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You mean like packet radio?

I put up the slides. Again, they are here. I can't confess to much patience with the tl;dr crowd.

This is 2015, bub. You're lucky any of us bothered to read the title of the /. article.

I put up the slides. Again, they are here. I can't confess to much patience with the tl;dr crowd.

The poster you're replying to, "mr_mischef", did not summarize my talk. He just wrote jibberish. The name of the poster might have been a clue :-) The slides are here.

Here are the slides..

Here are his presentation slides. https://www.tapr.org/pdf/DCC20...

I'm was in the back asking questions.

Chrony is a complete working implementation of the NTP protocol.

You mean complete except for broadcast/multicast mode, or authentication based on public-key cryptography. Some basically it's a good client and a unauthenticated / inefficient (network) server.

It also makes some pretty misleading claims; Chrony can usually synchronise the system clock faster and with better time accuracy except it never explains how it can possibly achieve better time accuracy than NTPd.

Chrony does handle a number of client usage scenarios better than NTPD (namely non-permanent network connection, and laptop-like environments) as far as I know, but it does not achieve better accuracy for the usage scenarios NTPD was primarily designed for (e.g. network connected servers).

NTPD gets its knickers in a twist at the slightest excuse and sometimes ends up stepping the time even though it has perfectly good Internet connectivity and a reasonably good internal clock.

Yet chrony can't detect rouge or fix broken time servers. Beyond possibly having better handling for clients of dynamic clock frequencies (i.e. SpeedStep, and various other power saving features that modify one or more of the several frequency oscillators in a computer.). I say possibly because I am not certain of the state of affairs in the current NTPD code base, I know it was lacking when dynamic clock frequencies originally appeared in systems, but I am not sure that it still is naive about that.

Chrony keeps steady time even if Internet access is intermittent. It never gets confused and picks a falseticker pretending to be stratum one instead of a stratum 3 with correct time, unlike NTPD.

While it does appear Chrony has improved greatly from a simple SNTP client for intermittent network connectivity it was when I first heard about it, that is still its forté, and likely the best client for many end-users' cases. Still it is not a robust general purpose replacement of NTPD.

It even has interfaces to GPS clocks or other hardware clocks, so you can run your stratum 1 server on Chrony if you want.

And YouTube is full of people doing stupid, reckless, and/or unwise things too. That's perhaps too harsh, but that's those "features" are quite incomplete.

Having PPS (Pulse Per Second) optional support is a good start, it is not a comprehensive solution to running a quality stratum 1 server. I expect a stratum 1 server to have improved or at least quantified oscillator ("clock") parameters, such as ideally TCXO (Temperature-Compensated crystal Oscillators) or OCXO (Oven-Controlled crystal Oscillator) for the stratum 1 system's time-keeping. For commercial systems I would suggest looking at a professional NTP server network appliance, there are several vendors including Spectracom, Symmetricom, Meinberg, and others.

Here's the paper published in the TAPR DCC conference proceedings: http://www.tapr.org/pdf/DCC2012-Handheld-Software-Radio_KD2BMH.pdf

Also, follow me on twitter http://twitter.com/testa or my blog http://blog.testa.co/

It's good to see people doing stuff, but this article is a decade or two out of date.

Hams have been hooking computers to radios for a long, long time.

There are hundreds of pages on digital radio and sound card interfacing:
  try
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSK31
http://hfradio.org.uk/html/digital_modes.html
http://www.tapr.org/packetradio.html
http://www.dxzone.com/catalog/Technical_Reference/Sound_Card_Radio_Interfacing/

THIS is bad ass:

Owned Over Amateur Radio (Remote kernel exploitation) [PDF]
http://vulnfactory.org/research/defcon-remote.pdf

rose-exploit â" Remote kernel exploit for ROSE amateur radio [code]
https://github.com/djrbliss/rose-exploit

Using Part 15 Wireless Ethernet Devices For Amateur Radio (AX.25 over Ethernet) [ftp/PDF]
ftp://ftp.tapr.org/software_lib/ether/Ham_Ethernet_GBPPR.pdf

Google: ax.25 over ethernet

THIS is the REAL global conspiracy!

