Ham and Software - Communities of Creativity? 207
lgreco asks: "I've been thinking about the similarities between the community of early ham radio operators and software developers. Both communities produced a lot of useful technologies that found applications beyond the scope of a 'just a hobby'.
Ham radio operators built their own equipment and experimented with modulation and propagation techniques. The results of their efforts today are used in a variety of radio communication applications, from cell phones to marine radios.
Similarly, hackers developed concepts of computing that are now universally accepted tools of productivity. Both communities share an enthusiasm for technical creativity and up until recently there was even some overlap between the two groups. Are there any interesting stories about the creativity of either groups (that relate to the other group perhaps) that should be recorded and documented?"
Topic... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Put this in your metadata and smoke it (Score:2)
Out of the loop (Score:4, Funny)
I didn't get the memo. When did the split occur?
Re:Out of the loop (Score:5, Informative)
There are more than a few well-respected hackers (in the good sense of the word) are hams, and there's a lot of software development going on in ham radio.
In particular, ham operators are doing lots of work with new digital modes made possible by using the sound card + PC as a powerful DSP platform. There's a lot of good stuff going on there.
Blatant plug -- I'm president of TAPR [tapr.org], which is a group that's promoting computer-related R&D in the ham radio community. Along with the ARRL (the US national ham group), we sponsor an annual Digital Communications Conference [tapr.org] where papers are presented on all sorts of new uses of technology in ham radio.
PS -- for the hams here who may not be familiar, TAPR is not significantly focused on packet radio these days; we're doing lots of other stuff related to digital communications.
Re:Out of the loop (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hackers and Hams (Re:Out of the loop) (Score:2)
Re:Out of the loop (Score:3, Informative)
There's a lot of good software coming out now that works on Win2k and WinXP, since we've all figured out how to access hardware directly.
There's a small community that prefers Linux, but it always seems that there's a much larger quantity of ham-related software for Windows.
That said, Linux ham software works well and covers just about any function you could want. The hot thing today is
Re:Out of the loop (Score:2)
Heh, the last thing I had connected to a ham radio here was one of my C64s.. ah well, guess its telling for how logn I have been out of the loop with HAM more then anything I guess.
XASTIR (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.xastir.org/ [xastir.org]
Re:XASTIR (Score:2)
There's even a few lines of my code inside it!
Re:Out of the loop (Score:2)
Well, there's was split per se, but a huge rift exists. The "software developer" side blossomed in the past few years to include anyone who did anything with "code", using the term lightly. Most of the "software developers" I know have never stepped inside a Radio Shack, much less wielded a soldering iron.
Re:Out of the loop (Score:2)
Re:Out of the loop (Score:2)
Back when I lived in Portland, though, I would have agreed with you. It was all cell phones, DVD players and toys. The only radio-type things they had were scanners and those Grundig hand-cranked shortwave sets.
Re:Out of the loop (Score:2, Informative)
You can get their catalog in PDF format [digikey.com] here [digikey.com].
Re:Out of the loop (Score:2)
Spoken like a true non-ham.
Granted, Radio Shack hardly lives up to it's name anymore (unless cell phones qualify, and they sort of do, but not really), but they do still have things that are useful to hams. Basic components (generally overpriced, but if all you need is two resistors, you don't want to order it), and some other stuff like power supplies and the like.
They do also still carry a useful selection of things lik
Re:Out of the loop (Score:2)
My town is Austin, TX. We have various Radio Shacks, Altex and Frys. And there's a ham radio shop.
Frys has big gaps in what they carry (they don't carry many components, but they do have some.) Altex doesn't carry much at all anymore beyond computers. The ham radio shop doesn't really carry components. That leaves ... Radio Shack.
(which doesn't carry much, but they do fill in some of the Frys gaps.)
Re:Out of the loop (Score:2)
-Jesse
Re:Out of the loop (Score:2)
There is a very good RS in Derby, KS (southeast side of Wichita) that doubles as a ham radio store. The owner is a ham and usually has a good selection of used gear and accessories. Heaven knows that I've left more than my share of a few paychecks there...
