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

[Jeff Scaparra]

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

Scap KK4EPP


On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 9:37 PM, Sean Sheedy <sean at thesheedys.com> wrote:

>  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
>
>
>
>
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