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Ham and Software - Communities of Creativity?
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?"
Ham is to pirate radio stations as hacker is to hacktivism (e.g. defaced web sites)
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.
When the first BBS's went up in NYC, and the first personal computers came out, like the Radio shack Model 1, all those early programmers/BBSers were Ham nuts. Hacking in NYC and personal computers user grew directly out of HAM. They are not parallel, but instead the hacking field all grew from Ham. Everyone in FreakShow 100 from NYC learned their stuff from a guy name Art. Art got into computers from his Ham hobby. Other pioneers of the NYC hacking scene were the likes of Billy Arnel (Ham first, ran an early BBS called People Links) and a lady named Susan I seem to remember (ham as well)
A new technology begs to be tinkered with and if people can tinker, they will. As technologies mature the opportunities for tinkering decrease and the tinkerers may move to the margins.
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 difficult. They didn't go away though. There are major retailers devoted to supplying parts to them. Similarly, I don't think radio amateurs and 'computer amateurs' are in danger of extinction.
I think one of the advantages of having people do these activities is that it produces a supply of people interested in becoming professional. (Remember that one of the reasons that amateurs were licensed was to create a supply of signalmen for the army.) It is very important that people have the opportunity to tinker and innovate because that ultimately is what drives the economy.
One split was somewhere in the DOS 3.x world, where many ham operators now reside. Another split hit around Windows 95.
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 soundcard-based digital modes followed by serial-port radio control (adjusting tuning, bands, transmitting by serial commands).
But you will still find a lot of high quality, oft-updated DOS-based software for Ham use -- it just works.
Note also that Ham equipment makers and experimenters appear reluctant to dump RS232 for USB, though there are some strides being made by individual kit-makers. Drivers are the main stumbling block, I think. There's just so many different drivers and USB-serial adapters out there and some allow direct-like control of the various pins and some assume that you only want to use serial for sending bytes. But Hams use the handshaking pins independently for various tasks.
Check out the gnu-radio projecth e TAPR group (not just packet radio anymore all sorts of digital communications topics)
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
For Amatuer Radio, there are. Everything from amatuer satellites, Echolink (VOIP linked to ham stations across the world), Meteor and moon bounce communications in the the UHF and Microwave bands, and microwave based digital communications modes. Most of these things are cronicled in ARRL publications and magizines.
I think it is too cool to be able to program black boxes, either a receiver like the IC-PCR1000 or a pure software based T/R radio like FlexRadio
Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle lucid dreaming.
If you read (www.arrl.org) about the new internet via power lines technologies i.e. BPL, you will find tons of evidence that the all consuming need for internet bandwidth may spell the end for HF Amateur work and perhaps even VHF weak signal work. Hams near BPL test sites have experienced extreme interference with all radio communication types.
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
Here's a story of creativity and innovation in ham radio. Check out Elecraft -- this all sprouted from the brain of Wayne Burdick and others who designed some innovative low-power ham tranceiver kits for the Northern California QRP Club. Elecraft kits are not only superior to the old Heathkit kits, but the end result is a high quality transceiver comparable to the expensive commercial gear.
www.jameco.com and www.digikey.com
do not waste your time with ratshack. they destryoed their useability with ham's and hackers a long time ago.
hell their COAX for Rf is below even the crappiest grade, nobody would use it.
The ham and electronics hacker of the 21'st century must have a credit card and the ability to wait a few days for parts to arrive.
Amateur Radio isn't at all relegated back to a hobby without development.
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.
-twb
There are some problems right now in the computer industry, and unfortunately they aren't being addressed right now. I think you need to compare software engineering to nuclear engineering, and see how that now the current crop of high school students who want to get into computer science and software engineering are encountering some incredible barriers to being able to truly understand and work with computers from a hobbyiest viewpoint.
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
Best. ham. radio. software. ever. I wish every application was so great.
http://www.xastir.org/
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
Personally, I've ejoyed the following lately:
Check it out and take a look at my Ham Web Log for more stuff.
When I was in middle school, I subscribed to the Digi-Key catalog by mail just because there was a lot of fascinating stuff to see...everything from connectors and cables to semiconductor devices to embedded computers to prototyping tools and software.
You can get their catalog in PDF format here.
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it's International code. Some characters in common, but many are different. One big difference is that American Morse Code actually uses spaces inside some characters while International code doesn't.
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
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Ham radio exploited by corporate interests? Maybe some technologies developed originally by hams are, but there are pretty strict rules in most countries preventing commercial activities by amateur operators. Broadcasting is strictly prohibited. When I was an active ham operator, it was considered illegal even to order a pizza over a phone patch from your radio (they might have loosened this since then, I don't remember). And of course, it is off limits if you don't have a license. So while as a ham you might be able to hack, say, off the shelf 802.11 equipment to operate on ham bands, and legally use it at much higher power levels and with better antennae than you can on their normal unlicensed frequencies, accessing much (most?) internet content over such a connection would be of questionable legality, selling access would be clearly illegal, and using it without a license would be absolutely verboten.
In fact, the amateur service is under constant threat of losing frequencies to commercial uses, especially the marginally used microwave bands where most of the interesting experimentation goes on now. Most commercial radio frequency users are more interested in destroying ham radio than embracing and extending it (which, as discussed above, is pretty difficult).
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre