Blogging From The Microhams Digital Conference

I'm blogging from the MicroHAMS Digital Conference. It's a one-day conference on digital communications technologies and techniques being used in Amateur Radio, hosted by MicroHAMS - the Microsoft Amateur Radio club. It's being held at a nice conference facility on the Microsoft campus.

It's got a pretty interesting lineup of presentations, all of which will be online, and, I think, a video of the presentation will be online too now online.

Modulations, Protocols and Modes - Oh My! Mike Mraz, N6MZ (was to be co-presented by Ward ?, ?)
The talk would cover these basic differences between modulation, protocol and a mode; give a review of what a "stack" is, and present specific instances as illustrations. The goal is to equip hams to be better able to discuss digital communications. Notes:

• Good overview of some of the digital protocols and terminologies related to digital that are running around in Amateur Radio
• Lots of good overview, all of which are discussed in the presentation.

Amateur Radio Networking Steve Stroh, N8GNJ (me)
An overview of Amateur Packet Radio Networking 3.0. 1.0 was the original Packet Radio, Net/ROM networking, BBS, etc. 2.0 was TCP/IP, APRS and other follow-ons to Packet Radio. Notes:

• (Link to my presentation - stroh.typepad.com/2008_microhams_digital_conference_n8gnj.pdf)
• Comment later is that I should have mentioned Automatic Link Establishment (ALE) - PC-ALE is the most popular program for that.
• Another comment is that I should discuss Software Defined Radio (SDR) - point taken!
• Yet another comment was that the SoftRock-40 is a perfect example of the amazing things that are happening in Amateur Radio... but relatively unknown.

Moving away from RS232 devices to the world of USB! Clint Hurd, KK7UQ
Use a single USB cable to connect to an integrated sound card, CW and RTTY interface - and get improved performance at the same time. Notes:

• It strikes me... that the radio manufacturers are way, way behind not having integrated USB in the radios, which should include a USB hub.
• This wasn't so much a discussion of how to use USB in Amateur Radio, but rather how USB was used in a product that he helped develop.
• That said... the radio interface system (the name of which I missed...) that he's discussing in detail is pretty impressive.
• Apparently PC's vary considerably on how they handle USB on power-down; some leave the USB powered; some shut it off, etc.
• His company ships a USB cable with each of their units that have integral ferrite cores on each end of the cable that eliminate almost all USB-generated RFI in a typical shack.

(Break for lunch - "catered by Subway"!)

PSK31 Without a Computer Lyle Johnson, KK7P
Open source solution being sponsor by the AmQRP group, to build a DSP based hardware modem. Also a look at the Elecraft K3 internal CW -> PSK31 function. Notes:

• Designed for conversation - ham to ham typing
• NUE PSK31 was written as a DLL for Windows, so PSK31 can just be "embedded"

Getting online with DSTAR Scott Honaker, N7SS
Using DSTAR and some of the latest DSTAR tools. Notes:

• Kenwood is shipping a D-Star (at least one, maybe more) in Japan
• Voice QSOs are routable
• Real selectable callsign-selectable conversations
• D-Star has "find the ham you want to talk to" wherever they are "on the D-Star Net"
• Bottom line, to me, is that D-Star is very, very cool, and it's damn embarrassing that of all places in the world, the Seattle Eastside - Redmond (high-tech!) and home of Icom America... doesn't have a high-profile D-Star repeater, like, for example, a repeater family mounted on one of the downtown high-rise buildings in Bellevue. Shame!
• Interesting idea for finding "room" - put it on exactly the same frequency as an underused analog repeater... with "cooperation"... of course.
• Repeaters "being built" or on the air in Federal Way, Bellevue, Camano Island (?), and Scott's in South Snohomish County.
• Long list of interesting D-Star add-ons, applications, utilities, web services, etc.
• Reverse-engineered D-Star for 2m - www.moetronix.com/dstar
• DV Dongle - Reverse engineered the D-Star digital voice protocol - plugs into a PC, then connects via Internet as just another gateway
• DStarCOM, DStarlet
• I'm definitely gonna be doin' D-Star... as soon as I can afford some new radios to play with!

Remote Station Operation via the Internet Miguel Mayorga, KC7IGT
Leveraging the internet to operate your home rig from anywhere. A look at the system integration required for enabling a operating your home rig via the internet and the how much fun a remote setup can be. Notes:

• He demo'ed his home station completely remoted to a stock laptop.
• The "magic" is "Ham Radio Deluxe" software

Microsoft .Net and Mapping API for Hams,- an introduction Dennis Harding, KE7DEN
Microsoft provides several .Net API for device communications and mapping of data. This talk will focus on .Net API that can be used for local and remote control of serial devices, and the mapping of data using the MapPoint and Virtual Earth API. Example application showing the use of the API will be provided to enable participants to develop their own applications using free development tools from Microsoft. Notes:

• Can no longer "get ahold of the hardware"; .NET provided "clean" API's to "get ahold of the hardware"
• Interesting talk if you're an experienced Windows developer trying to do interesting stuff with Microsoft's (PC-based) map products.

By Steve Stroh N8GNJ

This article is Copyright © 2008 by Steve Stroh except for specifically-marked excerpts. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).