I like The TAPR Open Hardware License. But yes, there is a problem that Hardware Isn't Generally Copyrightable. We can deal with the problem by using contract law, sometimes, and imperfectly, and by embedding copyrightable and trademarked content. I have a proposal for this that I've not finished yet, I'll try to get it up on the Open Hardware wiki soon.

Developed in the 1960s, used on ARPANET in 1969. Initiated in 1970, the ALOHANET, based at the University of Hawaii, was the first large-scale packet radio project. http://www.tapr.org/pr_intro.html

At the speed the revolution is moving for the moment, particularly from the east, I think internal comms is more important than external internet access. And, from the film foreign correspondents have broadcast, it looks like the cell network is still up. So, prolly good to go for now.

For the sake of argument, a 200km link is theoretically possible, based on the 125mi link record established during the 2005 Defcon Wi-fi shootout. They were using 10 and 12' satt dishes, and barely managed simple ssh console connections using unamplified wi-fi. With the heights quoted, I'm going to make a wild-ass guess that there isn't going to be sufficient fresnel clearance to prevent significant reflective signal fade over the Med between Cyrenica and Crete. But, with a few watts amplification, who knows?

Or ....

Get yourself a best-of-class kit radio from Elecraft - K3 or K2 or one of their other kits. Or a cutting edge Open source High Performance Software Defined Radio from HPSDR and TAPR.

Get yourself a radio kit from Ten-Tec, or MFJ.

Or from Oak Hill Research, or Hendrick's QRP Kits, module kits from W8DIZ who also sells parts, or from various non-profit QRP groups selling kits from time to time, like NorCal QRP Club.

Get yourself a copy of Circuit Cellar or Nuts and Volts from the US, or Everyday Practical Electronics (EPE) and Elektor from Europe or Silicon Chip from Australia.

Heck, you can even get vacuum tube based kits still.

Forget it, just go buy a new chinese made mp3 player!

Wow, +4 Insightful for a parent Troll..

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/040209-obama-cybersecurity-bill.html

A federally enabled Internet kill switch will place an Internet Off Button in the White House which can be used to instantly deactivate the Internet in case of an emergency, such as the plebes getting riled up. This bill, introduced to the Senate on April Fools, is expected to pass.

The guy in the white house may soon be able to take out the Internet when those who inhabit it publish information that is embarrassing to him, but there are other methods of digital conversation, such as Packet Radio, Ham Radio satellites, and other Amateur Radio communications methods.

We will truly know that we are an occupied nation when the white house declares ham radio to be illegal. One of the first steps of any tyranny is the control of information

You should also note that other frequencies (5.8 GHz, 2.4GHz, etc.) are free for all, so long as the power does not exceed a certain amount.

I sure am aware of the 5.8 GHz, 2.4GHz, bands. The is the power rating is so low its not useful as a roof top network node.

What the FCC needs to give the people that pay there salary is the same power ratings that we hold to the side of our heads all the time. That would be Cell phones.

We also need fare sharing protocols that are easy enough to figure out. This would give local ISP's a foot hold that would allow for fare competition with out the need for all the wires that limit competition.

I appreciate your correction. I am not a radio guy but rather a computer scientist.

But my point is this, the Internet is the town square of the 21 century. The founding fathers would be appalled that we are taxed by monopolies to assess that town square.

Perhaps short of Dish TV quantity's of data, there is Adequate bandwidth for roof top Internet access and traffic routing. I know this based on a 1994 petition that Apple computer Inc. sent to the FCC, but was rejected.

This sort of thing was apposed by the AT&T Lobby, since it would make local make local phone service obsolete. It also would have replaced the cash cow of the Cell networks with a free home grown network.

Here is a good reference about how little head way amateur radio community has so far exibited.

As for me I through out the idea of being taxed to use the cell phone nets long before there existence was popular. And the local Broadband providers can't seem to reach my house not so rural house. So I seek out the local bread shop where WiFi is provided.

The rub is the local House of Delegates would criminalize purposely surfing the Internet on someone else's wireless connection. And this would be just one more way for the for the Government to take away our freedom of speech!

PS. I appreciate the support of the original poster as well.

This is the reason that TAPR created the Open Hardware License. It is available in two versions - the Open Hardware License, and the Non-Commercial Open Hardware License. The former is like GPL for hardware, and the latter provides a license that can be used to allow a company to open a design without giving their competitors the chance to use the design commercially.

It is designed to provide many protections including of the circuit designs and layouts, and patent protection.

Darryl

P.S. I am on the board of TAPR

This is the reason that TAPR created the Open Hardware License. It is available in two versions - the Open Hardware License, and the Non-Commercial Open Hardware License. The former is like GPL for hardware, and the latter provides a license that can be used to allow a company to open a design without giving their competitors the chance to use the design commercially.

It is designed to provide many protections including of the circuit designs and layouts, and patent protection.

Darryl

P.S. I am on the board of TAPR

CWOP uses FindU.com's database back-end. The FindU guy is running the service as a hobbyist; keeping the source closely held (because he doesn't want commercial interests using it) and is funding it out of his own meager salary.

* http://www.tapr.org/pipermail/aprssig/2005-September/009128.html
* http://www.findu.com/

I have a problem with defacto services being run by one guy who promises he'll hand the whole thing over to someone else if he should ever get bored of it. Ya, Right.

Posting as AC because I don't have time at the moment to go through the password recovery rigamarole.

I'm not sure if they're going to be represented this year, but I've seen some GNU Radio stuff shown at the annual ARRL/TAPR Digital Communications Conference, which happens to be coming up next week in Hartford, CT. I see a couple of SDR-related topics on the schedule, including the Sunday seminar.

Even if you're not an amateur radio operator, it's worth checking out if you're interested in SDR. And the banquet speaker this year is Bruce Perens of Debian and OSI fame.

http://www.tapr.org/dcc

Lets make it clear that what I called the Google's Internet is actually the Internet. and will be better the anything any of the monopolies have supplied.

• What makes you think "Google's Internet" is going to be any less ghetto-ized than the Big Evil (TM) Telcos'?

Many good thing came out of the Ghetto's, but nothing good is going to come out of the Telcos but expensive long distance bills and broadcast TV cashed at local sights. All the rest will be blocked, or the bandwidth will be restricted so as not to require the Internet backbone growth that will be needed.

• You can buy a wireless router right now and put in on your roof and give all your neighbors free Wifi. Realistically, there is little chance of your ISP finding out, if it happens that it's a violation of your TOS.

I have a http://www.fon.com/ router on the roof... what joke the signal does not get off my yard let alone to the next house.... back in May 95. And yes the FON its is the same transmiter used by Cisco's 803.11b/g hardware. It's power is limited by the FCC. So that it can not compete with the Telco's. See when the FCC failed the people back in May 1995. Read about the NII Band (National Information Infrastructure)
http://www.tapr.org/ss_psr60ss.html

Now that you have read that you will realize how routers on the roof will work. And why the telco's promote FUD so the public will not see the end of the telco as we now know it.

• But Google is a for profit company, so the minute you start getting checks, free access, or some other kind of compensation the "authorities" from the IRS on down to your local dogcatcher will be all over you like a cheap suit. More than likely, at least in the US, it's not worth the trouble.

I all ready have free internet access, I just have to drive to the local bread store to get it! The telco's can't seem to lay down the wires to make things work. But there are many, hundreds, of houses with in a 10k to 15k radius. So a roof top network would solve the problem. As referenced above.

