Them That's Doin'

Update - The information in this post is now a web page that I will maintain and enhance - Interesting and Advanced Projects / Products in Amateur Radio.

... Interesting stuff in "Advanced" Amateur Radio.

I borrow this phrase from Mother Earth News which I subscribed to years ago. Them That's Doin' was a feature (if memory serves) describing people that were doing hands-on activities, not just writing about, or opining, or editorizing. Active folks!

I frequently complain to my Amateur Radio friends (sorry friends) that the problem with Amateur Radio these days isn't that there aren't interesting things going on in Amateur Radio; there absolutely are interesting things going on. The problem with Amateur Radio these days is that the interesting things aren't being widely reported to Amateur Radio in general through "popular" Amateur Radio media - magazines, blogs, YouTube channels, podcasts, etc. The worst offender of this, in my opinion, is ARRL's magazine QST. They don't write (or talk) about this "interesting stuff" much at all, and if they do at all, it's a passing mention.

For example, Packet Radio (admittedly, my passion) is undergoing a renaissance largely through the work of John Langer WB2OSZ's Dire Wolf software (Decoded Information from Radio Emissions for Windows or Linux Fans). I have yet to see (that I can recall) any mention of Dire Wolf in QST. Before anyone suggests my writing for QST... no, I'm not going to do so because what Amateur Radio needs more content that's proprietary and restricted to those that can afford the increasingly costly membership in the ARRL in order to subscribe to QST, and ARRL does not make the content of QST publicly available.

I've been threatening to do this for a long time (most recently in this forum), and time just keeps getting away from without it getting done. Keeping a list in private doesn't help anyone but me, so here is a series of terse descriptions with links to what I consider "Them That's Doin' Interesting Things in Advanced Amateur Radio". In advance, this list is highly subjective, and lack of inclusion about a favorite activity, project, vendor might just be that I haven't gotten to them yet.

Last updated 2021-02-16 - final.

