Telegram Bot for POTA and SOTA information

I created this mainly for HAM Radio operators YO3BEE and YO3DYL, but decided to create a repo for it. Its main features are POTA and SOTA spotting in the form of commands and auto-spotting for selected callsigns.

Getting Started

Dependencies

• Ubuntu 22.04
• Python 3
• All used Python modules are in requirements.txt

Installing

• Make sure you have Python3 and pip installed
• Clone the repository
• Install the requirements:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Setup

• Create a .env file. You must include the following lines for the bot to work:

TOKEN="YOUR_BOTS_TOKEN"
BOT_USERNAME="@YOUR_BOTS_USERNAME"
CHAT_ID=YOUR_CHATS_ID
TOPIC_ID=YOUR_TOPICS_ID

• Add the filters to .env. Note that filters for POTA must contain grids, while filters for SOTA must contain callsigns that represent a country (ex.: Romania - YO YP YR). For the auto-spot feature use specific callsigns. Reference:

AUTO_SPOT="CALLSIGN1 CALLSIGN2 CALLSIGN3"
FILTER_POTA="GRID1 GRID2 GRID3"
FILTER_SOTA="COUNTRY_CALLSIGN1 COUNTRY_CALLSIGN2"

Note that the bot is made to work in a specific topic only.

• You may add additional filters for either POTA or SOTA in a similar manner as above. FILTER_POTA and FILTER_SOTA are the default ones. The additional filters will be applied when sent as an argument of a command. Reference:

EU_POTA="GRIDS_CONTAINING_EUROPE"
EU_SOTA="CALLSIGNS_OF_EUROPEAN_COUNTRIES"

To create a filter, simply add SOMETHING_POTA or SOMETHING_SOTA to .env. The argument passed through the message should coincide with SOMETHING (i.e. /get_pota EU for the above European filter).

• Create a bot using BotFather on Telegram.
• Set the following commands with /set_commands :

/start
/info
/get_pota
/get_sota

Running the bot

Run the following command in the terminal to start the bot:

python3 bot.py

You will receive informational logs in the console and error logs in the log.txt file.

Usage

• For the first time using the bot, run /start.
• Use the /help command to display the available commands.
• Use /get_pota to get the latest information on POTA activations.
• Use /get_sota to get the latest information on SOTA activations.
• You may provide an argument to the /get_pota or /get_sota commands to represent a certain filter that was created in .env.

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. For major changes or bugs please open an issue first.

License

This project is licensed under the GPL-3.0 License - see the LICENSE file for details