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

[Sean Sheedy]

Greetings,

I signed up for AMRAD years ago, but family and the long distance from 
Loudoun pretty much kept me from coming to meetings.  I have visited 
Tacos once (and enjoyed it) and have been to Frank's lab (thanks, 
Frank).  This must have been in 2007 or 2008 because I got my own big 
tall Sprinter van in 2009 which has become my ham shack of sorts.

<political>

I'm very happy that AMRAD is getting into Arduinos, because I believe 
ham radio desperately needs a bridge from this land to ham radio.  I had 
a brief but interesting discussion with an FCC staffer during an 
inauguration event this weekend about our aging demographics.  He 
remarked that I was a young ham (and I have kids in elementary through 
high school.)

It occurred to me that the youth we should be targeting are not 
necessarily folks like my 11 year old, who just got his license, or my 
15 year old, who got hers a few years ago but now is busy winning art 
competitions.  Perhaps we need to target youth of all ages - college 
students, programmer mom and dads, etc, who have become interested in 
Arduino, Pi, HTML5, and other Maker-like things.  In that world, Ham 
Radio should be another tool in a toolkit to accomplish tasks.  With 
these tools they can build cool things that will interest their kids.

There is a large person-to-person communication mindset in amateur 
radio.  But these Maker technologists need communication that is 
machine-to-machine or machine-to-network (as in Internet) where the 
machines are serving a purpose for the hobbiest like reporting weather, 
telemetry, or a million other things that the world can think of that I 
can't begin to imagine.  These kind of people may not be calling CQ on 
80 meters CW but would still be fulfilling most if not all of the 
purposes that the FCC has set out for Amateur Radio.

The most remarkable thing about Arduino is that someone finally realized 
that the embedded toolchain was inscrutable to the vast majority of 
people interested in this stuff, yet was the first barrier facing anyone 
trying to get a PIC or AVR working.  They also brilliantly constructed a 
platform where you can have great success with two simple routines and a 
few lines of very straightforward code.  Yet when the hobbyist is ready, 
they can fully incorporate the most sophisticated concepts like 
interrupts, pointers, structures, objects, and all the powerful tools we 
use in programming and embedded development.  Arduino built a bridge 
over the toolchain headaches that is bringing people into embedded 
development in droves.

I think Ham Radio is missing a similar bridge.  For example, anyone can 
use an ISM band modem (Bluetooth, Wifi, Zigbee) but a hobbyist wanting 
to take this to a wide area level has no simple ham radio option.  For 
example, I've equipped my van with a couple of Arduinos and a router 
running OpenWRT, and have a couple of deactivated Android phones and 
tablets that will make great user interfaces, and are interconnected 
with Bluetooth and Wifi.  But I have no simple way of using Amateur 
Radio to experiment with this on a wider area level. I'm not about to 
hook it into the APRS system in the van. I'm terrified to pollute the 
APRS channel with telemetry messages from my van, and wonder if how 
close to the edge of the "person-to-person communications" rules my 
"machine-to-machine" mindset that places me.  I could cobble together a 
data system using hamfest radios and software or hardware modems, but 
here again we are looking at reinventing the wheel and the toolchain 
preparation that takes time away from my kids.

I could elaborate for hours (and perhaps I need to come to a meeting 
with my new ham son and do this) but I will stop here and answer the 
question posed.

</political>
<arduino>

- One of my projects is an "Arduinopunkt" ( 
https://plus.google.com/115676199813038165917/posts/hPJdCXeRT1U) which 
is a Blaupunkt stereo with the tape mechanism removed and two Arduinos 
and a couple of prototype shields installed in its place.  I have a 
number of lines coming from my instrument cluster (read-only at this 
time!) which are waiting for me to write code for.  I don't use OBD-II 
(yet) though it is available because I can get higher resolution data 
elsewhere (like a speed signal where frequency in Hz = MPH).  One of 
these Arduinos is USB Host capable for use with the Android ADK 
(Accessory Developer Kit) but I think I am preferring Bluetooth since it 
is more reliably present in Android ROMs.  I plan to use a Sprint EVDO 
connection for communications with an EC2 server, and here would be a 
great place to insert a ham radio WAN connection.  I have far more ideas 
for this than I have time to implement them or space to write them.