• 222-225 MHz Amateur Radio band (US, Americas) - The 222-225 MHz band in the US is underused. It's an ideal "playground" for data communications, but is hampered by few 222-225 MHz radios currently in production - Alinco DR-235 MkIII and BridgeCom Systems Systems BCM-220. Both have "data" ports making higher speed data communications possible.
• 44net - Static IPv4 addresses (and routing) are available for Amateur Radio experimentation. 
• Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) - ARDC has two missions. Their origina mission was to operate 44net / AMPRnet (44.0.0.0/9, 44.128.0.0/10) which they continue. Their new, additional mission is providing philanthropic grants for Support and Growth of Amateur Radio, Education, and Technical Innovation.
• Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network (AREDN) - Flash selected Wi-Fi radios with AREDN firmware to create standalone mesh networks.
• Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) - ARISS supports the Amateur Radio equipment and activities on the International Space Station.
• AMSAT-DL (Germany / Europe), AMSAT-NA (North America) / AMSAT-UK (UK) - Satellites built, operated, and used by Amateur Radio Operators. 
• Analog Devices ALADM-PLUTO - A friend directed me to this device for getting started with GNU Radio. This device is different because it's a software-defined transceiver, not just a receiver.
• aprs.fi - aprs.fi is the "public face" of Amateur Radio APRS activities. For example, world-circling balloons carring Amateur Radio beacons can be followed by anyone, including school kids. aprs.fi is just an amazing project. 
• Data over Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) - It occurred to me a few years ago that all the Amateur Radio DMR repeaters that are being built are, at their core, data repeaters. The DMR specification makes provisions for data, but no one seems to know much about how to do data over DMR. These Maxon DMR data radios deserve some experimentation.
• DFQF2 T7F Data Radio - Like the Kantronics D4-10, this radio is now out of production and mentioned here as inspiration for a hoped-for new generation of data radios for Amateur Radio. The T7F was more advanced than the D4-10, including frequency agility. There were several excellent data radios for Amateur Radio made in Germany, but none remain in production (that I know of). 
• David Rowe VK5DGR - His most famous project is Codec2 and FreeDV, open source digital voice modems. He is also working on a "radio", and other projects.
• Dire Wolf - software based Packet Radio. It's simply amazing how much better Dire Wolf works than hardware modems. I can't offer enough kudos to WB2OSZ for Dire Wolf.
• D-Star Digital Data Mode / ID-1 Radio and "Repeater" - The Icom ID-1 was the fastest (that I'm aware of) data rate for an Amateur Radio product (that wasn't a kit / science project) at 128 kbps (half duplex). It also had the distinction of being of operating on the forlorn Amateur Radio 1240 - 1300 MHz band. While the ID-1 is out of production now, the D-Star Digital Data (DD) mode lives on in another Icom radio, and a planned successor to the ID-1 repeater. It would be a very cool project to create a new radio with the ID-1's data capabilities. 
• Earth - Moon - Earth Communications (EME) - AMSAT started a tradition of naming Amateur Satellites Oribiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio (OSCAR) follwed by a sequential numeric designator. The first AMSAT satellite was named OSCAR-1. EME enthusiasts sometimes refer to Luna as "OSCAR-0". I just think EME is uber-techie cool.
• F5OEO rpitx - It doesn't get any cooler than a software defined transmitter that's just a Raspberry Pi with a wire connected to a GPIO.
• F6FBB FBB - Very capable Packet Radio Bulletin Board System (BBS). Yes, BBS' are still useful.
• fldigi - A suite of software data modes. FSQ is particularly robust.
• Flex Radio - I've been impressed with Flex Radio since their founding as they are "all in" on Software Definied Radio for Amateur Radio HF like Tesla is on electric drive vehicles. I just wish they did the same thing for VHF/UHF radios.
• G8BPQ Software Suite - G8BPQ's suite of software is Packet Radio Networking - Bulletin Board Systems, Chat Bridges, and much more.
• GNU Radio - GR is open source software defined radio. GNU Radio Companion is a graphical interface that makes it possible to create software defined radios by dragging modules around in a into graphic layout. In addition to the software and support, they sponsor the GNU Radio Conference.
• Hackaday.com - I love Hackaday because they treat Amateur Radio, especially data modes and projects (like New Packet Radio) as interesting wireless experimentation for techies. Hackaday makes Amateur Radio look cool to techies, which we desparately need more of.
• HamPi - Amazing integration of much Amateur Radio software for the Raspberry Pi, already compiled into a plug-and-play image.
• HamWAN - HamWAN is a vision for building an Amateur Radio Wireless Internet Service Provider. It began as a project in the Seattle area and has since been replicated in other areas.
• Inductive Twig HamShield: LoRa Edition - This is the only vendor / project that I'm aware of that attempts to make the very popular LoRa hardware into compatibility with Amateur Radio. I think LoRa has great potential in Amateur Radio, especially if it can be made into a mesh network.
• JNOS - JNOS is the swiss army knife of Amateur Radio packet radio networking. It's a multi-mode router, including basic AX.25, Net/ROM, TCP/IP (including encapsulation), and BBS routing. Yep, it's still going after all these years.
• JS8Call - The one thing that the WSJT software suite doesn't have is a keyboard-to-keyboard chat mode. JS8 is an independent project based on the WSJT technologies.
• Kantronics D4-10 Data Radio - It's sad that in many ways the long-discontinued Kantronics D4-10 was a high point in packet radio radios. It featured a wide bandwidth that could do 19,200 bps (and faster), 10 watts transmit power, minimal design (no fancy faceplate), and best, was designed for data, not a radio designed for voice that kind-of does data. Because it uses crystals for frequency setting (which are near-unobtanium now) it's not that useful now, but it is a benchmark for what a data radio for Amateur Radio could and should be - minimalist, stable (with the mods mentioned in the link), and reasonable power output (though 25 watts would be better). I include it here as an inspiration for a new generation of data radios for Amateur Radio.
• Kenwood TM-V71A Radio - In my opinion, this is the best VHF / UHF radio for data communications available at this moment. It features the 6-pin MiniDIN standard "data" port for easy interfacing, 144 / 440 MHz, 5 / 25 / 50 watts transmit power, and its settings can be controlled via RS-232.
• M17 Project - Developing a new Digital Voice standard, and hardware, for Amateur Radio.
• MicroHAMS Digital Conference - MicroHAMS is an Amateur Radio club based in Redmond, Washington, USA. What makes it special, in my opinion, is that it sponsors an excellent Digital Conference in the Spring, on par (in my opinion) with the ARRL and TAPR Digital Communications Conference (DCC).
• New Packet Radio - Packet Radio reimagined as higher speed and native TCP/IP.
