Joe NE2Z, head of software development for the HASviolet project has been busy working on application specific use cases for our HVDN LoRa project along with the help of Steve K2GOG for user experience function feedback.
Function before feature
Many LoRa projects hit a roadblock after they reach basic objectives such as basic text chat between units where others such as the Disaster Radiogo much further.
Since HASviolet has been initially built around a Raspberry Pi Zero instead of the various ESP32 boards, we are able to do a few things differently from a development perspective and most of which will port over to ESP32 based boards in the future.
Here are some photos of the user interface that allows easy to navigate function selection without the need for a SSH connection after initial configuration for things like messages, call sign, SSID and other parameters.
A more advanced version of the basic game involves a laser sensor to detect when someone is near by the Duck and it can either start quacking even more or stop transmitting just to annoy the hunter.
Imagine 5 networks in one perfectly-formed, same-small-foot-print development board that is MicroPython enabled. The Pycom FiPy board includes WiFi, Bluetooth, LoRa, Sigfox and dual LTE-M (CAT M1 and NBIoT) In one product, the FiPy gives access to all the world’s LPWAN networks on one tiny board. Processing Details
Espressif ESP32 SoC
Dual processor and WiFi radio system on chip
Networking processor handles the WiFi connectivity and the IPv6 stack
Main processor is entirely free to run the user application
An extra ULP-coprocessor that can monitor GPIOs, the ADC channels and control most of the internal peripherals during deep-sleep mode while only consuming 25uA
2 x UART, 2 x SPI, I2C, micro SD card
ANalog channels: 8_12 bit ADCs, 2_8 bit DAC
Timers: 2_64 bit with PWM with up to 16 channels
DMA on all peripherals and up to 22 GPIO
Physical Interface Details
Additional Details
There is far too many great specifications to list, so have a look a look below for details.
Ground Hog Day: Why does HVDN care?
If we think about the last 100 years of wireless technology and development, amateur radio has often been closely aligned with the latest innovations and finding ways to leverage them across our globally aligned licensed spectrum.
Today, far too many within the amateur radio ranks are complacent in only spending time with applications long since established and keep doing the same thing, over, and over, and over.
While there is still much innovation taking place within amateur radio that the general public is not aware of, our goal within Hudson Valley Digital Network (HVDN) is to focus on what is next and find ways to bridge that back into our hobby interests. If we can share that with other communities such as those interested in programming, making and every possible convergence of hobbies ranging from agriculture to astronomy, that would be amazing
So now what?
Many of us involved in the formation of HVDN also work for a variety of well known technology organizations and somehow still find some time to unwind in our off hours in experimenting with new things.
The upcoming Pycom New York event on September 9th 2019 seemed a perfect way to dive in even further, so expect good detailed review of this fascinating workshop.
Spoiler alert
Timing wise, this was also perfect as we have been busy experimenting with ways to leverage LoRa technology within amateur radio and how to integrate it in to many well known amateur radio related practices. Be sure to watch this space closely as we transition much of our focus towards Micropython, IoT, LoRa and a few other related themes to keep up with the digital and innovation themes we have worked hard to build.
Upcoming Event Notice
On October 24th 2019 at a soon to be determined location will be the first HVDN official involvement in "Open Source Hardware" month along with our good friends from "Squidwrench" where we collaborated on the oscilloscope build project earlier this year and HV Open, which offers great monthly presentations mostly around open source software.
P.S: Would be nice if we could somehow get Bill Murray to attend since he still appears to live nearby within the Hudson Valley, even though his house is for sale. Kegger at Bill's? :)
Embedded computing and open hardware in the form of Raspberry Pi, Arduino and a few others have propelled creativity in the maker, electronics hobbyist, STEM education and amateur radio communities in recent years.
A new format standard called Feather has recently come to market and is very exciting, so lets find out why.
Embedded computing you say?
Since 2012, there have been over 19 million Raspberry Pi sold when combining all the different (and improved) versions sold over the years. Perhaps the biggest competitor to the Raspberry Pi has been the genuine Arduino family of micro-controller boards with an estimated few million shipped.
Both "embedded computing" ecosystems have spawned various forked versions that illustrate the success these two standards have demonstrated both for hardware and software compatibility.
HVDN [reset] is a sub-series of content that compares different enabling or disruptive innovations relevant to the maker, electronics hobbyist and amateur radio community.
One reason that has made both devices popular for add-on device or "hat" accessory development has been standard sizes and pin or GPIO configurations.
This has helped developers create exciting applications quickly & reliably
A new standard called "Feather" has arrived recently and promoted by Adafruit and Sparkfun, both known for providing a range of original add-on products to build even better Raspberry Pi and Arduino based projects.
18 different Feather based products using standard sizing and connections
The [reset] moment
Thanks to Limor Fried and her team at Adafruit along with a number of different vendors like Particle, the new Feather and related terms such as "Feather Board" and "Feather Wing" are poised for a lot of success.
This HVDN [reset] article will explore the "Feather" open hardware ecosystem in comparison to Raspberry Pi and how it simplified development of our latest project by standardizing on this new small form factor wireless enabled embedded computing standard.
Different sizes of Pi for all appetites Let's look at how the size of the most well known and current Raspberry Pi offerings look next to each other.
Pictured from top left clockwise are the Pi Compute 3 Module, Raspberry Pi 3 and Raspberry Pi W Zero
Raspberry Pi has been chosen by HVDN to compare against the Feather format because they all offer wireless connectivity.
Arduino has too many variants to compare that have a similar size to Feather but do not offer wireless connectivity. ESP32 and ESP8266 boards have too many versions.
A major benefit with many of the smaller Feather based products compared to the slightly larger Raspberry Pi Zero is built in battery charging, power options and connectivity options.
Arduino versions such as the Nano, Micro, and Lilypad along with the Adafruit Trinketare left out of this review since they lack wireless connectivity.
Plucking Feathers Specifications help drive standards and adoption, so Adafruit has everything documented on its website to make development easy for most everyone.
Standard dimensions of the Feather help create easy product development and compatibility
Key Feather Physical Dimensions:
The 'classic' Feather and Wing size is 0.9" x 2.0" with 0.1" holes at each corner.
There is one 16-pin breakout strip on the bottom side, centered 1.0" from the left edge.
There is one 12-pin breakout strip on the top side, 1.2" from the left side.
The spacing between the two strips is 0.8"
Don't change the GPIO spacing or location, or you will not maintain compatibility with Wings!
Key Feather "In/Out" Specifications Using the Particle.IO "Argon" product as the example, here are the connection details copied from the super helpful datasheet. Many of the elements found in certain Particle products were even part of the attendee badge at this years Open Hardware Summit to show example of an embedded application in the real world.
So, what is the project? In 2017 HVDN started to develop a modern field strength meter that has remote sense and analytic capability as featured in the Field Strength Meter Monday series.
After working out the actual sensor part of the project and offering for sale a limited run of stand-alone sensors, we then set to work to redesign the RF signal strength sensor unit to fit as a "hat" onto a popular embedded computing board.
The initial plan was to use the Arduino Nano because it was low cost and easy to program but was soon abandoned because certain versions of it used non-standard USB drivers to update or interface to the device.
A later version looked at standardizing around the STM32 based ESP32 and ESP8266 based embedded computing devices because they both offered integrated battery charging and wireless functionality. They also used the very flexible microPython programming language.
WEMOS ESP32 based Wi-Fi/BLE 4MB microPython IoT device
Quality and version control of these different ESP32 or ESP8266 based boards proved hard to develop easily replicated results around, but working prototypes showed the proof of concept was sound and could be improved upon.
Looking at Feather based options again seemed ideal due to a price drop and additional features.
It was decided to build this project around the Particle Argon (Wi-Fi + Mesh) and Xenon boards (BLE + Mesh), with potential support for the Boron (LTE + BLE + Mesh) board at a much later date.
Making projects simple with Feather
The Adafruit Feather based options helped simplify our project design and also allowed even more features to be added!
Future articles will cover microPython coding basics, computer-aided circuit design and fun applications for this exciting project.
This past week in Boston was the Open Hardware Summit on the beautiful campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
An estimated 340 people attended based on the number of filled seats for the great presentations that were scheduled across the day.
Alex Camilo and Michael Welling helped create this amazing open source design for an attendee name badge. OSH Park and Screaming Circuits helped bring this into reality for OHS 2018
Beyond the 17 scheduled educational sessions at the MIT Stratton Student Center, there were also two separate areas for event sponsor demonstrations.
Open Hardware Summit 2018 Highlights
Every attendee received a keepsake "hackable" name tag that includes Wi-Fi connectivity for users to customize the E-Ink display, just like the ones found on the popular Amazon Kindle or in shelf edge displays at Kohl's department store.
More badge functionality can be accessed or enabled by built in FTP or serial connection thanks to the embedded MicroPython based programming along with some additional add on boards also provided to attendees of OHS2018. Other features include temperature sensing, different display fonts, color changing LED lights and SD card storage to name just a few.