</arduino>
<linux platform="android,openwrt" attributes="low-power,junk-drawer">

- I have not gotten into Raspberry Pi because I think I can do better 
from a power and display perspective by employing linux-based cell 
phones and tablets, using wifi as the communications channel.  A browser 
or a PhoneGap app provides a natural UI for Arduino or embedded 
functionality exposed through small servers.  I believe folks are 
running certain Linux distros in a chroot environment on Android (there 
is a recipe for doing this on the HP Touchpad.)  OpenWRT not as much 
router firmware as it is a highly functional Linux distribution, 
complete with package manager, which happens to run in routers.  These 
meet all my needs so I don't need a Pi yet.

</linux>
<arduino mode="cw">

- I think there was a discussion a while back on the value of the 
relatively low CPU capability of the Arduino.  I'm frequently somewhere 
I put a bunch of thought into making a crossband repeater for the van 
that identified properly and could support a number of radios, by 
assigning a radio to its own Arduino and having them all communicate 
with a master Arduino that determines who should be transmitting and 
receiving and can accept remote commands to control the repeater.  I was 
planning to put the Morse code sender in its own Arduino.  I got as far 
as writing a non-blocking CW library that can send different messages on 
different pins at the same time.

</arduino>
<arduino style="dead-bug">

- I also built an ISP cable onto one of my Arduinos, mainly to reflash 
another bricked Arduino, but Microcenter has a $12 kit with a 
programming socket which will soon replace it. An ISP cable is not a big 
deal, but the point here is that many people forget that you can pull 
the AVR out of the Uno and bug-style it into any circuit you want.  Why 
doesn't Microcenter have a drawer of raw Atmel microcontrollers?  I 
would like to build a lot of these into the wee corners of my Sprinter 
(for example, one per battery to measure individual charging currents in 
a battery bank.)  Again, what is missing here is a dirt simple, low 
range RF telemetry connection.  The data is disposable, and I could use 
a digital signature to authenticate the source of telemetry data sent 
clear text.  Yet another project for another day.

</arduino>

All I really need now is a big bucket of round tuits.

Sean AI4ID

On 01/25/2013 07:29 PM, wb4jfi at knology.net wrote:
> There has been a proliferation of small boards and development boards, 
> from Arduinos to Raspberry Pis, to Odroids, or PIC Explorers, and 
> others. Amateurs are adopting these platforms to build smaller, smart 
> project of many different types.
>
> I am writing to let all-you-all know that AMRAD is interested in 
> knowing about what projects are being done with these small 
> microcontroller-based boards.  We hope to capture a knowledge of 
> projects and information about using these devices for reference and 
> educating others.  Please let us know what you are doing, and whether 
> you are interested in sharing your work (completed or in progress) 
> with others.  There are several board members that are working on how 
> to collate this information, along with creating fodder themselves.
>
> Also, you may have noticed that I began the subject of this message 
> with a bracketed name.  I would like to suggest that this format be 
> used for emails related to this (or other) subjects, so we can quickly 
> and easily identify the main subject matter of the message.  I belong 
> to a number of groups where adding this information has proven 
> beneficial.  You could go so far as adding [ARDUINO] or [PI] or 
> [WHATEVER] to match your hardware platform of choice.
>
> Of course, I would also like to see this extended to other subject 
> matter, such as [HUMOR] or [POLITICAL] or [NOTWORTHREADING].
> Thank you & 73,
> Terry, WB4JFI
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tacos mailing list
> Tacos at amrad.org
> https://amrad.org/mailman/listinfo/tacos

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