu bar. Clear the check box for
"Don't Display Internet Traffic".
MapPoint is a large, resource-sucking, rather slow program. When UI-Point was first released
years ago, the author was concerned that the typical PC used by hams wasn't fast
enough to keep up with the flood of data from the APRS Internet system, while
running the sluggish MapPoint. As a result, he defaulted Internet display to
off. (The over-the-air data rate is only 1200 baud and is no challenge for
even slow PCs to keep up with.) Today, with fast PCs with gigabytes of RAM on broadband connections
with port 14580 selective filtering (Details
Here) of the Internet stream, UIview and UI-Point
have no problem keeping up with the Internet data.
Displaying Stations Tracked in UI-View
on External Mapping Programs.
Although UI-View can only use Precision Mapping
internally for scrollable, zoomable maps, it is possible to pass very limited
amounts of data to any external mapping program capable of working with a
standard NMEA GPS device.
The obscure UIview plug-in Pos2NMEA (click
here to download) will grab the incoming position data for any single
specified callsign+SSID in UIview, convert it into generic NMEA format, and then
output it to a virtual COM port.
In turn, the external moving-map program
is "fooled" into thinking it is connected to a standard NMEA GPS
device in a moving vehicle.
Only position data (and altitude, if it was included in the original APRS
posits) is passed to the external program. APRS symbols, comment fields, callsign,
etc WILL NOT appear on the external map; only the same kind of cursor and
bread-crumb trails that the program produces normally with an attached GPS
receiver will show. This setup works very well to display a balloon with an
APRS tracker on a Delorme TopoUSA relief map as it drifts into mountainous
terrain, while following it in UIview. Examples of the track in both
UIview and TopoUSA are here on this
website.
Since both UIview and the external program have COM ports trying to talk to
each other, you need a virtual null-modem (i.e. simulated serial cross-over
cable) to connect the two. The MixW "Serial Port Bridge" does exactly this
in Windows 2000 or later, and is
downloadable here.
The Serial Port Bridge was originally intended to allow MixW to act as a
software packet TNC to external programs (it works perfectly with UIview).
However, the Serial Port Bridge (which installs as a virtual hardware
device in the Windows Device Manager) will work to connect any two serial-port-using
programs in the same computer to each other.
Changing the callsign, whose data is to be passed out of UIview to the external program,
requires hand-editing the .ini file that controls Pos2NMEA with a text
editor like Windows Notepad. (Pos2NMEA was a quick unfinished hack of a program
without a full user interface. You can't change the callsign from a pulldown
menu inside the running program.) You can make editing the .ini file more
convenient by adding the edit function to the UIview "Files" menu.
Open Windows Notepad and copy/paste the following four lines into it:
Pos2Nmea_Edit
"C:\Windows\Notepad.exe" Pos2Nmea.ini
False
True
Save the file as Pos2NMEA_Edit.xtr
. A convenient entry to edit the Pos2NMEA file will appear in the UIview
"Files" menu the next time you start UIview. .XTR files (short
for eXTeRnal) allow commands to run external programs to be added to the UIiview
menus. [If your Windows installation is located on a drive other than C:
, edit the path above to match.] An XTR file to run Pos2NMEA is
created automatically when the program is installed. This added XTR just makes
editing the Pos2NMEA.ini file more convenient.