To automatically spot live OARC members on POTA activations (and SOTA in the future) or live pings on the RBN, the channel utilises the Discord “pota_bot” developed here: cwhelchel/pota_bot

In order to have your operations spotted in the #oarc-spot-bot channel please send a message to @pota-spots-mgr from any channel in the Discord, and ask to be added to the list; one of the managers will llet you know when it's complete.

The bot is hosted externally in a Docker Container, and therefore can be deployed quickly and hosted practically anywhere - it's currently running off a Raspberry Pi!

The bot reads in a list of callsigns and continually checks the POTA API or the RBN for any new spots of a given callsign. It only repeats a spot if it moves frequency or after 30 minutes if the spot is still live.

The bot is setup via it's .YML file, where it is given the ID of a discord server, the ID of a channel to post in, and the ID of the two roles described below. This ensures that it only sends messages to the server it is configured for.

Once deployed with these IDs the bot then needs to be added to the server by an admin via it's installation link here, and given access to the channel. In Server Settings > Integrations > OARC_POTA_BOT ensure that the required channel is added to the bot. Once added to the server, the bot then requires the container to be restarted on the server side and the commands should then appear in the “Integrations > OARC_POTA_BOT” menu, and will be only usable by those with the relevant role.

The bot has write message, view channel, and role management permissions to allow it to send the messages in the correct channel and view roles for callsign management.

There are 2 roles for the bot; these can be named whatever the server prefers as they are ID referenced in the bot code, but for example the suggested role names are 'pota-spots' and 'pota-spots-mgr'.

The 'pota-spots' role will ping the members who elect to have this role every time a spot is posted - this role is not required for the bot to function.

The 'pota-spots-mgr' will give the user the ability to run three functions - /showcalls : show the current list of callsigns the bot references. /addcall [callsign] : add a callsign to the list. /removecall [callsign] : remove a callsign from the list. The role is required to allow proper functionality. This ensures that the callsigns list can be added but also trimmed if necessary.

If you would like to be added to the list of callsigns that are spotted, please ping your 'pota-spots-mgr'.

Maintainer: Anthony M7TAW