Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

I see that the Hilberling PT-8000A has replaced my Elecraft KX-3 on the top line of the Sherwood receiver test results.

The Hilberling commands about 17x the price of the Elecraft.  On the other hand, it is provided in your choice of five designer colors.

(tks I0GEJ.)

High Tech Infrastructure

Weil-McLain Boiler / DHW system

We've replaced our 30 year old oil boiler and hot water system with new 95% efficient natural gas equipment.

Bringing in the gas line from the street was a job, since we had to trench through granite ledge. Fortunately, the gas company was willing to do it on their nickle.

Our friends at Viglione Heating & Cooling produced a nice bit of industrial art in our basement.

Now we just have to count on a rising oil to gas price ratio and the passage of time (8 years?) to start making a profit. Meanwhile, we can feel green (less CO₂) and happy not to import oil -- but sad about dirty fracking. Nothing is simple.

And there's an on-board microcomputer to be hacked!

Need.More.Bench.Space

Reinventing Ham Radio? - Pogue

"You might think that we’ve exhausted every variation on electronic communication — text, audio, video — but you’d be wrong. A new one is quietly winning over millions of gadget fans. They’re free apps with names like Voxer, HeyTell and Zello, and they really do mess with the rules of the game."  -- David Pogue, New York Times

It's Ham Radio (e.g., D-Star) without the license.  Seriously,  Amateur Radio may need to lose some of its exclusive focus on FCC-licensed communications, to bring in a little new energy.

A New Leaf: QRP and the KX-3

The latest project is to put the Elecraft KX-3 through its paces.  The kit arrived Thursday afternoon.  Assembly was complete on Friday, and now we're on the air.  The preferred mode is 5 Watts CW, leaving a little headroom in case of "difficult conditions" (up to 12 Watts available).

The receiver is doing very well.  (See the latest Sherwood results.)  The transmitter is fine so far, but it gets some help from the 3-element SteppIR antenna upstairs.

First Q's: DK2SC (20 M), CT1EDJ (15 M)

It's very impressive how much functionality is compressed into this little box.  I calculate its volume is about 1/20th of the Ten-Tec Orion on the main desk. The Orion does deliver 8X the power, and it has a few other nice features, but I'm thinking how I could better use that desk space.

Interesting Little Boards

Shortly, I'll have three little computer boards to understand, play with, and possibly (just possibly) build into some useful projects.

The Arduino Uno is "slow" (16 MHz) ATmega328, has limited RAM and OS support, but is very flexible for interfacing and control applications. Easy C-style programming for simple applications. $27 at Digikey.

The Raspberry Pi is fast (700 MHz ARM) with 256 MB RAM, Fedora Linux, etc., and it's amazingly cheap ($35 US at Allied Electronics, if you can get one!).

As a full-blown Linux system, the Raspberry (and BeagleBoard, below) will require somewhat more software sophistication to get in the game.

The BeagleBoard XM is fastest (800-1000 MHZ ARM) with 512 MB RAM and full set of peripheral connections, running Ubuntu Linux, Android, and others. $149 at DigiKey.

This board has the makings of a DIY netbook computer or tablet, even including a camera interface.

You get extra points if you can program the built-in TMS320 DSP processor.  Usually for audio and video codecs, the DSP development environment is complicated. (To be charitable)

I've mostly been working the the BeagleBoard XM, and I use a lot of its I/O capabilities.  (This is the only board of the three that seems to directly support audio input.)  It provides all the fun and frustration of working in a full Linux environment (including video display, mouse and keyboard if you want), but there are few extra headaches dealing with the embedded aspect.  (E.g., configuring GPIO pins and boot files.)

The rule seems to be: use the simplest board that will support your project without elaborate daughter cards, etc.  In a one-off project it's really easy to use many hours and dollars to shoehorn a project onto a board that doesn't quite fit.  On the other hand, if all you need is blinking lights of one sort or another (even a complex Morse keyer) the Arduino's easy programming system can really save time.

These are all open source boards, making it possible to do your whole project in an open style (software and hardware), a big plus for Amateur Radio DIY work.  There is a huge amount of online information and help forums for all these boards.

Software Defined Radio for Every Purpose

"Right now, most people probably couldn't imagine why they'd want software-defined radio hardware in their homes. But people said the same thing about microcomputers in the 1970s."

 Interesting overview of SDR vs the communications world at Ars Technica, featuring USRP and Phi.

Amateur Radio and Innovation in an Age of Austerity

Eben Moglen

Why would I watch an 88 minute YouTube speech by Eben Moglen?  It was John Naughton's hearty recommendation for  his talk given at F2C:Freedom to Connect 2012, Washington DC on May 22.

In a nutshell, Moglen gives an eloquent and provocative story about how what will save us all, economically, is innovation, and innovation in these economic times (austerity all around) will only succeed if we promote free (as in free speech) software and place tools for experimentation in the hands of young people around the world. (Jabbed for their closed nature: Apple, Facebook, etc.)  We need control of our own servers. (and logs!) Powerful stuff that folks in the Linux / GNU camp can all believe in.

So should everybody go spend an hour and a half on this?  Maybe not, but there were several comments at the end of the Q&A session that were related to Amateur Radio.   An unexpected reward for persevering!

Some folks brought up the Maker Movement as an example of a community that is developing along the lines Moglen is describing.   Then (at about 1:17:00), Doc Searls confessed that he had started out in life as a radio amateur, and he called on an audience member, Dwayne Hendricks (WA8DZP), to give a short spiel on Amateur Radio - no, it's not dead, and in fact it provides a great platform for open technology development.

Dwayne relates some of his work, suggesting among other things that hams can develop platforms for non-hams to use.  (This raises some questions for me!)  He also takes an unfortunate dig at the ARRL in these comments to this professional internet/computing audience.  (In another setting, his point about ARRL's stance vis-a-vis innovation deserves discussion.)

For your convenience, here is the full video: