# Editing Objects and Items

APRS Objects and Items are tracked assets that are not transmitting radio stations. As such, some station has to transmit information on behalf of these objects. The Object editor is invoked either by right-clicking on the map and selecting Create Object (for a new object) or Update Object (to modify the information of an existing object or take over ownership of an object or no-longer-transmitting station). Similarly, right-clicking on a row in the Station/Object list gives the choice of updating the selected object.

The Object editor window allows you to enter the following parameters for an object; the entered data will be correctly formatted according to the APRS protocol specification as an Object or Item report, depending on whether the object is timestamped or not.

Name | The globally unique identifier for the object. Note that if you are updating an object or station, the name is not editable and is pre-initialized to the existing name of the object or station.
Object active | Specifies whether the object report should show the object as "live" or "killed". Killed object reports will automatically stop re-transmitting after 3 transmissions (to ensure everyone hears that the object is no longer relevant.
Latitude and longitude | The geographical position of the object. When the editor is invoked from the map, the position on the map that was right-clicked will be the initial position of a new object.
Scope | The span of interest of an object. Objects can be private (only visible on this station and not transmitted), local (not repeated through the APRS-IS backbone), or global (allowed to be sent to APRS-IS).
Permanent | Specifies whether the object is reported with a Object Report timestamped at the time of editing, or with a non-timestamped Item Report (permanent).
Symbol and overlay | Specifies the symbol code to be transmitted in the object messages, and any overlay character for alternate symbol table symbols.
Speed and course | The speed and direction of travel of a moving object. If the speed is set to zero, speed and course will not be included in the object reports.
Area type, color, and offset | Used only for symbol type Area (\l) to specify the shape, color, size, and relative position of an identified geographical area.
Signpost | The text to appear on a Signpost (\m) symbol.
Monitor frequency, duplex direction, and subaudible tone | Used only for Repeater (/r) symbols to identify the tuning parameters for a repeater station.
Comment | Arbitrary free text to be appended after all the protocol-specific information.
Digipeat paths | The digipeater path or paths that should be used to transmit this object. If more than one path is specified, proportional pathing will be used in the order of preference specified.
Initial object repeat rate | The time in seconds between the initial transmissions of the object report before decay begins. Note that edits to an existing object will cause transmission to begin again at the initial rate (to ensure everyone promptly hears about the update).
Slow repeat rate | The longest interval between transmissions of this object, as infrequent as decay is allowed to make it.

QRU group membership

The QRU information group this object belongs to. If a non-blank group name is specified, every time this station hears a QRU message asking for that group of information from a station within the range limit (default or explicitly specified by the requesting station), this station will report all members of the group locally known.
The list is pre-populated with standard QRU group names, but you may enter a custom group name if you choose. The standard QRU group names are:

group name | meaning
--- | ---
AMBU | ambulance
CLUB | ham radio club
ECHO | Echolink
FIRE | fire station
FOOD | restaurants
FUEL | gas/petrol stations
HOSP | hospitals
LIFEBOAT | lifeboats
LTHS | lighthouses
POLI | police stations
POST | post offices
RD13 | D-Star 13cm repeaters
RD23 | D-Star 23cm repeaters
RD2M | D-Star 2m repeaters
RD3C | D-Star 3cm repeaters
RD70 | D-Star 70cm repeaters
RP10 | analog 10m repeaters
RP13 | analog 13cm repeaters
RP23 | analog 23cm repeaters
RP2M | analog 2m repeaters
RP3C | analog 3cm repeaters
RP6M | analog 6m repeaters
RP70 | analog 70cm repeaters
RT13 | television 13cm repeaters
RT23 | television 23cm repeaters
RT3C | television 3cm repeaters
SRAIL | steam railroad
STOR | Amateur Radio stores
T2SRV | approximate locations of Tier 2 APRS-IS servers
VETE | veterinarians
WOTA | Wainwrights On The Air peaks

Once the parameters are edited, clicking the OK button will save the changes and start transmitting the object with its current parameter settings. Clicking the Send button will also save the changes and start transmitting them, but will keep the editor window open so the same object (or a different new object) can be edited.