Posts Tagged ‘Digital’
LHS Episode #090: Purple Hays
Here we are at Episode #090, just 10 away from the century mark. Things have been rolling along fairly smoothly, and except for Russ being deathly ill for the last eight days, there’s not even a lot to complain about. In this episode, we have yet another interview. This time it’s with John Hays, K7VE, of Northwest Digital Radio. These guys are producing an entirely new purpose-built radio platform called the UDR56K. This technology promises to be a great advance in the amateur radio arena as well as in the computing arena. It’s a bit of kit that’s going to find a use in almost every radio amateur’s shack. If you want to find out why, please sit down and take a listen to this episode of LHS. We promise you will not be disappointed.
73 de The LHS Guys
Show Notes #088
Introduction:
- A sticky, stormy night in Texas, just right for podcasting and Russ’ attempt to take over the MintCast.
Announcements:
- Pimpin’ the band: Thanks, as always, to Gamma Leonis for the theme music for the show.
- We recently learned of Tom, KB4HQA’s, unfortunate car accident after leaving the Dayton Hamvention this past May. We wish him a speedy recovery and return to podcasting.
- Richard is a fan of America’s Test Kitchen.
Topics:
- Pimpin’ the network: If you have a podcast and want to reach LHS listeners, please visit Black Sparrow Media and contact us to become a member! The Waveguides Podcast did and so can you.
- Who is your hero in amateur radio, living or dead? Let us know! Richard is gathering information for his super-secret project.
- Storm watchin and workin on radios. While a storm raged in Texas, Richard received an email about an IC-735 that would not power on reliably. Richard’s trouble-shooting philosophy: start with the things that are cheap to replace.
- Richard is hoping to pursue a high-speed multimedia (HSMM) and mesh radio project using DD-WRT or OpenWrt for use in emergency communications. Used routers, such as the Linksys WRT54GL, are ideal and can be found for little money.
Feedback:
- Leif, KC8RWR, wrote to clarify a comment to episode 86, explaining that he’d like to try using an NE602 frequency converter to an RTLSDR radio to receive ham bands.
- Brian, G3XGY, heard Russ on the Mintcast and is looking forward to listening to episodes of LHS! Welcome, Brian.
- Leif, KC8RWR, offers a suggestion for Grant, who was having difficulty with the LHS live Linux CD handed out at Dayton. He thinks it may have been due to Linux not recognizing Grant’s video card. Thanks, Leif.
- Harrison, VE2HKW, a sometime participant in MintCast, expresses his appreciation for episode 85, our interview with David Rowe and discussion of Codec2. Thanks, Harrison. Speaking of Codec2, Russ reports that David Rowe has won the 2012 ARRL Technical Innovation Award for his work on Codec2. Congratulations, David!
- Harrison, VE2HKW, wrote to ask for help with his Icom IC-735 (as mentioned above).
- Claudio of the LinuxBasement podcast thanks us for the mention in episode 87.
Contact Info:
- Contact Richard at [email protected], Russ at [email protected], or both at the same time at [email protected].
- Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.
- Leave us a voice mail at 1-909-LHS-SHOW (1-909-547-7469), or record an introduction to the podcast.
- Sign up for the LHS mailing list.
- Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.
- LHS merchandise is available at the Merch link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!
- Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.
Music:
- “The Television Song” by Bryan Dunn, from the album Vicious Waltz, courtesy of Jamendo.
- “Total Breakdown” by Brad Sucks, from the album Out of It, courtesy of Jamendo.
LHS Episode #088: Total Breakdown
Hello, esteemed listeners. Welcome to the latest installment of Linux in the Ham Shack. Tonight, Richard and Russ take the first third of the podcast to get a few topics off their minds that they’ve been thinking about over the past several weeks, whether or not those topics have anything to do with amateur radio or Linux. Wedged in the middle, discussion of wireless networking comes up, using HSMM and inexpensive Linksys hardware to provide Part 15 and Part 97 based communications for local, regional and EMCOMM use. Then our cagey hosts finish up with a mad dash through feedback, giving useful advice to those listeners with enough mettle to write in. Thanks as always to our loyal followers. We appreciate each and every one of you, each and every fortnight.
73 de The LHS Guys
The $20 Software Defined Radio
Despite my interest in boat-anchors I do find myself peeking ‘over the wall’ from time to time and taking a look at new and emerging technologies. After several demonstrations from friends I had become convinced of the incredible potential of software defined radios and even found thinking about owning one … one day.
Software (Linux) : After poor results with the software running on MS Windows I moved across to Linux and got it working well there. I can’t point you to a single howto for this because I used several different guides and tried a few things before it started working. The most helpful, and probably all you really need, are the build-gnuradio script which gets hardware support and gnu-radio running and the “Getting Started With RTL-SDR” page by Tom Nardi which covers installing Gqrx. All the software used is in development and requires familiarity with the command line to install and use at the moment.