Up here (northeast Kansas/southeast Nebraska) the quality of the store for components depends on the ownership. The one in Beatrice, NE is pretty good for parts and some n
Re:Out of the loop (Score:4, Interesting)
My grandfather was "radio hacking" in the 1920s. He told a funny story where he "accidentally" took out a commercial transmission while playing with some homemade hardware as a teen. Sounds a little like website defacing to me, but 80 years before the computer kids were doing it. His hobby grew to the point where he was hired as the communications engineer for a huge mining and resources company that had to manage communication lines right into the Arctic. By 1937 he had developed a portable voice radio that could be carried and used in bush camps by operators who didn't know morse code - arguably the first walkie-talkie. Sounds a little like the early PCs to me, but 40 years before the computer kids were doing it. His employer donated his services to the war effort in 1939, and he modified the walkie talkie [triumf.ca] into a military tool that filtered out battle noises and had signal scrambling to prevent eavesdropping. Sounds like error correcting, encrypted communications to me, but 50 years before the computer kids were doing it.
So yeah, there are similarities, but the hams were there way before we were. Most of the hams who pioneered the field are now dead and gone, whereas most of the computer pioneers are alive and well, and still debating who gets credit for what. The links between the fields that are obvious now only came about after many decades of convergence.
Re:Out of the loop (Score:2)
rj
Re:Out of the loop (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree completely. Hams have been using computers to enhance hamming for as long as hams have had computers. Grab a 20 year old ARRL Handbook -- you'll find mentions of computers being used for lots of things. You'll even find BASIC programs to do stuff ...
As for your list of combinations, none of these is new -- all of
NPR's coverage of ham radio (Score:5, Interesting)
There's an NPR [npr.org] episode of Talk of the Nation [npr.org] entitled "Letters and Ham Radio Lessons" [npr.org]. From the website: "...ham radio teacher Rick Stern joins Neal Conan with tips on teaching your kids about ham radio."
There is also this episode [npr.org] of TOTN that covers the topic, featuring the authors of the book Hello World: A Life in Ham Radio.
And in February of this year, All Things Considered ran a piece [npr.org] on the pending approval of a Morse code "at" symbol so that operators could tell others their email addresses. How's that for radio and the internet meeting in the middle?
Actually, it's not Morse code that hams use.. (Score:3, Informative)
Morse Code is rarely used nowadays, while International Code is alive and well on the ham bands. 73 K9LJB
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
until recently? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:until recently? (Score:2)
-73, KG4QXK
Tasty (Score:4, Funny)
Mmmmmmmmmm.....Ham radio.....glaaaaaaaaaarrgh...
[/Homer]
Exploited? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Exploited? (Score:3, Informative)
Bless them! (Score:5, Funny)
Hopes (Score:5, Insightful)
i'm not sure why i stick to this hope so badly, but i hope there's another way for software. fundamentally, software is all about building blocks, using the existing to build more. for this reason, its crucial that there be open-ness of software.
software at least stands a chance. it doesnt require adv. fabrication, expensive test equipment and doesnt cause anything other than your own computer to break.
and to all the hardcore ham people still out there, keep kickin baby! or something.
Myren
Re:Hopes (Score:2)
It's an understandable impusle. Everyone wants to feel like they are doing big things, and it's much easier to just start writing something from scratch (since you usually see the biggest things right at the start of a project). You don't have to futz around with lear
Re:Hopes (Score:2)
There is also a limit to how many routines you can simply keep track of. If you need a special
Re:Hopes (Score:2)
On the other hand, if you are writing a word processor, an image processing engine, or dealing with multimedia resources like combining video with embedded data, by its ve
Re:Hopes (Score:5, Informative)
Go pick up a copy of QST (the ARRL's magazine). Flip through it. You'll see all kinds of articles on people developing more and more transmission and encoding techniques. Pretty much all of the development focuses on digital (packet) radio systems, and since power outputs are limited, (sometimes by law, but usually just because it's fun to be challenged) amateur radio operators have developed pretty much the best ways of dealing with interference and robustness in transmission of data.
