open source

Interesting stuff from Mastodon: Vacuum tubes, open source, and Linux

August 18, 2024 By Dan KB6NU Leave a Comment

Here are three interesting things I found on mastodon last night. If you’re a mastodon user, you can follow me at @[email protected]. If you primarily post about #hamradio, I’ll follow you back.

Electronics at Work: 1943

In 1943, electronics was all about vacuum tubes. This video is a good introduction to how vacuum tubes work and how they were used in industry.

Open Source in Amateur Radio Wiki

The Open Source in Amateur Radio Wiki provides information about open-source software and hardware as well as free home-brew projects for radio enthusiasts and promote the use of open source software and hardware in amateur radio. The wiki’s founder, Michael, DK1MI, writes, “This wiki cannot be filled and maintained by one person alone, which is why I call on people to register on the wiki in order to correct errors, add information, translate articles and/or create new content.” Check out the how to contribute page for more information.

Amateur Radio Community Operating System (arcOS)

arcOS is a bootable Linux system on a USB drive. arcOS is founded on the belief that digital communications within communities of operators can be accessible and easy to use for ALL, regardless of license class or experience.

The author of arcOS is KG4VDK. He writes, “By minimizing the number of included applications and complexity, arcOS strives to avoid overwhelming new or inexperienced users, while offering ambitious users the ability to configure additional features and functionality.”

I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks like something to investigate.

Partly-baked idea: Earning the “ham radio hacker” title

August 16, 2024 By Dan KB6NU 5 Comments

Last week, I attended DEFCON, where I gave my “Ham Radio for Hackers” talk and mingled with a number hacker types. This talk seems to have struck a chord. It was featured on Hack-a-Day, and recently, Steve Stroh, N8GNJ, commented that I am “fast becoming the Amateur Radio Evangelist of techies / hackers / makers.”

All this has got me thinking, though, that perhaps I’m not really walking the walk, so to speak. After all, I’m using an Icom IC-7610 in the shack and an Elecraft KX-3 out in the field. I am using a K3NG keyer that I built as my main keyer, and I have been building my own antennas and baluns, but to really earn the title “ham radio hacker” perhaps I need to step up a little more.

A piece of electronic equipment. — The VU2ESE sBitx is very hackable.

So, how do I really earn that title? What comes to mind is that I could sell my current closed-source gear (dare I say appliances) and go with all homebrew and/or open-source gear. For example, for the shack, I could sell my IC-7610 and purchase an HF Signals sBitx. The sBitx is a 40 W, fully open source, high performance HF SDR transceiver with built-in digital modes, including FT8, RTTY, PSK31, and more, in addition to CW and SSB. Based on a Raspberry Pi 4, this radio is very hackable.

For VHF/UHF operation, I could go with any of the radios that support OpenRTX. Open RTX supports M17 on some radios, too. There’s also the Quansheng UV-K5. There are many open-source firmware hacks for this radio.

Antennas I pretty much have covered. I bought a Buddipole about 15 years ago, but aside from HT antennas, that’s the only commercial antenna that I currently own.

These are all just partly-baked ideas at this point. I don’t know if I’ll ever actually do this, but now that I’m retired, I certainly have the time to do it. Please let me know what you think. Are there other cool open-source/homebrew projects out there that I should also consider?

Amateur Radio Software Award goes to developers of OpenWebRX and OpenWebRX+

May 10, 2024 By Dan KB6NU 2 Comments

The Amateur Radio Software Award (ARSA) committee is pleased to announce that they have selected OpenWebRX, a project led by Jakob Ketterl DD5JFK, and OpenWebRX+, a project led by Marat Fayzullin KC1TXE, as the winners of the 5th annual Amateur Radio Software Award. The award recognizes software projects that enhance amateur radio and promote innovation, freedom, and openness in amateur radio software development.

These projects allow access to radio reception from around the world, whether they are ham operators, shortwave listeners or somebody curious about radio waves. The committee is impressed with the ease of installation, simplicity of use, and overall features that are provided.

The history of these projects showcase the benefit of open source software. OpenWebRX was originally created by András Retzler but due to the demands of his career he decided to discontinue its development. Jakob Ketterl took over the OpenWebRX project and continues to maintain and improve OpenWebRX. Marat Fayzullin’s OpenWebRX+ builds on top of Jakob Ketterl’s OpenWebRX adding support for additional communication modes and advanced features. Both projects are currently separate, allowing implementers of hosting sites to choose between the simple core version or the enhanced version, while allowing the developers to focus on their projects goals.

Jakob Ketterl plans to use the award money to purchase new hardware for the build system of the OpenWebRX project. Recently he added a number of avionics related modes (ADS-B, VDL2, HFDL), a new decoder for DAB (European digital broadcast standard), the ability to decode RDS / RBDS, and a new experimental data interface in the form of MQTT that is intended to allow third-party processing of the information that is received via OpenWebRX.

Marat Fayzullin’s goal for OpenWebRX+ is to support as many communication modes as possible without the need of tweaking multiple pieces of software. In his own words: “In a way, I view OpenWebRX+ as a real-life ‘tricorder’ for the radio spectrum.”

The ARSA committee is already looking forward to next year’s award and welcomes input and nominations for future awards.

Interesting stuff from my Twitter feed: Open-source smart watch, FPGA-based Arduino, open-source hardware

March 22, 2021 By Dan KB6NU Leave a Comment

Lately, my amateur radio Twitter feed has turned into more of a “maker” feed than a ham radio feed. Here are a few of the more interesting tweets….Dan

Lilygo
@lilygo9