Update : Thanks to a link from Neil W2NDG to an EBay sale I’ve been able to track down a pre-assembled HF up-converter on this page : New HF Converter Kit for the SDR Fun Cube Dongle The price seems to be 45 euros, or about $55 US.
Show Notes #085
Introduction:
- “You know it’s summer in Texas, because all the truck tires shed their winter coats.”
- This episode, an interview with David Rowe, VK5DGR.
Topics:
- Our hosts conduct a lively conversation with David Rowe, VK5DGR, from Adelaide, South Australia.
- David is the author of Codec 2,, an open source speech codec designed for communications quality speech.
- You can find more information about David and his project on his blog.
- Powerpoint presentations and Youtube videos of how Codec 2 works are available on his Codec 2 blog page.
- You can see David’s presentation of Codec2 at linux.conf.au here.
- David then describes the Mesh Potato project, an open hardware product designed specifically to build telephone networks without infrastructure like cell phone towers or land lines.
- The Mesh Potato is available for purchase.
Contact Info:
- Contact Richard at [email protected], Russ at [email protected], or both at the same time at [email protected].
- Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.
- Leave us a voice mail at 1-909-LHS-SHOW (1-909-547-7469), or record an introduction to the podcast.
- Sign up for the LHS mailing list.
- Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.
- LHS merchandise is available at the Merch link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!
- Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.
Music:
- None.
The unfortunate & epic saga of the perfect military radio
The long awaited but ultimately unwanted GMR radio |
As my day job starts to include more long term projects & project management I was particularly intrigued by an article in arstechnica.com. The article is, “How to blow $6 billion on a tech project“, although the title may be more inflammatory than technically accurate.
The article covers the 15 year development of an advanced & unified military radio communications system that suffered from multiple issues including scope-creep & a rapidly changing underlying technology.
If you are involved with a group that is working to develop a product or service you’ll really get something from this article. If you interested in radio systems, military or otherwise, you’ll find this interesting as well.
Its hard to image the frustration people suffer when contributing to a project that is mismanaged unless you have been there yourself. I hate to think of the wasted effort that resulted when people found out How to blow $6 billion on a tech project
Show Notes #083
Introduction:
- Back from Dayton and ready to go.
Topics:
- Dayton Hamvention 2012
- LHS had the same booth as last year at North Hall #131. Estimated attendance was 25,000 individuals. Russ recounts the experience. Thanks to Matt, KC8BEW, who stopped by and helped out at the booth. The LowSWR podcasters stopped by, too.
- FCC Dismisses Texas Ham’s Fourth Petition, Calls it “Repetitive”
- Our hosts discuss.
- Contest logging for Linux.
- Several people at Hamvention asked about contest logging software for Linux, but Russ was at a loss for a recommendation. Upon his return, he discovered…
- SO2SDR Contest Logging Software
- Stefano, IZ3NVR/KD2BGM was trying to get so2sdr to work under Linux Mint and while it would compile, it did not run, so Russ set about trying to get it going.
- It’s not packaged for Debian or Fedora, so it must be built from source, available at the link above.
- The program is written in Qt, so it can be run on devices which support that environment, including Linux and Windows. Of course, Qt must be installed in order to compile so2sdr.
- Russ also had to install the following packages on his Linux Mint machine: portaudio19-dev (NOT libportaudio-dev; apparently, libportaudio-dev is too old), fftw3 and fftw3-dev
- The compilation procedure consists of:
qmake make sudo make install
- so2sdr compiled and ran fine. It did complain that it wanted a parallel port for switching between radios, but you can ignore that if you don’t need to do that.
- Russ gives an overview of the features and capabilities.
- There are a few drawbacks:
- An apparent lack of SSB support? It seems to be CW-only.
- Frequency input checking is broken.
- Keystrokes are not intuitive, but are well-documented.
- However, the built-in help file is quite useful.
Feedback:
- E-mail from Larry, KG4Q, extolling fldigi and JT65-HF. He wishes there was a version of JT65-HF for Linux. Well, Larry, there is! You can download the source here. Also, WSJT does JT65, too.
- Chris, K4FH, caught up with Russ at Hamvention and talked about his Linux in the Ham Shack presentation. He managed to put together a fine bunch of slides completely without our help. Sorry, Chris!
Contact Info:
- Contact Richard at [email protected], Russ at [email protected], or both at the same time at [email protected].
- Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.
- Leave us a voice mail at 1-909-LHS-SHOW (1-909-547-7469), or record an introduction to the podcast.
- Sign up for the LHS mailing list.
- Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.
- LHS merchandise is available at the Merch link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!
- Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.
Music:
- “Down Today” by Jonathan Coulton from the album “Artificial Heart”.
- “Sucker Punch” by Jonathan Coulton from the album “Artificial Heart”.