A few pictures
Latest news
- refactored the source directory into something cleaner
- pulled out vue components into own files
- cleaned up a few names to be more intuitive
- can now add and delete commgroups
- can now add commgroups from pre-made lists to the columns without having to add all of them
- table headers (both rows and columns) now “sticky” so the applicable headers are always visible when scrolling in either vertical or horizontal dimensions.
- switched to Sakura CSS and simplified the HTML a bunch too
- made a new Vue component for editing commgroups
Worrying everyone
Continuing the paragliding, skydiving, and being recently unemployed trend of worrying my parents and friends, I bought a motorcycle.
VMW M&A - hire me!
I got laid off! Along with a huge chunk of the company.
Turbulence
Really cool example of turbulent air caused by some mountains. Ran across this and I’m keeping it here as a cool way of showing just how big turbulence can be.
VMW M&A, new hobbies
It’s 2023, Oct 2nd.
VMware is getting acquired by Broadcom. VMW is my day job, and has been something of a dream job considering some of the people I’ve been working with and for.
I don’t yet know what that means for me, but I’ll know in about a month.
PiM17 Introduction and early days
Pi-Star is an excellent hotspot firmware image that has brought multi mode hotspots to the amateur masses.
It could be improved in several areas, as it does not use many of the tools that make managing Linux systems easier.
Unfortunately, I don’t want to work on pi-star directly.
( Update 2024: Name changed to porkalpine, domains purchased, shelved until I get steady income again. There are exactly two users, me and Chip so far, so impact is zer0.
I still use pim17/porkalpine daily so it’s not going to disappear, but there’s no strong interest from others so I’m not spending time on socializing it. Overlap between people that like solid packaging and ham radio is very nearly a null set. )
Chip's Open Letter to MMDVM vendors
Chip posted this the other day titled “Open Letter to MMDVM Board/Hotspot Vendors”.
I don’t have much to add. I’ve been bitten by this too. Many hotspot vendors are skimping on quality or other various aspects, or otherwise sell you something that is artificially limited.
I figured I’d link his post for what little extra attention it might gain his message, and mention a couple sellers that are good while I’m at it.
LMR Channel Representation Standard
In land mobile radio, it can be handy to have a legible shorthand for describing a channel. Over time we’ve seen one evolve, that I’ve formalized a bit to implement in dmr.tools.
Yaesu FTM-300 and Module17
Yaesu’s FTM-300 mobile VHF/UHF radio has a bug related to decoding digital data from the data port in the back.
How to best run an open source project
Daniel Stenberg’s guide and writing are excellent.PD362 Cable diagram.
I discovered the hard way that the cable for Hytera PD362s from BlueMax49ers was not correctly made on multiple levels. (Written early June 2023)
FCS-152 inside pictures
The FCS-152 is a visual clone of the PRC-152 that offers FM analog VHF/UHF voice communications.
State of the Projects February 2022
Happy Valentine’s day! I didn’t get you anything.
DCS World Buffeter
If you play the flight simulator DCS World and happen to have a bass shaker or buttkicker handy, and are comfortable with Python, you’ll want this.
M17 Quickstart TX HackRF
This is meant to be a series of short and sweet guide to a few ways to run M17 over RF today. This one focuses on transmitting and receiving M17 with m17-cxx-demod and GnuRadio. This’ll require a little more Linux familiarity than the OpenWebRX guide, but it’s not too bad.
I’d say the hardest part is making sure you have the right dependencies installed - on some linux systems it can be a real bear. If you run into any troubles, make sure to ask for help and we’ll try to sort it out and get it documented.
DMR.Tools v0.7.5
I’ve just pushed the first version of DMR.Tools with a backend server. The highlight for this release is the easy firmware upgrade to OpenRTX releases, and the easy flashing of OEM firmware. There’s a LOT more coming, (codeplug editing!) but it’s not fully ready so it’s disabled right now.DMR.Tools: Backend server work started
I’ve broken ground on the backend server for DMR.Tools and ProgramRadios.com.
WebUSB TYT radio firmware updates
I got firmware updates through WebUSB working for 1st and 2nd gen TYT radios last night.
DMR.Tools/ProgramRadios.com 2021 New Year update (And launch!)
2020 has been a hard year. With family medical issues, a dying (and now passed) dog, the end of 2020 was particularly rough.
There’s one bright point - I soft launched DMR.Tools, specifically to help my first user.
ProgramRadios Update 2020/11/19
Some new updates for ProgramRadios/DMRTools involving encryption keys.
M17 and ORI
Open Research Institute (ORI) has sponsored us (M17)!
Check us out on their projects page, and keep reading to see why this is good for M17.
mrefd and mvoice
A reflector for a mode like M17 is something like a chat server - it has rooms or channels, called “modules”, and whoever talks in one channel gets broadcast out to all other nodes in that same channel.
These channels can also be linked with channels on other reflectors, which allows for creating vast networks of audio conferences for linking ham radio clients together around the world.
I’ve never actually used a reflector like mrefd, just made a compatible implementation and designed (as one of many) the pre-reflector protocol, but someone on IRC reported constant “connect” messages being printed to the screen attempting to link to M17-POL, but no packets being sent.
ProgramRadios updates and led strip status bar
I spent a bunch of time on the ProgramRadios and DMR Tools source today.
These are web based radio programming tools for DMR radios - there are no competitors, and I have a pretty slick programming paradigm that hasn’t been seen before - makes it a lot easier to create, manage, and update large complicated codeplugs.
Biggest improvements: