Will keep this brief as a photo is a 1,000 words and a 3 part video combining for 59 Minutes and 13 Seconds is worth I do not know what, but.....
You need to know what is going on within 902 and 928 MHz!
On September 30th 2024, I was invited to present on what is known as the 33cm spectrum to the Warren County Amateur Radio Club. This plan was hatched by the club president, Adam Koeble KD2YFY and I over the summer while attending the Sussex County Hamfest. I just needed a topic, but knew it would involve MeshTastic and something else interesting.
Thanks to the NextNav news brought to the attention of the amateur radio world by the ARRL, I think I had my plan. With not only the amateur radio community irritated, the commercial world is not happy with what they are attempting to do. Even the Electronic Frontier Foundation has something to see about this possible land grab.
In my video, I explain who are the major users and what they are doing between 902 to 928 MHz. Amateur radio is not as important here as some may think, as a secondary user for 39 years. But, those who are using unlicensed devices plus those using licensed frequencies with higher power here are pretty irritated should this NextNav plan get approved by the FCC.
My personal opinion is that there is enough spectrum to keep everyone happy, but amateur radio should lose secondary status and be given a few portions as primary users only. I would offer the following scenario.
927.000 to 927.500 MHz (Repeater Output Block)
902.000 to 904.000 MHz (Weak Signal Users & Repeater Input Block)
910.000 to 912.000 MHz (Amateur Data Experimenters Block)
This reduces from secondary status from 26 MHz of total spectrum down to only to less than 5 MHz of spectrum. The blocks above were chosen to protect repeater users as well as weak signal activities. It then dedicates a block to be used specific for any other use, such as modified use only for ISM repurposed devices for amateur radio only. These are my summarized comments submitted to the FCC before the deadline period.
A plan like this is more than fair, offers clarity for commercial users and easy to coexist with existing licensed users in almost every area plus provides a great incentive for unlicensed users to consider a path towards amateur radio or just stay as ISM users.
Let the rest of the ecosystem fight over the remaining 21 MHz left. Has the ARRL proposed anything? I would love to find out!
Have watch. I broke the video down into three parts and you can play them via a playlist or one by one:
Part 1 - Mostly just focuses on some history of the spectrum and how many devices are sharing the same spectrum across all users, licensed or unlicensed.
Part 2 - Gets into more details of the commercial users and breaks down spectrum used by different types of users, regardless of what they are doing as licensed or unlicensed users plus if they are commercial minded or not.
Part 3 - Focuses 100% on the very basics of MeshTastic, which uses unlicensed devices anywhere across the entire spectrum and by those that are not licensed and thus restricted to what they can do legally compared to the benefits of an amateur radio license holder, but will face other issues too!
After thirty full days of monitoring the National Weather Service balloons launched from the capital region of New York State, here are some observations.
Hopefully this inspires you to become interested in this unique weather monitoring opportunity anywhere in the United States or other parts of the world using inexpensive and easy to set up equipment.
Twice daily and from more than 90 launch sites in the United States, the National Weather Service releases weather balloons to help monitor upper air observations for the first 15 miles of atmosphere. The closest launch site to me comes from the Albany area of New York and currently the exact location is on the grounds of University of Albany instead of at an official NWS facility.
Even with all the advancements in space or ground based radar or other sensors, a radio sonde balloon still is one of the best ways to monitor a variety of useful measurements.
Setting up a receiver which listens for these weather balloons is relatively easy and inexpensive. Not much additional knowledge is needed and generally the project of setting up a ground receiver will teach a number of other useful things related to some basic RF and computer related skills to anyone interested in STEM related interests.
30 Days: What Did I Learn?
Different times of the year of course will have different general weather characteristics. Here in New York, December and January are known to be a bit tricky thanks to cold and wet weather which usually includes some gusty conditions too!
From my home in Poughkeepsie shown as the radio tower on the map, I am easily able to receive the Albany area launched balloons once they generally reach around 17,000 feet AGL.
Signals first are heard by my antenna at an average of 58 miles south of the launch point and the average furthest signals away are closer to 100 miles usually towards the north east.
Looking at the above map, green target symbols are for where the balloon signal was first received and the red target symbol is where the last signal heard by my receiver system. A explosion icon is where the balloon reached maximum altitude before it burst and started to descend.
Given the distances involved from my home location, a quick retrieval is not very likely by me but the goal is eventually to capture one and send it back to the National Weather Service.
In general, the wind mostly blows west to east. On more than a few occasions, it got so windy, some balloons traveled so quickly and accurate telemetry was not received for too long.
On average, locations are sent once every 10-15 seconds and more than 3000 positions are captured per flight. Here is an example of January 22nd to 29th 2024 recordings and general statistics.
The blue lines on the map are the flight paths and there is much greater granularity to be observed when plotting the path on Google Earth. Its worth noting that sometimes the GPS on the balloon sometimes sends a false report for a short time to help explain the straight horizontal or vertical lines on the map.
Within the AutoRX application which is what runs on a Raspberry Pi based receiver along with an SDR dongle, its easy to also output in real time to Google Earth to visualize in 3D, such as to see where packets were not received by looking at the lighter colored part of the map when zoomed in. Sometimes wind gusts make the balloon much faster than the reporting transmissions occur.
Here is a converted MKV to GIF video file zooming around from azimuth and elevation angles to show more details in the North East from receiving site, path and location details during the February 1st evening launch from Albany area.
It is interesting to see how the wind blows is sort of the summary of this article. Data like this is just one of the many inputs used in more complex weather forecasting. When the time is right and weather nice, it will be fun to retrieve a balloon once its on the ground.
Details about that can be found on www.sondehub.org and there are also portable receivers easily created from the ESP32 LoRa boards like the Heltec V3 which also runs other projects like Morserino, HASviolet, LoRa APRS and MeshTastic.
Before COVID was a thing, the HVDN team worked on a project called HASviolet. The underlying wireless technology for this was LoRa. The timing was great for us to get into this spread spectrum technology as the costs for consumer hobbyists were coming down and the possibilities were endless or so we thought back in 2018 and into 2019.
There are many, many videos by all the famous ham radio people on YouTube covering this also, so chances are you have heard of LoRa by now right?
This article is going to focus on six clear reasons why if you are involved in ham radio and our modern digital future, you need to get up to speed about LoRa now. And.... we are only hyperlinking once, so get ready to do some massive Google action for things mentioned below!
This article does not apply to people who think that HF and CW is the pinnacle of ham radio, so do NOT start making comparisons because LoRa has different goals, mostly deployed on the 70cm and 33cm bands. Here we go...
Reason #1:Its another mode with infinite settings - In LoRa language, there are some settings you can adjust that give you optimized communication. As in "traditional" ham radio, in voice modes like AM, FM and SSB, you can change your bandwidth and audio to your liking.
With Morse code, you can change how fast or slow you send with the aid of your radio features plus how to filter out adjacent signals. With digital voice modes like DMR, you really do not adjust anything, just the destination details like color code, time slot and talk group.
Other modes like D-Star, Fusion, NXDN, P25, there are other things you change relative to destination, but with these you can also send different non-voice payloads like location, texts and limited telemetry. LoRa also does not compete directly with the likes of FT8, PSK31, RTTY, etc since it can do so much more. Closest competitor in terms of utility might be VARA, but its still not the same.
It is hard to RTFM if no manual exists. Welcome to LoRa and many other modern things which only include out of date limited print material. Its no longer 1979. Lets move on here.
With LoRa, you adjust the frequency and bandwidth plus specific settings for spread factor (SF) and coding rate. The right blend of settings can provide short and fast transmissions for short range communication or longer and slower communications for greater range plus higher overall throughput or data speeds.
There are many options in between which give you higher or lower data rates too. This is important depending on what you are communicating and how often. LoRa does not support voice communications though, but can actually have up to eight distinct simultaneous channels for different needs and that is actually pretty cool.
There are preset options for frequency and the right settings to chose from are built in to many projects already. The top non-academic level projects to look into are Meshtastic, HASviolet and LoRa APRS.
All three are ready for use and support many different applications not found elsewhere in amateur radio today using advanced waveforms, low signal to noise ratios and options around spread spectrum technology at very low cost. Beware that interoperability is still being worked on given frequency and setting variances.
Reason #2:It is a cheap way into ham radio for people who do not speak - Sure, you can go and buy a cheap Baofeng or Quansheng radio for VHF/UHF voice communications or any other inexpensive radio that may do digital voice modes like DMR with or without some extra messaging capability. You can also buy and build some type of 40m CW lower end kit for around the same price.
Sure you can use a wire and connect the radio to your computer device and do limited data over audio channels.
Price is not the goal here, but for under $50.00 you can buy a pair of either 433-510 MHz or 900-928 MHz LoRa radios plus maybe a case for both.
While all the projects mentioned support either frequency range, there are benefits to both options.
If you plan to coordinate with others, try to all buy the right spectrum radios. It is worth noting that the M17 mode boards available for under $50 today can do both voice and data, but require a 9600bd capable radio and is still the same type of 12.5 kHz signal used by other digital voice modes. So we are still not talking about price. For under $50 you can buy two LoRa radios on 70cm, install the right code for which over project catches your eye and that is all you need along with an antenna for greater range.
Reason #3:It offers great community value - If you and your local friends can actually plan together, you can communicate in interesting ways with LoRa.
Depending on the project you like best, its possible to bounce your signals from one another using mesh features or over a wider distance via a well placed digipeater.
While most LoRa options are low transmit power, the range is pretty impressive and this allows both ham radio and unlicensed people to talk to each other with LoRa. As a ham, you can use higher power and create nodes that serve the whole community. Be careful however when selecting frequencies so that you do not share unlicensed users over a digipeater created via LoRa in amateur radio.
Here is your chance to actually do something for the community because no one who is not a ham could care less about your morning "fiddle faddle good guy net".
Your neighbors can check in with one another if the internet or cellular network goes down.
This is your chance to do something without a 130ft wire antenna and the cult like aura of Morse code or even the local analog voice repeater where some "morning drive" discussions take on some form of papal like positioning.
Once you get your community engaged with LoRa, then you can try and suck them in to the parts of the hobby you like better later on. Again, LoRa could be a great gateway into ham radio if thought about correctly.
Reason #4: Gets you out of the house- We know you want to sit in your shack or pack your car full of gear to go to a park and bring way too much equipment to play "Parks On The Air". With a LoRa device, you can look for other signals and be surprised who may be using LoRa, especially via Meshtastic if everyone is using the same frequency and settings.
Clip a node to your dog collar or hide one on your wife's bag to track them, if you have a LoRa device with GPS. Give one to your kid or grandchild to stay in touch with you in an area with bad cellphone coverage. It is easy to pair a LoRa device to your smartphone to create a modern text communicator.
There are many things you can do with LoRa and it also makes a great discussion point the next time you are doing POTA and no one cares about 20m contact park leader points. If you are into SOTA, this may really get fun during summit to summit contacts especially since these are very small and light weight.
You may even wish to visit your local library to have them print a 3D case for you if you do not own a 3D printer. So, anything with LoRa may get you doing something different somewhere different and possibly with different people for different reasons.
Reason #5: People who have 3D Printers will love it - If you have a 3D printer, now you can print cases for your local community which are customized how you like them for a LoRa based project. This also gives you reasons to find unique places or uses for a LoRa device to help justify why you bought your printer in the first place.
If you got into digital modes like DMR, D-Star, etc via a MMDVM based hotspot, think of LoRa as the next thing you need a 3D printed case for.
Reason #6: Update the software to do really cool things - Best for last. If you use the Meshtastic software and want to try something else, just flash the new program to the ESP32 LoRa device you have or whatever other option you acquired.
It is super easy to change things around and then even make you rethink your device case since you may now want to connect sensors to your LoRa device. Have you ever wanted a mailbox alert to know when your small Amazon packages get shover in your postal box? You can do that!
There are so many options to explore and software is usually free, thanks to a community of opensource people.
Heck, maybe if even gets you dabbling in some code without feeling overwhelmed since the projects mentioned here are well documented on Git.
Ok, now that I have your attention
You are probably thinking, what to buy and where to buy it. Ham radio people often jump at the chance to spend a little money. And, by little I mean little. That last under $50 HT you bought because you saw a video on YouTube or a local friend got one is a great example.
How about those under $50 ham clock screens for your shack? YES! LoRa is now another thing competing for your under $50 spending.
Before you go and buy something, please do a little more research. This is not for someone who struggles to find the power switch on a computer, how to use CHIRP software, or does not yet know that Raspberry Pi is not a snack.
The good news is there are people who did the hard work for you already to help guide what you buy, but beware, not all LoRa products are the same. Here are the tips for making your first LoRa related purchase.
Tip #1 - Spectrum choice. It is likely better to purchase 70cm (420-450 MHz) capable equipment compared to the 33cm (900-928 MHz) type. Be sure what you are buying is the correct frequency range. Some options on Amazon may be unclear so be 100% sure of this first before buying.
Tip #2 - LoRa is not always a finished product. While there are some really cool things on Etsy, Amazon and others sites you can find simply by searching for "LoRa". Likely a case is the most important thing to put an unfished LoRa board in. Here is an example if you want to get started which includes a basic case, but not self contained in any other way.
Tip #3 - Power! The Heltec v2 board linked in the above tip can run on a battery, but this means you need to buy a battery and a case to put your radio in. This means you will do some more research. A great example can be found on Etsy via a reputable seller who often gets sold out quickly since he prints on demand per order, but are top quality. If you have your own 3D printer, you can print the cases yourself though since the plans are in public. Really consider power to your device early on to help you with future use cases.
Tip #4 - How do you use it? The Heltec or TTGO options out there based around an ESP32 provide the ability to connect the LoRa board to a computer or smartphone over USB, WiFi or Bluetooth. If you plan to build some sort of "LoRa Base Station" for use at home connected to an amplifier and larger antenna, using USB is fine since it can power a board and provide communications at the same time without needing a battery.
Tip #5 - Oh, this is sort of like APRS for tracking things? Yes, LoRa can be used for that. Not every LoRa board has GPS built in. Many boards can connect an external GPS to it if you wish to add that later. Many applications can still send location data without a GPS since you can either manually put coordinates in or use the GPS from your smartphone. I would advise start with the two pack of LoRa mentioned above first and then perhaps buy a device like a TTGO T-Beam which is almost all self contained, including battery.
Tip #6 - Tell your friends!! For this to work, we need more people using LoRa. There are groups focused on frequency standard like 433.775 as being a common one so far, but with different spread and coding rate. If a few digipeaters can be put up somewhere using this inexpensive equipment, communications range is increased. Parts or Europe have been ahead of one North American country for a few years now, not surprisingly as example.
Finishing Up
There are no links above in article which is different compared to many HVDN articles. We are trying to encourage you to go and search on your own. That is why!
If you build it, they will come is how the saying goes, right? When it comes to digital voice modes today in amateur radio, the best way to chart the growth of the most popular modes is by looking at repeater deployments.
No individual, club or group of people will invest the time, money and annoyances to deploy a repeater on common amateur VHF and UHF spectrum unless they know there are people who will use it. And, for people to use a repeater they need the appropriate radio which uses the appropriate mode or modes of communication. This means that people need to coordinate and that is not always easy.
Going into our 13th edition of the global amateur radio repeater round up over the last seven years, no one can argue where the direction of digital voice is headed, but where are the actual users today?
Please review any of the past linked articles for expanded commentary on mode specific drivers such as new radios or features related to different modes because this update will take a different direction.
As we can see in above chart, DMR continues to grow but there are so many splintered networks such as Brandmeister, TGIF and FreeDMR which make it frustratingly interesting for new joiners to figure out how to find people given that each network is separate and each uses its own talk groups/destinations unless they are content with using a hotspot.
A hotspot is under 100% control of the user compared to a repeater, so allowing your hotspot to go to different networks (on DMR) or other modes as well as any of the destinations (talk groups, bridges, reflectors, etc) is possible. Repeaters do not permit that, but that is not the intent anyway.
DMR Networks: Lessons in diplomacy
While Brandmeister is still the most popular, not every DMR repeater will support talk groups the same way which forces some users to use a hotspot. This make programming radios a challenge for some people as well as those that are experienced in keeping radio programming up to date as it relates to repeaters.
For new users who look for local repeaters that have DMR, the same talk group (Example: 31368) will not reach the same people if they are on a different network, unless someone created a bridge but that sort of defeats the purpose for different networks anyway. This frustrates people since DMR is not just DMR, its DMR that is implemented at the network level differently.
This network flexibility has proven to be a benefit and a curse at the same time for DMR, but that is ok because its still the most popular and lowest cost entry to digital voice. DMR has also proven to be the driver behind many innovations on network capability which the others did not focus on.
Any Pi-Star or the WPSD/W0CHP variant running on an inexpensive hotspot is just like having your own repeater though and you can set it up however you wish.
It is estimated by HVDN that there is 70:1 ratio of hotspots sold compared to digital voice repeaters currently online. At any given moment according to Brandmeister, there are well over 15,000 hotspots connected at any time. Currently, there are only a little over 11,000 digital voice repeaters, so that means that its possible there have been over 700,000 hot spots sold.
There are many amateurs, including myself that have had multiple hotspots over the years and those I no longer used, were sold/given to others in the hobby. Its easy to think that many interested in digital voice likely have or have had in excess of three or more hotspots so that 700,000 number is actually pretty modest and is probably too low.
Digital voice repeaters do not all need the internet
DMR also as a reminder does not need the internet and there are repeaters that provide only local coverage and users do not need to be registered via a central user database, even though it helps to have an ID linked to your callsign from https://www.radioid.net/
Yaesu Fusion and Icom's D-Star have a more tightly controlled network to connect repeaters to for those wishing to communicate via the aid of the internet, but also can be configured for local only coverage, but there are likely far less repeaters using these modes which operate that way. Registering on the Icom D-Star network can be annoying and Fusion while easier, still requires registration for internet access.
The commercial modes like P25 and NXDN can be deployed any way the repeater owner wants, but these will never reach the same scale as DMR or dedicated vendor modes because handheld or mobile equipment is not designed with the radio amateur in mind as its main buyer.
Here is the actual data for repeaters globally by mode and surveyed twice a year along with matching compound annual growth for period by period and total growth.
Eight Repeaters: And growing.....
Now lets look at the M17mode again which was designed by amateurs for amateurs, but there are no commercially made handheld or mobile radios available to support this just yet.
Instead, for the time being its easy to purchase a few auxiliary devices which connect to 9600bd capable mobile radios to allow them to transmit and receive M17 protocol.
There are also a few other devices such as transceiver capable SDR devices like a HackRF, Caribou or LimeSDR which can be used with software like SDRangel on a computer to communicate M17 mode.
Ready to purchase equipment will be available so anyone can use M17 for radio to radio communications, or radio to repeater to radio communications with or without the internet. Pictured above is the small batch run M17 board that only maybe a dozen people in the world currently have which converts any 9600md radio into a M17 radio.
Currently there are eight listed M17 repeaters on www.repeaterbook.com and this is three more since May 2023.
North America as of the time of this article has a four M17 repeaters
And the remaining four elsewhere in the world can be seen below.
The current state of M17 is the "sweet spot" for HVDN given our focusing on emerging technologies that have evolved from ideation to "beta release" easily accessible for those motivated to hands-on experiment and collaboratively discover versus appliance focused push button operators.
Over the last seven years as digital has become mainstream, those who consider themselves early adopters have moved on to other things. It appears that M17 is the going to be the new playground for those looking for something new.
M17 is also not just voice communications since it also handles text. All the digital voice modes allow for this, but not many people use them. It is this non-voice capability which HVDN will be spending more time focusing on in our build out.
Let's Just Wait: Club Excuses
When HVDN was created in 2016, it was to partially provide intelligence to the local area here in New York who needed education about the most popular digital modes and assist those with becoming familiar with what turned out to be DMR as predicted. Now seven years later, not much has changed in the region. This has been a success, but only if you add up all the people who bought DMR radios and hotspots and not who use them every day, like an HF radio or 2m analog radio.
Eventually, just talking radio to hotspot to internet to hotspot to radio sort of gets boring. Am I wrong? No.
The challenge is that still seven years later, the New York area and Hudson Valley specifically has not done anything innovative when it comes to embracing digital voice or infrastructure.
The local ARRL leadership excluding a few recent changes and leading clubs in our area continue and constantly fall back on "low effort" activities like HF contests, actual hamfests that do not get cancelled, recurring entry-level presentations, etc and ignore the fact that in order to attract and retain members, various leading edge activities and the infrastructure to connect them are needed
Amateur radio is different things to different people and many clubs complain about dwindling membership, lack of treasury or lack of engaged members. None of them actually try to fix this known issue or make it hard for those willing to fix them. Events and new technology are needed to maintain and grow.
HVDN started off strong but only to be overwhelmed by some who just wanted the same thing, so now we will further distance ourselves from the general interest community's instead of being forced to embrace the failures by other clubs.
Tell me where the freaks at!
As 2023 now comes to a close, the seven year experiment ends and moves to the next phase. HVDN will be focusing on building out its network in order to put the Hudson Valley on the map even more so and to attract like minded individuals to its membership ranks.
Our first experiments with membership driven models did not allow us to target the right people, so those who were paid members have not been asked for dues in about three years to bring us back to zero and move to our new membership model.
Between technologies such as M17 and LoRa, there will be some interesting things ahead for HVDN. Our suggestion is other area clubs better get ready or get left in the analog dust.
The member rates for HVDN will also be changing to raise the bar even higher and to act as a nice filter to retain and reward our contributing members in current standing. Let the rumble begin!
Its been a while since HVDN has written about the SDRangel software, its many changes and new features have been largely at fault for not having time to write about them!
Since the FreeDV demodulator post last September introduced in SDRangel v4.11.8, the software is now up to v5.14.0 as of October 11th 2020.
Over the last year, Edouard F4EXB and a growing number of contributors have compiled 47 total new release candidates. This level of open source contribution makes SDRangel one of the most popular software defined radio software suites that supports both receive and transmit today.
Getting SDRangel to work is now easier than ever thanks to already compiled execution packages for Microsoft Windows. All you need to do if using Windows is look for the below in therelease you want to experiment with installing.
Linux however still offers the best overall experience, but only by a narrow margin in my opinion when comparing use between Windows x64 10 Professional compared to Ubuntu 20.04 on the same Lenovo T495 with 40GB of RAM along with a Lime SDR Mini and RTL-SDR V3 USB dongle.
Lets talk about APRS
Either 1200 or 9600 baud communication can now be sent from SDRangel since v.4.17.0. Receive is not yet supported which may limit its use for now. Getting this to send packets with a Lime SDR Mini was trivial once I set the channel sink to use the Lime SDR Mini. More about the packet modulator can be read about here.
Here are a few images of SDRangel configured as well as showing it transmit, plus being received by a Kenwood TH-D74 radio.
Setting the transmit power and antenna port in SDRangel is important based on the frequency and what you are trying to do. A few inches away between the LimeSDR mini and its small "stub antenna/dummy load" on the transmit port.
The "high" filter and about -10dbm gave me the desired short range test I was after on an unused frequency that is part of a UHF channel plan HVDN is proposing for US use of underused spectrum in the bottom part of the US 70cm band.
Pressing the transmit button allowed the packet to be sent and received by the Kenwood radio set to the same frequency.
It is possible to use a USB GPS to share location data with SDRangel by adding that under the "My Position" tab in the SDRangel menu along with the proper device arguments for the GPS.
Lets talk about LP-WAN
This refers to many technologies that fall under Low Power Wide Area Networking such as LoRa and Zigbee. In the aptly named v5.14 version of SDRangel, it is now possible to transmit various combinations of IEEE 802.15.4 based communication. Going back a number of releases it is also possible to receive different combinations that are possible under the LoRa.
There is far too much to say about the differences and similarities between these different LP-WAN technologies, but the fact that SDRangel supports these two types of LP-WAN options is fascinating
Some possible applications worth exploring include controlling or monitoring utility devices and different projects that require very low power but longer range low bandwidth communication.
Due to possible "creative" use of both the capability of these modes of communication and the transmit capability of some SDR devices like the Lime SDR mini, HVDN is not going to provide details on using these functions since they may lean towards possible malicious use by some people.
We do encourage you to have a look at our HASviolet project which allows for both the transmission and reception of LoRa based communications, along with our latest builds involving the ESP32 based TTGO T-Beam devices.
A very good article can be found here to better explain the differences of LoRa and 802.15.4 thanks to IEEE and the authors from the Athena Research Institute in Greece
The HVDN HASviolet project is alive and well, thanks in part to continued software development by Joe Cupano NE2Z and further (but limited) user experience poking and prodding from Steve Bossert K2GOG.
A while back we decided to start officially supporting additional hardware so as to not be limited to only Raspberry Pi Zero for "Compute" and the Adafruit LoRa Radio Bonnet for the "Communicate" layers.
What is next for HASviolet?
It has been a busy past few months on things outside of hobby interests which has limited time for more articles, so here are two presentations talking about our journey as well as some of the underlying "technicals" on why we chose LoRa for the HASviolet project.
Both presentations were derived from a presentation given to the Bergen Amateur Radio Club during one of its member meetings earlier this summer.
Look out for some updates involving the TTGO T-Beam v1.1 (not the v0.7 or v1.0) which is where we will be doing more development and details on the how and why.
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.
The HVDN HASviolet team have been "mostly" hard at work toiling on our next software release over the past month. This article is meant as a tease only to entice you to check out our Git repository and to stock up on some HASviolet Certified hardware.
We expect that as COVID-19 goes back into hiding, people will want to get out and enjoy some nice weather enabled by technology that is safe and able to promote social distancing. Our goal was to develop some really fun and unique use cases to let people ease back into normal society.
Explaining some of the above
We have covered our basic applications in past articles, such as HASviolet Beacon and HASviolet Chat along with the receive and transmit applications used to enable other future applications. Now, lets talk about.....
HASviolet-atmos.py - Provides temperature, barometric and other environmental sensor data integration.
HASviolet-distance.py - Support for laser based distance sensors related to our "Duck Hunt" series of radio direction finding (RDF) applications which will be ready for Amateur Radio Field Day 2020.
HASviolet-GPS.py - When executed, allows the transmission of standard NMEA 0183 formatted location data and telemetry along with the call sign specified in your HASviolet.ini file
HASviolet-handheld.py - This is a stand alone application which when enabled allows navigation and control of various function using the buttons on the Adafruit Lora bonnet as well as future supported hardware. This will be helpful for "basic field use" when a computer or smartphone is not available.
How to get started with HASviolet
If you are just learning about HASviolet and do not wish to go through our detailed documentation and user guide, here is what you need to do.
It all started with a member of HVDN sharing the following idea with Steve, K2GOG and I
"I've been wanting to do a "communicator" for a while. Something that someone could use over relatively short distances to send text messages back and forth. I have been looking for others to work on a project with too!"
After some investigation LoRa was something to consider since it "should play well with the hacker/maker crowd and possibility the IoT/computer science area." From this point we thought it was a good idea to take forward and started developing a concept around it.
Yet another LoRa project?
We sifted through a number of existing published LoRa projects using Raspberry Pi and various microcontrollers. GitHub sites with code, libraries, and recommended hardware but most of them were just "proof of concepts" with no demonstrations of use cases are sharing of lessons learned whether as a "lone eagle" or part of a team.
Since there were going to be a number of skills we were going to develop along the way including building new skillsets our differentiator with this project would be sharing the journey through articles, videos, and (hopefully) good documentation.
Our Story and Hope
There were skill gaps to overcome but we were driven by the same desire.
Do an open source RF project that bridges the maker/hacker and Amateur Radio communities
Learn new or build existing skills along the way
Inspire others to do the same
Inspiring others is not about contributing to this project (though it is welcome) it is about inspiring people to take big steps in making your ideas real and not be intimidated by any skills gap you or your compatriots have. Lot's of discussion and breaking progress down in small steps or sprints is what will keep the learning feel organic.
By emphasizing the project journey through a series of blog posts here, we hope to inspire you to chase your passion and through caution to the wind in developing skills you think are hard to build. You just need to find something you have a passion for and other like minds.
Finally, we would like to thank Joe N1JTA for the initial idea and taking time out of his busy schedule for early testing.