Today's ham tech is 2007 commercial tech.
Re:Hopes (Score:2)
And you're defiantely right: ham's continue to grow this body of knowledge. but between the technology barrier and the availability of 802.11b, there's been shift away from this. i'd (rather safely) wager that the number of hams making their own g
Potential for Software to Fade Away (Score:4, Informative)
The growth of Linux certainly is counteracting that influence, but there are some things to worry about besides closed API's. It concerns me when CPUs are so incredibly complex that you get a crop of even seasoned software developers who are simply incapable of hand-assembling a piece of software. I'm not talking about doing this for the latest copy of DOOM III, but if you don't know how to hand assemble a simple "for" loop that does a quick bubble sort, you really don't understand the hardware that you are working on.
Also, while abstraction is useful, it is also important to have at least _SOMEBODY_ on a medium sized development team that can go all the way down to the gate level and understand just what is going on in the CPU, and to understand that while computer are fairly consistant, there are still time delays and quantum fluctuations that can affect a piece of software, sometimes even at the wrong time. If you look through the SETI@Home website, they mention that they have to on a daily basis reject some work-units simply because an add operation missed a bit in the carry network or some other similar random fault of the CPU occured. At some point software does have to directly interact with the physical level, and sometimes that happens just in RAM and the CPU itself.
While the above points might show some bias toward how I learned to program computers: On early mainframe computers and early 8-bit micros (where hand assembly was really the only way to do thing unless you had a few $$$ or took the time to write your own assembler), I would have to add that since the collapse of the internet bubble, I would also strongly discourage young people to even get into the industry right now. With significant numbers of software developers still out of work, incredibly intense competition to gettting what few jobs are around, and the outsourcing problems that are plaguing the industry shrinking the current number of jobs down even more, it is getting tougher to really break in. Essentially what I'm saying is that the computer industry right now is burning intelletual capital rather than trying to invest into its future.
If you are smart and want to get into a hot new industry that feels like the computer industry did 20 years ago, I would strongly suggest going into aeronautical engineering and try to join up with Bigelow Aerospace, Scaled Composites, or Armidillo Aerospace. Them and a dozen other companies right now are getting ready to boom, and that is going to further take away the creative types that earlier fueled the computer industry.
This is perhaps the #1 analogy that I can use with ham radio, which is struggling right now trying to attract the young smart minds that have the talent and the slightly off-axis humor to be able to build things like radio frequency jammers, blue and black boxes, or even computer virii. From doing those irreverent and potentially illegal in some context applications, many young people formed the skill sets that makes many of the advanced technology applications that we see today. I fear that the computer industry is losing that group in particular, and now all that is left are folks who can follow a recipie (script kiddies), but are incapable of coming up with anything like that on their own. Some of that is still left, but many school and university administrators are now beating out any creative urge in most schools in regards to computers.
I'm speaking now to the creative 1% of humanity who really makes things happen. They aren't missed right away when they are gone, but you eventually
Re:Potential for Software to Fade Away (Score:3, Insightful)
When I interview I usually ask a C question about a function referencing a variable assigned in a higher stack frame, now freed. But that's more to see if they are a) interested in "how things really work", b) whether they've ever
Re:Potential for Software to Fade Away (Score:2)
If you are smart and want to get into a hot new industry that feels like the computer industry did 20 years ago, I would strongly suggest going into aeronautical engineering and try to join up with Bigelow Aerospace, Scaled Composites, or Armidillo Aerospace. Them and a dozen other companies right now are getting ready to boom, and that is going to further take away the creative types that earlier fueled the computer industry.
Nah. A couple tragic accidents will take care of that trend. Besides, I rememb
Re:Potential for Software to Fade Away (Score:2)
Re:Hopes (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the problem with HAM radio is that it's technology for its own sake. If I write good software, it can make a difference in the world. People who aren't programmers will use it, and it will make the world a better place. If I come up with new HAM radio technology, no one but HAM operators can make immediate use of it.
The practical uses of HAM radio are very limited (emergency communication is the most significant exception). Rules have been placed on the HAM bands such that they can't be used for anything remotely useful. Many ham operators consider this a feature, since it keeps away all the people who don't care about the technology and just want to use it to surf the web and check their email from remote locations. Their objections may be justified - frequency is scarce (especially on the lower frequency bands), and commercial traffic, if allowed, might make the bands unuseable.
Unfortunately, this also means that it can't have any real effect on people's lives. The Internet is a tool of social change. Ham radio is not.
The rules I'm refering to are these:
These rules all ensure that HAM radio is a polite medium used by nice people who aren't going to step on each other's toes. It also means, however, that you can't use HAM radio to carry Internet traffic for non-ham radio people, due to the difficulty of policing their traffic, making sure they aren't sending or receiving prohibited data.
My opinion is that they should open up some small subset of the UHF and VHF bands to general purpose traffic. It would still require a license to use the equipment, but with content rules similar to the ISM band (whatever kind of traffic you want, as long as it's not interfering with someone else). This would allow people to use HAM radio as part of the infrastructure of the Internet.
-jim (KE7BGU)
Re:Hopes (Score:2, Insightful)
i wager that with 802.11b, cell phones and what not, things appear "good enough". we're in the age of marvels, why make cooler ones?
good breakdown of the restrictions.
Re:Hopes (Score:2)
That's an interesting point. But supposing you did own the copyright, or the music in question was your own performance of a work no longer under copyright, it would still be prohibitted to transmit over ham radio.
(There is one odd exception, and that is rebroadcasts of a space shuttle transmission.)
-jim
Re:Hopes (Score:2)
Answer (Score:2, Funny)
Perhaps a little off the mark (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Perhaps a little off the mark (Score:2)
Ham is to pirate radio as hacker is to DMCA violator.
Re:Perhaps a little off the mark (Score:2)
Re:Perhaps a little off the mark (Score:2)
My analogy does not imply that hackers are like pirate radio stations, and it does not imply that all hackers violate the DMCA.
Re:Perhaps a little off the mark (Score:2)
And only Americans or people wishing to attend American schools take SAT's, but thanks for assuming.
Re:Perhaps a little off the mark (Score:2)
Neither hacking websites nor the DMCA are directly related to pirate radio operators. That's the point of analogies.
Re:Perhaps a little off the mark (Score:2)
Would you care to explain this? Most pirate radio stations do not violate the DMCA, except possibly in incidental ways (cracked iTMS music being used or something like that.)
Now, if you were talking *internet* radio, you might be right, depending on format. But most *real* pirate radio stations are violating various FCC regulations, not the DMCA.
Re:Perhaps a little off the mark (Score:2)
Hacking a "closed" repeater (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyways, one local ham used to be part of that clique, until he managed to cheese off the repeater owner. He wanted to be able to use the system again.
I built a gadget that used one of the cool digital recorder chips you can get from Radio Shack. We digitally recorded the signal on the input frequency of the repeater, then sent these tones when the mic was keyed up.
Worked amazingly well, until the guy dropped the mic and the wire broke loose. Wheee, what fun his sudden re-appearance on the system caused!
OK, so it's not really software hacking, more of a hardware hack with some social engineering thrown in too, but hey, doing it was quite a blast. MUCH more amusing than Field Day.
de N9JZW
Forgot to mention... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ahh, the joys of using in-band signaling
Re:Hacking a "closed" repeater (Score:3, Interesting)
Past Tense (Score:3, Insightful)
They are the same community (Score:3, Informative)
Re:They are the same community (Score:2)
This is a typical pattern (Score:2, Informative)
It happened with radio and it happened with computers. It also happened with cars. When the Model T came out, many people could afford a car and it was worth their while to be able to fix them. Everyone was a back yard mechanic. As cars got better and more complicated, the life of the back yard mechanic got more difficu
Packet radio (Score:5, Interesting)
Peer to Peer wireless network (Score:2)
I beleive there was recently an FCC ruling that said you could check your personal net email through digital modes or something like that.
Now, the bandwidth isn't so fat, but hams provide this service free if your licensed
The sad side of the split (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, as a youg internet generation geek (I'm 21), I look around at geekly peers my age, and see very few people who know how to solder.
I fear that the age of computer geeks going and buying the parts from Radio Shack and building stuff might be passing. Radio Shack has noticed this too, and stores with a good parts selection are getting harder to find.
Re:The sad side of the split (Score:2)
It's getting harder to build hardware that can be used in modern computers -- building a PCI or USB device, for example, requires significant "interface" hardware in addition to the device-specific functionality. Boards covered with tiny surface-mount parts are hard enough to even diagnose when they stop working, let alone fix by hand. There's not as much of use that a computer geek can do with a soldering iron anymore.
However, there's more to being a computer geek than "soldering things together". My
Re:The sad side of the split (Score:2)
Everybody orders parts on the Internet now. Try DigiKey [digi-key.com] and Mouser [mouser.com]. They ship really, really fast (order late in the day and it's here tomorrow morning) and they're seldom out of stock. Digi-Key even has the data sheets for almost everything they sell on line.
Still lots of overlap (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/
T
Eric and Matt from the gnu-radio project were at the TAPR digital communication conference again this year.
http://www.tapr.org
Here's some more linux ham software listed:
http://radio.linux.org.au
Also check out The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT):
http://www.amsat.org
The next major sat project named Eagle will use as much open source software and open hardware as possible.
There are also many notable hams who are also linux hackers, just to name one Bdale Garbee, former Debian Project head and CTO for linux solutions at HP, whom I met at the TAPR DCC this year, he is very active with both TAPR and hardware design on AMSAT satellites.
Also check out the June and September issue of Linuxjournal for gnu-radio and a psk article (Sept).
73, w0uhf
Re:Still lots of overlap (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Still lots of overlap (Score:2)
Perhaps even more famous, Phil Karn [ka9q.net], KA9Q.
Even more similarities (Score:4, Interesting)
As a result he of this obsession he never communicated well with his family, instead choosing to share freely with his on-air mates. Resulting in a well of negative energy in his own home.
Yep I knew him
(Yes I am bitter about that
BTW I also remember when people built their own computers
Re:Even more similarities (Score:2)
Check out Software Based Radios (Score:2, Informative)
Internet i.e. BPL may Kill Ham radio innovation (Score:3, Informative)
All the FCC cares about right now is putting the positive spin on the BPL technology and ramming it through the approval process.
So here is a computer innovation that could enable thousands of people to get high speed internet access but at the same time may kill off another very innovative group of technologies we call Amateur Radio. I am certain there are components of BPL that hams originally had a hand in developing. Its incredibly ironic.
Rob N3FT
BPL will die (Score:2, Interesting)
Because it's hooked to high voltage power lines which attract lightning (not really, but they sure seem to).
Because it's expensive and dangerous to keep running.
Because it's owned by a company whose main business is not communications.
Because, if it radiates, it's susceptible to interference, too.
Given a choice, consumers won't take it unless it's better and cheaper than other alternatives, and it's already being dropped in Canada, UK and Eu
Re:BPL will die (Score:2)
Rob
Re:BPL will die (Score:2)
I agree that BPL is going to die because of operational inefficiencies (i.e. it's not good technology), but of the reasons you lis
Ham!? (Score:2)
Re:Ham!? (Score:2)
Umm... how much software do vegetables need?
Re:Ham!? (Score:2)
MSOD (Morse String Of Death) (Score:5, Funny)
Everything was going smooth as silk in mission control and then... lost connection to the payload from the mission controller station... I go to the linux router, and its LOCKED UP... nothing... screen is frozen with my windows up, no mouse movement...
CAPS and SCROLL led's are blinking in unison... some kind of code... maybe a number? I start trying to write down dots and dashes, but my autonomic response is to try to copy is as morse code... I get characters... then I scrawl out...
!!! Linux was sending me morse code via the keyboard LEDs! That's a new one on me. It didn't send any kind of diagnostic code, not that it would've helped me. But knowing that it was a fatal exception was actually the right information, because I knew it was appropriate to immediately restart the machine.
So instead of the Windows blue screen of death, it's the linux "Morse String of Death" (MSOD?) !
-K0DUG
dit dit
Saw this on RH - thought I was imagining it (Score:2)
The other day I was trying to install 'Pink Tie' Linux [cheapbytes.com] on a laptop, and every time the [CD] boot process got to
Re:MSOD (Morse String Of Death) (Score:2)
Re:MSOD (Morse String Of Death) (Score:2)
Porn (Score:2)
Forgot the S? (Score:2)
Oh wait.. this story is not about my Viagara order? nm....
Elecraft (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Elecraft (Score:3, Interesting)
The resulting transceiver is a superb piece of equipment, surprisingly devoid of useless bells and whistles, shiny knobs and impractical handling that have become to characteristic of all the modern Japanese tran
the biggest thing that helped... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the simple fact that they SHARED what they knew with the world.
that is how things like Packet Radio, APRS, antenna designs, etc become more refined and wide spread use.
Most of what is in Ham Radio and software WOULD NOT EXIST if people were selfsih and kept their discoveries and designs to themselves.
Re:the biggest thing that helped... (Score:3, Insightful)
Fortunately, the influence of Free Software spurred by Linux and friends has begun to turn this attitude. Quite frankly, I don't think the ARRL should review or publish an article on any software unless it is Software Libre. We are fortunate as well that the Free Software influence wa
PACKET RADIO (Score:2)
Re:PACKET RADIO (Score:2)
R Bruce Peters
203 Collingsworth Dr Rochester NY 14625
hamsexy (Score:2)
Fun Stuff (Score:5, Informative)
Personally, I've ejoyed the following lately:
Check it out and take a look at my Ham Web Log [wa5znu.org] for more stuff.
Fractal antenna inventor (Score:2)
When Nathan Cohen first submitted a paper documenting his fractal antenna research to a scholarly journal, the editors thought it was a practical joke.
Essentially, he had discovered that bending conventional antennas into repeating geometric or "deterministic fractal" shapes helped save space and did not adversely affect reception. It's a very simple idea -- and that simplicity, coupled with the fact that Cohen is a radio astronomer by training, not a fra
Public wireless networking and packet radio (Score:2)
I thought that using packet radio to cheaply join up the segments would be a good option and in the long term a viable safeguard on the intranet mesh itself.
Anyone done this?
Very important (Score:2)
Re:Ham + Software (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ham + Software (Score:2)
As mentioned, it's 10 minutes. And as mentioned, you really should know this.
As for spamming, there's two problems: 1) ham radio cannot be used to broadcast to the general public, and 2) it cannot be used to make money. The identification requirement just makes it easier to catch offenders (or to know more easily that they're offenders, because they're not IDing themselves.)
Re:Amateurs they aren't... (Score:3, Insightful)
I would also like to mention that even ten years ago there weren't nearly so many legal obsticles to software development. Certainly 30 years ago. There has been some recent legislation that has made software development a profession that almost needs a 1:1 ratio of software developers to lawyers, if not more lawyers than programmers. I don't think it is even possible now to write a serious appl
Re:Ham / Wi-Fi (Score:2)
Actually, hams can transmit with up to *1500* watts on *some* of those frequencies. But if you use spread spectrum, the limit is only 100 watts, and then only if your system is smart enough to automatically use only as much power as is needed. This site [qrpis.org] might help explain this a bit more.
This is not true. WiFi is certainl
Re:Ham / Wi-Fi (Score:2)
Re:While you're at it... (Score:2)
Now, the fridge-freezer wars of '97, thats another story....