As I hope you are already aware, the venerable HABHUB system is to be decommissioned soon. This was planned to be done by now, but has been postponed to the end of 2022. This won’t be postponed again, so in 2023 there will be no more HABHUB.
There’s a replacement, namely sondehub/amateur. It provides much the same functionality but it is completely new code. Programs that interfaced with habhub need to be changed or replaced with new programs that interface with Sondehub.
I’ve written several programs that take balloon telemetry (typically LoRa) and upload to HABHUB, and which I have modified to upload to sondehub/amateur. These are HAB LoRa Gateway. HAB Base, HAB Explora and HAB PADD. These all currently support HABHUB also but that will change in the new year. Additionally, most of them support uploading telemetry to an MQTT broker meaning that you can be independent of Sondehub if you wish.
You may have notice support in these programs for something called “HABLink”. That is my own server which I have recently reworked to be based on an MQTT broker. New versions of my apps can upload telemetry/chase positions to (and in some cases download from) the hab.link MQTT broker, providing further online redundancy for your balloon flights.
Server Comparison
| HABHUB | sondehub/amateur | hab.link | MQTT | |
| End of Life | End of 2022 | |||
| Run By | Uputronics | Project Horus | Me | You |
| Upload Mechanism | http | https | MQTT | MQTT |
| Download Mechanism | http | MQTT | MQTT | MQTT |
| Payload Doc Required | Yes | No | No | No |
| Chase Cars Supported | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Receiver Data e.g. SNR Supported | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Upload Format (telemetry) | UKHAS | JSON containing fields and values. UKHAS optional as “raw” field | UKHAS | UKHAS |
| Upload Format (Chase) | Fields | JSON containing fields and values. | CSV | CSV |
HAB App Comparison
| HAB Explora | HAB PADD | HAB Base | Pi LoRa Gateway | |
| Primary Function | Mobile Tracking | Mobile Tracking | Base Station Management | Embedded Receiver |
| Target Hardware | Android Phone | Android Tablet | Windows PC | Raspberry Pi |
| Mapping | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Landing Prediction on map | Payload Only | Payload Only | Payload or online Tawhiri predictor | No |
| Navigation | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Uplink to HAB | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Direct Sources | ||||
| LoRa HAT | No | No | No | Yes |
| LoRa USB | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| LoRa Bluetooth | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| LAN Sources | ||||
| LoRa Gateway | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| TCP/IP (fldigi) | No | No | Yes | No |
| UDP (HABDEC, other HAB apps) | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Online Sources | ||||
| HABHUB (for now) | Yes (whitelist) | Yes (whitelist) | Yes (whitelist, area) | No |
| Sondehub/amateur | Yes (whitelist) | Yes (whitelist) | Yes (whitelist, area) | No |
| hab.link | Yes (whitelist) | Yes (whitelist) | Yes (whitelist, area) | No |
| MQTT | No | No | Yes (whitelist, area) | No |
| LAN Ports | ||||
| TCP/IP (control, monitoring, emit telemetry) | No | No | No | Yes |
| UDP (emits telemetry) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Upload To | ||||
| HABHUB (for now) | Telemetry and chase position | Telemetry and chase position | Telemetry and listener position | Telemetry and listener position |
| sondehub/amateur | Telemetry and chase position | Telemetry and chase position | Telemetry and listener position | Telemetry and listener position |
| hab.link | No | Telemetry and chase position | Telemetry and listener position | Telemetry and listener position |
| MQTT | No | Telemetry and chase position | Telemetry and listener position | Telemetry |
what changes need to be made to programs that previously interfaced with habhub in order to work with Sondehub?
Take a look at the Sondehub API:
https://github.com/projecthorus/sondehub-infra/wiki/API-%28Beta%29
and this Python library:
https://github.com/projecthorus/pysondehub