[POLITICAL] [ARDUINO] [OPENWRT] [LINUX] What are you building?

[Dave]

    I am going through the <hamradionow.org>.  All of the talks from 
this years DCC are there.  One is on Codec2 - an open source 
narrowbnd(1.2 KHz) digital codec designed for HF use.  4 other videos 
were on GNU Radio.  Very interesting and would be for all the young 
computer hackers.

Dave - WB6DHW
<http://wb6dhw.com>

On 1/25/2013 7:54 PM, Jeff Scaparra wrote:
> I am a newer ham and I wanted to voice my opinion on combining new 
> technologies with ham radio. These are solely my opinion based on 
> my experience in ham radio and other communities.
>
> I agree completely with recruiting new programmers, makers, security 
> professionals. I am probably one of the younger people in Ham Radio 
> and I am 28. I have tried to get some of my friends into it but 
> talking on a radio doesn't really interest them (I realize there is 
> more to it than that but that is the perception). The only way to 
> really bring these people in is to increase digital experimentation. 
> Embrace open standards that allow the "hacker" community to play 
> (Hacker in the inventor sense and not malicious). I think D-Star is an 
> awesome idea with one fatal flaw. A proprietary voice codec. I have a 
> USRP and it is a great software defined radio but I can't really write 
> code to play with DSTAR because of the codec issue. I could probably 
> buy the dongle and make it work but then I can't modify it or try 
> something new very easily. I am encourage  by the codec2 work.
>
> We should encourage people to create new digital modes and find ways 
> to link radio, computers, internet, robotics, etc.. I believe that 
> this would attract more people. I also know that some of these things 
> are going on. I think that it is important for the people leading 
> these efforts to not only explain their importance to other HAMs but 
> to present them to the maker, and hacker communities. By showing the 
> interesting technologies and how they could be applied it will 
> encourage people to get licensed and start tinkering. There are also 
> some FCC rules that hinder our abilities to "tinker". Personally I 
> would like hams able to operate in any publicly published mode so long 
> that it fits in x-bandwidth inside of band-y. I believe that this 
> would allow for the most innovation and bring more technological 
> advances to our community. However this goes against tradition and 
> maybe hard to get support for. I would also like to see 
> more emphasis on building equipment v. buying it. It will take all 
> kinds of people to do the things I am talking about, visionaries, 
> programmers, electronic engineers, robotics engineers, etc...
>
> My 2 cents
>
>