All posts by j0n

Amateur Radio, APRS, Computing, Travel, Work

GAREC 2007

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I’m just back from the 2007 Global Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Conference (GAREC 2007). Where I presented some initial results from the GAISS project (previous entry here). I was also attending on behalf of AREN and the IRTS (who also partially paid for my attendance the conference).

Listening to the presentations from the Amateur Radio operators that worked (some for months) in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and Rita to provide communications in and out of the disaster area was most humbling.

The presentations were excellent overall, I learned quite a lot from other participants, and had a great reaction to my own presentation. Which surprised me a bit. I met a fantastic bunch of people, that I will hopefully be able to keep in contact with as time goes on.

What was most interesting to me is the holistic approach taken to Amateur Radio in countries that have experienced disaster, everyone is competent in all areas whether it be Contesting, VHF, Digital modes, whereas in Europe, people tend to have a more polarised view (i.e. some folk specialise in VHF, some in Digital etc). I have much to learn.

Here are some pictures taken before, during and after, GAREC.

All in all it was a fantastic experience (and I got a mention in the ARRL blog, thanks to Khrystyne, K1SFA).

Computing, IPv6, software, Technology, Work

Mobile IPv6 on the N770

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Following up from my earlier post. To save someone the trouble of building MIPL for Linux for the N770, you can find a Linux kernel here and mip6d here.

I’ve been trying the kernel out using the following command to upload the kernel:

flasher -l -b -k zImage-su-18-200730

And powering on the device, the mip6 kernel gets loaded (until the next reboot). Once it boots, its possible to copy mip6d onto the n770, as it appears as a USB storage device. Install X-Term, write a mip6d configure script, and off you go (I’ve not tested with IPsec yet though)!

I remain unconvinced about the usefulness of the n770/n800 type devices. They may be usefule for some remote control applications, although I’m not sure, more testing (using IPv6) is needed ;).


	

	
	




	
	

				

			Amateur Radio, APRS
		

			
TM-D710 Announced.

		

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Kenwood announces 144/430 (440)MHz FM dual bander TM-D710 series,

equipped with “APRS®” data communication system capable of exchanging positional information, messages and operating frequency, enabling multi communication with all amateur radio operators around the world.  More here.


Stephen H. Smith has had a quick run through the control program and has the following observations (posted to the aprssig mailing list).


After installing the required Microsoft Dot-Net 2.0 sludgeware on a PC, I have installed the control program.   The program uses the Office 2003 look with sculpted 3D looking tool bar and the reduced-legibility pastel XP-style toolbar icons. Browsing though the various menus, I have noted the following changes/additions to the configuration menus.




    

  1.  COM port settings in the program now support up to COM20 and port speeds from 9600 to 57,600 baud.
    2. 

  2. The much hyped “Echolink / VOIP” support is merely 10 memories for DTMF sequences that can be labeled and the recognition that the 6-pin MiniDIN connector can be used for voice audio as well as external TNCs, sound cards, etc.   These 10 memory slots are apparently separate from another set of “DTMF” memories.
    3. 

  3. External data port (6-pin MiniDin connector audio I/O) can now be locked to either A or B band; i.e. it doesn’t follow the selected band for mic as it does on the D700 .
    4. 

  4. The unit apparently includes a DVR (digital voice recorder) perhaps as an option. An “AUDIO” configuration menu has several options for this device.
    5. 

  5. A block of 10 memory channels is dedicated to NOAA weather radio freqs already filled in but changeable.
    6. 

  6. Cross band repeater mode has ID that can be selected in either morse or voice
    7. 

  7. Four PF keys on the mic and two PF keys on the front panel can be programmed to any of about 10 functions each.
    8. 

  8. New “Band Mask” menu allows you to skip unwanted bands as you step up or down between bands. Especially welcome is the ability to skip non-ham 200, 300 and 800 MHz ranges.
    9. 

  9.  “APRS/Navitra” menu (I thought Navitra, the Japanese forerunner to APRS and the original design target of the D700 was now history, but apparently it still lives.) has 6 sub-menus.
    10. 



Among the APRS options and features:


    

  1. Waypoint output on GPS port supports both NMEA and MAGELLAN formats.
    2. 

  2. GPS port now supports Peet Bros and Davis weather stations as an alternative to GPS.
    3. 

  3.  You can filter out (or pass) Weather, Mobile, DIGIpeater, or Object packets and filter by range in 10 mile increments up to 2500 miles.   [That would be one hell of a band opening on 2M!)
    4. 

  4. Proportional pathing selectable, as is manual beaconing with a decaying algorithm.
    5. 

  5. “New-N Paradigm” selectable as such from pull down menu!   Default setting is WIDE1-1, WIDE2-1
    6. 

  6. Voice Alert recognized and selectable
    7. 

  7. WX station transmit interval selectable 5/10/30 mins
    8. 

  8. UIdigi aliases supported in digipeater
    9. 

  9. UIFLOOD and UITRACE options selectable with definable aliases.
    10. 

  10. Canned autoreply message user-definable.
    11. 

  11. Units can be displayed multiple formats:MPH, km/h or knots,       Grid Format in either Maidenhead or “SAR Grid” [is this UTM??]
    12. 

  12.  Position displayed as either DD MM.mm or  DD MM SS
    13. 

  13. NO VISIBLE MENU SUPPORT FOR SMART BEACONING !!
    14. 



No SmartBeaconing is a dissapointing omission. Assuming that Stephen’s observations are correct, I for one won’t be ‘upgrading’.  The addition of SmartBeaconing, would have persuaded me that the Radio is worth buying, without it, I see no reason to. C’mon Kenwood, can we have SmartBeaconing please?

	

	
	




	
	

				

			IPv6, Work
		

			
Nokia N770 build system.

		

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In work I recently had to build a ‘build system’ for some work we are doing in the enable project.  Using the information from here and here, I was able to build a MIPv6 kernel for the N700.  The biggest hurdle was figuring out the build system, so, to make it easier for anyone else.


Using a clean install of Ubuntu 6.06 Desktop edition, the following steps were taken


1) The line:


deb http://scratchbox.org/debian/ stable main


was added to the file:


/etc/apt/sources.list


2) Next the following lines of code were run from a shell prompt:


$ sudo apt-get update


$ sudo apt-get install scratchbox-core scratchbox-libs \ scratchbox-devkit-debian scratchbox-devkit-doctools \ scratchbox-devkit-perl scratchbox-devkit-cputransp \ scratchbox-toolchain-cs2005q3.2-glibc-arm \ scratchbox-toolchain-cs2005q3.2-glibc-i386 \  scratchbox-toolchain-hostgcc


$ sudo /scratchbox/sbin/sbox_adduser $USER


3) After this, I logged out and logged back in.


4) Following this, the file from here  was downloaded to

/scratchbox/users/$USER/home/$USER/


5) To create a target, the following was done:


$sb-menu


6) This will bring up a text interface where you will be guided through creating a target. The target was named SDK2.2_ARMEL (in keeping with the existing documentation). The ARM compiler and not the i386 was selected as compiler. The devkits that were selected were:



cputransp

debian-etch



For CPU Transparency (cputransp) the option that was selected from the list was



qemu-arm-0.8.2-sb2




When asked to select rootstrap the file from step (4) above was selected.

When asked which files to install to target, all EXCEPT gdb were selected.


7) The following was used to log-in


$/scratchbox/login


To test that everything was working I built a kernel with



mkdir ~/kernel-build

apt-get install kernel-source-2.6.16

apt-get source su-18-kernel



cd su-18-kernel-2.6.16 $ dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -us -sa -d


If that was succesful, your now ready to begin! This worked for me, YMMV!

	

	
	






	
	

				

			Amateur Radio
		

			
Its the weekend

		

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The weekend arrived after a rather long week in the office. Saturday afternoon was spent catching up on various chores, that were oustanding. Saturday evening I managed to get time on the Shortwave bands. I’m ‘aerially’ challenged in my location in several ways (my garden is quite small, I’m inducing current into the house alarm somewhere, and most importantly herself doesn’t like the look of the wire aerials or the noise of the alarm going off), so I’m kind of snookered.


However, I have an MFJ ISOLoop antenna in the attic, and yesterday evening I started listening on 20meters.  The band was still hopping as the IARU HF World Championships were on.  Well it was a blast, worked 15 countries in about 3 hours, and i could run full (100 watts) power all over the 20m band without setting off the alarm!


I also used the opportunity to try out YFKlog, which does exactly what it claims to (thanks Brendan for the tip).


Today after the rain started I took a look around the shack for a likely ‘rainy day’ project and I found a Kenwood D700 kit that I’ve had sitting here for ages.  I’m not exactly sure how long it took me to complete, but it was working before I went to make dinner!  So all in all, a productive weekend.

	

	
	








	
	

				

			Green, Technology
		

			
5.25 Volts

		

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Thats what the 4 x AA pack is reading at 22:25 IST.  Obviously the pack wasn’t fully discharged, but still, thats not bad for zero cost charging (lets not get into the argument about the cost of manufacturing the solar cell). It will be interesting to see how long it takes to recharge a set of depleted cells.