The design files, firmware and more details are available on GitHub.
Additionally, a bag full of goodies including a Particle.io Photon board, DigiKey ruler, stickers, notebooks and a number of other open source circuit projects were given to each attendee too.
Since a few members of HVDNwere in attendance for the official event, here are our collective thoughts on the overall OHS2018 experience.
MIT Stratton Student Center was home to the 2018 Open Hardware Summit
Wednesday Evening Pre-OSHWA Networking & Attendee Swag Bag Assembly Gathering
Held at the premier "maker" space in Boston - Artisan's Asylum hosted tours of the member space and was also the backdrop for a pizza party to fuel the volunteers assisting with the assembly of swag bags for attendees of the next day official event.
Pictures of the pre-event have been withheld to protect the identities of all involved since adult beverages may have been also consumed along side the unique veggie crust pizza
The Artisan Asylum was not just home to electronic hobbyist "makers", but others interested in all sorts of other design projects such as this rather interesting creation. More about Artisan's Asylum can be found here
This casual gathering with a purpose was a great way to meet others involved in open source projects with pure hobby backgrounds or a blend of commercial and hobbyist areas of focus.
Thursday OSH2018 Event Sponsor Demo Highlights
There were two separate areas for event sponsors to setup demonstrations and talk with attendees of the event. This staggered approach made it possible for all attendees to roam around the entire event rather than just stay put in one space. Some of the sponsors that the HVDN team met with included:
Many hobbyists seem to have adopted the open source KiCad software or the more simplistic virtual bread-boarding Fritzingprogram recently, but maybe EAGLE should be reevaluated again by some in the hobby community.
EAGLE is one of many CAD (Computer Assisted Design) programs for those
interested in EDA (Elecronics Design Automation)
HVDN PERSPECTIVE: As a long time EAGLE user myself looking at alternatives in recent months, faith is now further restored in EAGLE (for now!!) as a commercial oriented program with a great freemium offering for hobbyists or students on a limited budget.
Tindie.com - Nice discussion about how Tindie can help its sellers reach an audience looking to purchase or experience authentic products rather than foreign copied versions.
Plus, how Tindie can help individual sellers better manage customer contact and support. Products such as the N5BOC duplex board that HVDN reviewed can be found on Tindie for example directly benefit by value offered by this online store which is part of SupplyFrame.
Ever wonder how much money gets spent by hobbyist "makers"? Here is a view into Japan only spending power. Please note this slide was provided by a charismatic bunny ear wearing attendee of OSH2018 and is not related to Tindie.com
Great Scott Gadgets - Fantastic discussion with the founder of this company (Michael Ossmann) behind products such as the HackRF One SDR platform, YardStick One and an exciting new product aimed at those looking for a peripheral expansion solution for I/O over USB called the GreatFET.
Further discussion about other products such as sensor based products similar to the HVDN remote field strength project currently under redesign to accommodate a different Wi-Fi module. This to me was one of the highlights of the event in meeting Michael and talking "shop" about similar topics of interest.
Red Hat - Handing out premium T-Shirts to those interested in Linux and IoT edge, core compute, or other open source related projects that can harness this robust operating system as an alternative to MicrosoftWindows, Apple macOS or other Linux distributions such as Debian or Ubuntu.
Open Hardware Summit logo combines a few common electronic hobbyist components
to form an interesting design to promote the mission and focus of the open hardware community.
Learn more at https://www.oshwa.org/
OSH Park - One of the best and US domestic provider of circuit board production services. Very valuable insight on working better with them for various projects and design tips to maximize hobbyist dollars. OSH Park is also known as the "purple board" guys, so that may give a hint as to whom HVDN is working with for some of its current and future projects.
Production space for the 300 attendee badges was made available at Artisan's Asylum. Badges were being soldered the night before and programmed up until the last minute to make f or a great personalized attendee experience.
Of the scheduled presentations, here is a review of just a few of them:
Sara Chipps: C++ API for Kids
Sara provided an excellent overview on how to encourage and inspire children and people of all ages that its never to early (or late) to learn how to code and enable all sorts of projects or dreams. Her company, JewelBotsdemonstrates the convergence of science, technology, engineering and math also known as STEM. This is outside of her day job at Stack Overflow.
Robin Getz: Open Source Software Defined Radio
Robin works for Analog Devices and provided a great basic understanding of what is software defined radio, its impact on the future of RF design and its ADALM-PLUTO evaluation platform available for purchase through ADI directly or re-sellers such DigiKey.
Prof. Gershenfeld is director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and covered the future of manufacturing through the lens of Moores Law limitations, self replicating machines and the third digital revolution. It was a fascinating presentation that generated many questions from the audience and three rounds of applause.
The ubiquity of compute enabled devices highlight the amount of underlying impact technology has on our expanding global economy
Joseph Apuzzo: MicroPython on ESP32 and LoBo
HVDN's own Joe Apuzzo (N1JTA) had the dubious task of following Neil's presentation and covered the convergence of amateur radio, embedded operating systems and low cost STM32 based micro-controller hardwarethat can offer high relative performance.
Particle.io comparison. The Photon, Electron and soon to be available Argon, Boron and Xenon boards all support microPython and area all very low cost.
Various applications such as MMDVM or IoT through the easy to adopt programming language known as microPython and its performance enhanced graphical interface system known as LoBocan take advantage of both open source hardware and software.
Jodi Clark: OpenCosplay, Teaching the Next Generation
Jodi took the audience on a journey through her progression of a hobby interest that turned into a life changing series events that ultimately unlocked a tremendous career opportunity. CosPlay is the hobby of designing detailed costumes or props found in cartoons, anime, comic books and more that are as realistic as possible.
While many costumers understand how to create amazing things out of fabric and other materials, many do not know how to integrate electronics to create even better costume experiences.
Jodi has a popular YouTube channel that teaches some of this and a video of her presentation can be found here
Nathan Seidle: Founder of Spark Fun (Secret Surprise Speaker)
Nathan was the surprise speaker of the 2018 Open Hardware Summit and shared some recent projects that leveraged or improved upon open source projects. Nathan first shared how the SparkFun team was able to 3D print different components that formed part of a "safe cracking" robot.
He then went on to later share in detail how a community of hobbyists helped improve on a machine used in the rapid production of circuit board assembly.
Sparkfun offers a range of kits, boards, modules and project ideas for the modern electronic hobbyist and education community
The company Nathan founded has proved a valuable contributor to the hobbyist community over the years and his presentation certainly was exciting to be present for.
Ted Hayes: How to Put A Neural Network on an Arduino and Why
The topic that Ted covered rivaled the big picture thinking and complexity explored in Neil Gershenfeld's earlier discussion. The Arduino is a capable low cost embedded computing option available today to hobbyists.
Neural networks partially involve a non-binary state of computing that unlocks amazing potential on low cost hardware, just like what Joe Appuzo covered in his microPython presentation. A more detailed article about neural networks can be found here and a recording of Ted's presentation hopefully will hopefully be made available through OSHWA soon, because I really want to go back and watch it.
Closing Remarks: Alicia Gibb, OSHWA Director
Alicia thanked so many people who made this event possible and let the audience know that the 2019 Open Source Hardware Summit will likely be in China next year. HVDN may be organizing a group rate trip for those potentially interested in attending, so please sign up for updates or inquire if there is interest through our various contact forms.
Why Open Hardware Summit & HVDN relate to each other?
Perhaps it would have made sense to explain about what the open hardware movement is all about first before a review of the event, but now I know I have your attention from all the excitement covered above.
Open source design has proven to disrupt and innovate in the data center. The amateur radio community may be able to innovate by looking at how the open source hardware movement has already impacted other communication technologies
Within the amateur radio community, there have been heated debates about copying the design of freely available designs for projects such as the ZUMspot. This is where the opensource overlay into ham radio comes into focus.
This hotspot device was hard to get at times and priced at a level that not everyone could afford for a niche interest.
These contributed to a friction full experience that hindered adoption and innovation, but at the same time created a competitive opportunity.
Once a few hobbyists copied the original design for this digital hot spot and offered them for sale at more than a 50% price reduction thanks to cheap off shore manufacturing, an entire new market was created that drove additional interest in MMDVM based hotspot purchases thanks to slightly less purchase friction.
Will this new project called "Faraday" be the future of amateur radio? Learn more here at: https://faradayrf.com/
Additional components for the copycat versions of the original ZUMspot were now high in demand such as cases, power supplies, better antennas, displays and even oscillators!
This never would have happened had there not been open source hotspot hardware available alongside its opensource software needed to create an interesting piece of communication equipment.
Amateur radio operators that had experimented with low cost DMR radios such as the TYT MD-380 or Radioddity GD-77 that did not have local repeaters to communicated with others through now had something entirely new to experiment with thanks to this open source derived experience.
The ZUMspot sparked additional purchases and areas of interest due to its open source design and the competitive opportunities it created
Open source projects have created tremendous amounts of spending that would not have otherwise happened without this contribution to the hobby.
There is a huge opportunity for the amateur radio community to look towards other hobbyist communities in order to bring expertise they do not have related to licensed wireless communication capability.
Open Hardware Summit showcased so much synergy potential for the renewed relevancy of amateur radio outside of what some most associate with amateur radio.
HVDN wants to help promote experimentation through open source hardware, so please use the search cloud on the HVDN Notebook to find other articles tagged with Open Source Hardware in the future.
Feel free to share some links to your favorite blogs, project pages, re-sellers, etc related to open source hardware.
Next Monday, June is June 20th and National Wi-Fi Day.
HVDN will celebrate by releasing our Smart Field Strength meter that has been the lead up to the "Field Strength Meter Monday" series.
Along the way of the project design, a few changes were made which includes:
Shifting from using an Arduino Nano as the "smart" element of the project to the WEMOS ESP32
Redesigning the HVDN FS1 RF sensor board to stack directly on top of the ESP32
Simplifying the power source by using the ESP32 with integrated lithium battery charger
Learning some of the coding needed to make a self served web page from the ESP32 instead of an Android application for remotely reading the RF sensor data.
The project software coding and board layout designs will be made available as a reference. Completed versions will be available for purchase in the HVDN store which has not officially been launched yet, but can be found here.
HVDN FS1 LT5507 RF sensor unit top view of stand alone PCB board
If you are catching up on
the HVDN Smart Field Strength Meter project or coming across this for the first time,
here are past articles in the "Field Strength Meter Monday Series"
With the brief US Memorial Day weekend break over, the first post of June in the series will focus on ensuring the RF power sensor is calibrated for
somewhat accurate measurements useful to the amateur radio community. Key design frequencies are:
The frequencies chosen between the 1 MHz and 25 MHz were chosen because they are in the sub bands for digital text transmission modes such as PSK31 and FT-8. Both modes have great signal to noise ratios and permit very long distance communication with low transmit power. Ensuring optimal antennas are used, especially for portable or temporary operation, is one use case for the field strength meter to get the most out of these most modern modes for those interested in HF communications.
Frequencies chosen between 28 MHz and 925 MHz were chosen with a little less formality. The 28.120 MHz and 50.290 MHz were chosen because of similar use cases as those in the HF band. 146.000 MHz and 223.000 MHz were chosen as good approximate "middle" frequencies in the 2m and 1.25m bands. The three frequencies in the 70cm band were chosen since its the widest and most used amateur band. Lastly, 925 MHz was chosen for representation of the 33cm band which is not very well used, but can help determine the top end of the field strength meter range.
Antenna Calibration Comments
With such a wide design range, it would be hard to use a 1/4 wave antenna for each frequency for calibration, even though that would be optimal. Only 3 antenna lengths will be used to calibrate the field strength meter.
6in/15.3cm = Chosen for small size and near 1/4 wave length for 70cm UHF testing
19.2in/48.5cm = Chosen for mid length size and near 1/4 wave length for 2m VHF testing
39.2in/1m = Chosen as a standard metric length to be used for general HF and VHF testing
The same exact material diameter will be used for all three antenna lengths
Unit Measurement Calibration Comments
Using the tables found in the "RSSI, dB, Oh My!" article is where we will get our calibration targets of 50 uV for the lower 8 frequencies chosen and 5.0 uV for the upper 8 frequencies chosen.
The upper frequencies will be easier to calibrate based on easier to set up test sites compared to the lower frequencies which require larger reference antennas, so calibrations will be more general for HF compared to more accurate for the higher frequencies.
Calibration Goals
The general theory in ensuring an S9 signal level can be generated at specific frequencies from a chosen distance from the transmitting antenna is how we will arrive at our calibration figures. The transmit power from the signal source will also be uniform at 37 dBm or the equivalent of 5 watts for all measurements to gauge the distance needed to generate the S9 signal level.
![HVDN [reset] is a sub-series of content that compares different enabling or disruptive innovations relevant to the maker, electronics hobbyist and amateur radio community.](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivoKfhjxHwSR77kUOOMNRmKfWKhs9yvM04ZQpT7SpWyNTPQjlI4EDRqmhHUVVEMOf1eC9KITyzLYkSQkFNO5Qlo05UwKhOmq63aVQEpvXX4woLFaAYYA9H4HpMHeidfwOcLuxj-IVQaMF2/s1600/hvdn_reset_logo.jpg "HVDN [reset] is a sub-series of content that compares different enabling or disruptive innovations relevant to the maker, electronics hobbyist and amateur radio community."){kind=logo}