• multimon-ng - Good example of obscure projects for Amateur Radio. This one decodes various obscure data modes, including POCSAG (paging). Imagine the robustness of paging used in Amateur Radio now that we all have access to high resolution timebases and flexible data transmission modes.
• Nexus DR-X - This is a project that's local to me for a capable, multipurpose digital interface, with great software support.
• NW Digital Radio DRAWS - The DRAWS is my favorite built-for-purpose sound card modem for Amateur Radio, mated with a Raspberry Pi.
• NW Digital Radio UDRX-440 Software Defined Transceiver / Data Radio - This was a project that came agonizingly close to becoming a product. I profoundly wish it had, even with many rough edges. It was to be a 25 watt multimode data radio with all the features we wanted - flexible modems, full software control of transmit bandwidth, frequency, power, etc. There were good, valid reasons that it didn't quite make it. It's listed here as an example of what Amateur Radio needs as tools to make great leaps forward in becoming relevant again in the minds of most techies.
• Open Research Institute (ORI) - ORI is... complicated. Its genesis was developing a ground station system for a potential Geosychronous Earth Orbit (GEO) satellite payload that would have been accessible from the North America. The satellite didn't happen, but ORI continued and morphed into a more generalized organization.
• OpenWebRX - web based multiple user sotware defined receiver.
• OpenWRT - Open source firmware for routers and Wi-Fi access points. It's the basis for AREDN and many other interesting projects.
• Othernet - Very cool project to do "datacasting" from satellite. Not entirely a new idea, but a new approach.
• PiGate - Imagine you're at a mass casualty shelter and people have phones that don't work on (saturated or down) cellular networks. PiGate is an appliance that combines a Wi-Fi access point, web server, form for sending email, and integration with Winlink, so that non-hams can send brief emails, via Winlink, under supervision of an Amateur Radio operator.
• PiSDR - Raspberry Pi image of a wide range of software defined receiver software for a variety of software defined receiver hardware.
• Packet Radio Users Group (PRUG) FX.25 KISS TNC - FX.25 to date has only been implemented in Dire Wolf software (needs a host like a Raspberry Pi and a sound card). An "appliance" like this could make FX.25 and Forward Error Correction more widely used.
• RadioID.net - Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) wasn't designed for Amateur Radio with support for callsigns, only "ID numbers". For DMR to be usable in Amateur Radio, someone had to provide a "translation table" of DMR ID numbers to Amateur Radio callsigns, and RadioID.net took on that task and, in my experience, does it well.
• Raspberry Pi - The Raspberry Pi ecosystem of products, projects, support, and software to me makes it the preferred computer platform for Amateur Radio. For as little as $10, "just throw a computer at it".
• Red Pitaya - This is the most capable software defined transceiver that I know of. It's so sophisticated and capable that it wasn't originally a platform for radio experimetation. As I understand the story it was created as a multifunction radio test set. As it's evolved, it seems to be the favorite Amateur Radio software defined transceiver of those who can write digital signal processing software.
• Reverse Beacon Network - Hams are incredible creative; this is a network of receivers connected to the Internet. See where your signal is being heard around the world.
• RTL-SDR.com - They make good quality inexpensive software defined receivers, and their website is the best "heads up" about anything in the software defined receiver / transceiver field.
• Repeaterbook.com - In my opinion, Repeaterbook.com and its apps is the best director of Amateur Radio repeaters. Its data is crowdsourced and usage is free.
• SDRPlay - This is my favorite manufacturer of software defined receivers. In my opinion their products are a good balance of receive performance and reasonable cost. They have very capable software for their products for Windows, and a plug and play image for a dedicated Raspberry Pi.
• SDRServer - Streaming data to multiple users from a software defined receiver device.
• SATNOGS - There are a lot of research (micro)satellites in orbit now from various institutions such as college engineering classes. The problem is that they only realize their potential when the data that they generate can get transmitted back. SATNOGS is a network of open source, inexpensive ground stations that use commodity hardware, 3D printed parts, and the Internet to receive data from these small satellites and get it back to the satellite's sponsors.
• Signal Identification Guide - an open sourced (Wiki) compendium of various modulation types. When you receive something you don't understand, look it up here.
• Single Channel Repeater - Single Channel Repeaters have been done, but only as a "record for seconds, then play back for seconds. Instead of that, think receive for 5 mS, then transmit for 5 mS.
• SMSGTE - A gateway between Amateur Radio APRS messages and Short Message Service (SMS) messages.
• SV2AGW Packet Engine - Software that operates as a packet radio switch - multiple TNCs can be connected to multiple applications.
• TAPR - TAPR didn't create the Terminal Node Controller (TNC) or Packet Radio, but they made it accessible to average Amateur Radio operators. TAPR has done many interesting things since the TNC-1 and TNC-2. Their most important mission now (in my opinion) is the annual Digital Communications Conference.
• Terrestrial Amateur Packet Radio Network (TARPN) Nino-TNC - This is a new KISS TNC with a USB interface capable of 9600 bps and a new Forward Error Correction (FEC) protocol.
• TNCPi9k6 - This is a 9600 bps KISS TNC for a Raspberry Pi designed by John Wiseman G8BPQ, originally produced by Coastal Chipworks (which has ceased operations).
• Unsigned.io OpenModem TNC - What can I say... I'm a fan of TNCs, especially ones designed and produced in the 21st century. OpenModem has a unique capability of logging AX.25 packets to an SD card for later analysis. 
• Unsigned.io RNode LoRa Radio - Another LoRa Amateur Radio for experimentation with LoRa technology.
• UZ7HO software Packet-Radio TNC - UZ7HO was one of the first to offer TNC capabilities (mostly) in software. 
• VARA-FM - Vara is a "clean sheet of paper" approach to high speed data over Amateur Radio. It offers impressive speed on VHF/UHF with improved reliability.
• Wildernets - It's hard to grok Wildernets at first, but it's an amazing piece of software. It provides a web server, Voice over IP (VOIP), mesh networking, and more. It was ported to a now hard-to-find Wi-Fi router, and it's hoped that the developer will be able to find more time to work on it.
• Winlink - Winlink has made "last mile emergency email" plug and play. Within their paragigms, it works well. I think every Amateur Radio operator should support Winlink for emergency communications.
• WSJT - Dr. Joe Taylor W1JT has revolutionized Amateur Radio data communications by creating entirely new communications methods using advanced digital signal processing made accessible to Amateur Radio operators.
• XASTIR - Open Source APRS do-everything software.