What makes you think the Internet is a pipe out of which money should flow in to your pocket. Its not. More over I am not trying to be an ISP. I am, like most people, willing to share the burden to promote open ISP competition.

The Internet is a communications tool. And its true the backbone requires some work. But the work will be best done by ISP's that are free to bypass the monopoly of the telco's that will be supplied by the general public

So we can, and will, simply bypass all this silly fiber optics. Since we will not need fiber for the for communications. And out TV needs can be supplied by broadcast media and time shifting DVR's.

Bottom line the telco is dead, long live the open market.

The real problem with Internet connectivity in the US is the FCC.
Look around where you live. Do you see the possibility of 2 or even
10 or 100 Internet users with in 5 miles of where you use the Net.
If so then you have the potential of a free "last mile" network that
has the possibility to put you into contact with 100s of possible
Internet providers. If The FCC only did not give away our freedom
of speech to the highest bidder. The FCC needs to be told to give up
or reclaim spectrum for the public infrastructure.

Only then will manufactures make the radios for home use to
connect nodes with enough power to be practical. and only then
will Internet providers become plentiful enough to create the
competition required to beet the monopoly. This all dates back
to the days of Al Gore the "Destroyer of the Internet". Apple computer
of all people gave him the chance back in 1995 to get this started, but
he missed the boat. and we are stinking as a result.

The PETITION FOR RULEMAKING of the "NII BAND".

What we get.

More things the FCC has taken away from us.

I really like the license over at http://www.tapr.org/ohl.html it was created by a bunch of HAM radio guys.

The one thing that concerns me about this whole "wireless e-mail" patent business is that this basic functionality has been available in the amateur radio community for DECADES. Packet radio was pioneering in 1978 by hams in Montreal, Canada. Hams established "wireless" BBS systems through the 1980's, which provided an e-mail like feature via the message board. Further with the rise of the Internet hams have provided e-mail over the amateur radio bands; i.e. wireless e-mail. Perhap's I'm missing something, but this appears to be a pretty compelling prior art arguement. http://www.tapr.org/history.html http://www.winlink.org/History.htm

Yes, that's what they used to be. Only instead of drawers, there were pegboard racks with all those bits hanging from them - usually with a sliding rack in front of them all with more bits hanging from it as well. Resistors, capacitors, DIP ICs (like someone else in these comments mentioned, the LM555 peg usually had a few cards hanging on it), diodes (both the kind that are supposed to emit light, and those that only do it once very quickly)... those were the days. Built an alarm system out of a few IR LEDs and receivers using relays as flip-flops, before I knew what a flip-flop was - just realized that if wired properly, a couple relays could be triggered and require another circuit to manually reset (hello, digital latch).

Now, as I've become a ham and have more of an appreciation for all the gadgets I used to see hanging on those panels, I sorely miss them (along with Heathkit). There was recently a thread on a mailing list I belong to (for APRS, see here) that said a lot of the decline of Radio Shack's parts wall can be blamed on ourselves, and the fact that the store which used to actually carry ham radio equipment and parts only catered to a group of people which aren't as interested in any of that anymore and are on the decline. That may be true, and there may be catalog stores and online places to get the same stuff, but there's just something about browsing through a shelf of components to get the brain going with what you can build using all that.. stuff :>

And I thought I was one of the few (outside of those who do/did packet radio) who knew about this.

For anyone interested, check out http://www.tapr.org/. There's a whole history there of wireless packet radio...one section even includes pushing messages to a computer over a wireless packet network. Maybe not a mobile device, but close enough in principle to a BlackBerry.

I have done a weather balloon project myself. Sounds like what you wish to do is a zero pressure balloon. You will need to read FAR-101 for regulations regarding free unmanned balloons.

My friend Bill Brown (WB8ELK) has flown more than 200 balloons and has had great success of long term flights with balloons that simply have a pinholes poked in them. One he launched in Alabama a few years ago flew all night and was last heard off the coast of Nova Scotia.

You can get a copy of Now You're Talking! for about $20 and the exam itself will cost $14. NYT! is a very good book for the exam if you also want to understand the concepts. If you think Ham is too low tech, check out some of the DSP stuff and homebrew DSP equipment

I think this is where I read it ...

WEP encryption

In addition if you google for "Broadcom Military" you will find quite a few references to their relationship.

So the idea of encoding low-precision GPS in other formats is at least 7-8 years old.

Look at: http://www.tapr.org/tapr/html/Fmic-e.html

TAPR(http://www.tapr.org/) is the usually the best source of packet radio information. They do lots of experimentation and collection of information.

I think several trends are at work in amateur radio right now. First is that advances in chip integration have made it more difficult to homebrew equipment. There are fewer and fewer "catalog" parts around with simple functions. This, plus surface mount packaging, have made electronic products cheaper but electronic experimentation much more difficult for the average person.

Another trend is the commercial annihilation of distance. Talking across the country on two-way radio loses its thrill when one can do the same on a cell phone more or less for free, and much more reliably.

Software Defined Radio (SDR) is a bright spot in ham radio today. Forget about the Big Project flavor of Gnu Radio. Amateur SDR projects tend to be quite simple - sometimes ingeniously so - and approach the subject from the experimenter's point of view, not the engineer's. Most are based on the simple proposition that a recent commodity PC plus sound card make a pretty decent digital signal processor.

Organizations like ARRL and TAPR have encouraged digital radio up to and including SDR, though they have each tried to firmly guide the direction of amateur SDR. In fairness, ARRL has published many articles in its experimenter's magazine and in an excellent online compendium.

Two independent projects show the range of amateur SDR. The SDR-1000 is a hardware/software project turned semi-commercial, with a steep price of entry. Flex Radio Systems also has a unique definition of Open Source. On the other hand, the SDRadio project is an independent software receiver that is slowly morphing into a community effort. The project forum is brimming with good ideas.

There are other, loosely related projects such as narrowband signal processing and Digital Radio Mondiale (broadcast) decoders being done by hams. From these resources it's easy to see SDR as an emerging force in rejuvenating ham radio, even though today the various efforts are quite fragmented.

Yeah, that struck me as ill-informed.

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, 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 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.

Yeah, that struck me as ill-informed.

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, 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 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.

Not exactly bleeding edge technology. Amateur Radio operators have been doing this for over 20 years. It's called packet radio. Low cost packet radio networks span hundreds of miles. http://www.tapr.org/tapr/html/pktf.html

That's why I am an Amateur Radio perator (Links for USA, Australia UK).

Every little bit of Amateur education in radio and electronics helps interest people in the bigger science too, and there are some great techniques and articles produced by Amateurs, e.g. Ian Purdie VK2TIP on all sorts of subjects; spread-spectrum, digital signal processing, and packet radio; etc.

Here's a better link to TAPR's software page. There are several radio-based BBS programs.

Did you even bother with Google?

Amateur (ham) packet radio networks have been doing exactly this since the early 1980s. They are designed to be independant of the Internet.

Check out TAPR for more information on that.

Also, check out the Guerrilla Net project by former L0pht members, which uses more modern hardware.

With a little time and effort almost any American can get an amateur radio technician class license from the FCC. It does not allow you to transmit 1500 watts at 2.4Ghz! The 2.4Ghz band is unlicensed and the max transmittion power is 100 milliwatts. The closest microwave frequencies are 902-928 MHz and 1.24-1.3Ghz. You should note that there is only 26 kHz and 60 MHz of bandwidth available respectively. Thus the 23cm (1.24-1.3Ghz) band is the only choice for applications similiar to WiFi. 802.11b eats up 22 MHz of bandwidth.

Digital Spread Spectrum is still in its infancies in the amateur radio community. However, progress is being made.

With what little knowledge that I have concerning radio theory, it should be possible to modify an access point or WiFi card and get it on the 23cm band. It might even be easier considering that 1.24 Ghz is almost a harmonic (half) of 2.4Ghz.

If you do manage to do such a thing, there would be a few requirements concerning identification. The access point would need to broadcast your callsign; this might be fullfilled with your callsign as the SID. The data traffic could not be encrypted, the data could not be offensive, and you must have control over the equipment.

http://www.tapr.org

wait- you had internet?! Or are you one of the few Packet Radio freaks left in the city?

I've used "PC Inspector File Recovery" with great success in recovering files from a smartmedia card that I accidentally deleted from the camera's interface. Compactflash should be similar.

CF cards shouldn't get wet! They have plenty of space inside for moisture to linger. You got lucky. If I got a CF card wet and it didn't work after blowing the holes dry, I'd crack it open and rinse the innards with alcohol, then try again. I've got pics of the insides of a CF card on my photo gallery under the Tech album.

For those who want to attach CF cards directly to IDE controllers, adapters are available.

I was interested in building a kit radio and had heard of a company called Elecraft. After checking their page today, seems they have open sourced their DSP source code used in some of their HF rigs. Users are free to modify the code and post to web site to share with other users.

They and TenTec are the last of American made and assmebled hame radio equipment makers left.

Wonder how this will spur interest in custom DSP desgined radios. There's also a link from the elecraft page to a samll and inexpensive DSP development platform.

73's

N2PDB

Bruce, a year or so ago you talked to the ham radio Digital Communications Conference and issued a challenge for the ham community to embrace the concept of "open source hardware" as exemplified by A HREF=http://www.opencoreshttp://www.opencores.org.

A year later, do how do you perceive the open source hardware movement? Will it have an impact similar to that of open source software?

I recommend the Historical Electronics Museum near Baltimore, MD. I visited the HEM when I attended a Digital Communications Conference (check out tapr) a few years ago. The radar displays were fascinating. Other old military electronics stuff was interesting, too, e.g., the electronics in a torpedo. But the sophistication of the radars was amazing. Historical Electronics Museum

CQiNet - Open Source implementation of Voice over IP (VoIP) software specifically for Ham Radio. Currently there are three popular VoIP packages used by Ham Radio operators, IRLP, ILink and EchoLink. Since none of these packages are open source it is difficult to contribute to the their development and learn from them by studying their source code. Let's face it for many of us Ham Radio is more about playing with technology than it is about yacking on the radio or Internet. (Hmmm... maybe some folks on Slashdot could learn something....)

Hamsoft - A great HAM/Linux database. (not to be confused with GNU/Linux)

TAPR! - These geeks will whoop yer ass in a second! A lot of them are commited to open source. They actually help fund HARDWARE projects (we could learn something). Check out their LINUX sig.

Flex-Radio - An open source software defined radio!

GnuRadio - Signal Processing in oepn source software

CQiNet - Open Source implementation of Voice over IP (VoIP) software specifically for Ham Radio. Currently there are three popular VoIP packages used by Ham Radio operators, IRLP, ILink and EchoLink. Since none of these packages are open source it is difficult to contribute to the their development and learn from them by studying their source code. Let's face it for many of us Ham Radio is more about playing with technology than it is about yacking on the radio or Internet. (Hmmm... maybe some folks on Slashdot could learn something....)

Hamsoft - A great HAM/Linux database. (not to be confused with GNU/Linux)

TAPR! - These geeks will whoop yer ass in a second! A lot of them are commited to open source. They actually help fund HARDWARE projects (we could learn something). Check out their LINUX sig.

Flex-Radio - An open source software defined radio!

GnuRadio - Signal Processing in oepn source software

Congratulations. You just (re)invented packet radio. Now go out and be happy with your 9600 baud connections.

There is even a programming library and some applications available to control various radios.