13 ms·

"Some people feel like HAM has no practical use outside of emergencies but there are definitely places where the owners of the spectrum have failed to build the

by rsync 6y ago

"Some people feel like HAM has no practical use outside of emergencies but there are definitely places where the owners of the spectrum have failed to build the infrastructure needed to use it." I keep reading about all of these very interesting protocols for texting over HAM radio ... and a lot of them seem very promising. My next step is to survey the landscape of devices that could be used to actually send and receive these text messages ... and there are none. Am I mistaken ? Does there exist a handheld radio that can be used to send and receive text messages over one of these HAM protocols ?

swiley 6y ago
lots of people are using a PC or phone running the software and either connecting that to a radio via the line-out port or using an SDR.
177tcca 6y ago
Are we done caring about the restriction on encryption? I'm down.
- throwaway3neu94 6y ago
  No, we aren't and we like it the way it is. The last thing ham radio needs is corporations just taking our bands, or ham radio getting banned in unstable countries over espionage concerns. If you want encryption, use a cellphone, LoRaWAN etc.
  - 177tcca 6y ago
    But...there's tons of projects already in use which use protocols that, if the regulatory body isn't following every open source project & actively updating their intake tools, effectively act as encryption schema.
    - throwaway3neu94 6y ago
      Could you give me an example or two so I can better understand what you mean? You're not entirely wrong, an undocumented plaintext protocol is functionally not much different from encryption. However, those which are legitimate (ie, just undocumented, not intentionally encrypted/obfuscated) don't tend to cause problems as only one or few ham devs would be using them. They can only get widespread adoption by other hams if they are documented. So this regulates itself. A corporation, on the other hand, is not like some ham dev coming up with their own protocol. They can design their own protocol, and then roll it out on thousands (or much more) of transmitters. So just one corporation can cause quite a big problem, with zero public documentation. The laws as they are, together with direction finding skills, are the communities only (legal) tool to defend against that. That does not mean hams don't see the value in encryption. I do! But it's a trade-off, and I think this is the only way it can work. The legal change I would like to see is explicitly allowing cryptographic signatures. Right now it's a grey area (likely legal, but not court tested)
      - 177tcca 6y ago
        Great points, especially, > They can only get widespread adoption by other hams if they are documented. > So this regulates itself Until the first project gets traction that allows you to easily drop in public/private key encryption of payload.
        throwaway3neu94 6y ago
        I'm not sure what asymmetric encryption has to do with this. There are already protocols that are widely used in ham radio that support encryption. For example, DMR supports encryption (because DMR can also operate in commercial bands, under different laws), it's just not used for ham radio and I've never seen a ham turn it on. Wifi supports encryption, and ham radio operators using it in ham radio bands (with more power) actually turn encryption on but document the PSK publicly (in an attempt to keep the non hams out, but make the encryption more an encoding that anyone could decode). In my experience, ham radio operators generally roughly follow the rules.
        6y ago
  - f-- 6y ago
    I hear this argument a lot, but it feels like a weird back-justification for the restrictions imposed by the government. Yes, encryption would make some enforcement actions slightly harder, but we tolerate it in plenty of other settings where you have a constrained, shared resource. Wifi comes to mind. Nobody gets upset that you can't examine your neighbors' packets to make sure they're following the law or not using the spectrum for a purpose other than "bona fide" home wifi. Even though the wifi spectrum in urban areas is far more crowded than ham frequencies. For much of the hobby's history, the government was deeply distrustful of amateur radio. They flat out banned all operations during WWI and WWII. And a lot of ham radio folks reminisce about the good old times when the government had listening stations and amateur radio enforcement operations throughout the country, and would knock on the doors of any amateurs who did anything wrong. Well, they funded that not because they shared your passion, but because they wanted to keep Soviet spies at bay. The ban on encryption was supposed to serve the government's interests, nothing more. If you worry about corporations misusing the spectrum, it's sufficient to require identification in plain text; if somebody is using amateur callsigns but sending 9-to-5 chatter on a fixed frequency every day, and you pinpoint it to a local warehouse, that's more enough for enforcement action, right? Except... there is almost no enforcement these days, because the Cold War is over and the government lost all interest. Ham radio getting "banned in unstable countries" seems like a whimsical concern, too. First, many other countries do not restrict encryption the way US does. Secondly, in the era of the Internet, mesh networking, ubiquitous smartphones, etc, ham radio hardly registers on the radar for most governments. Maybe in North Korea... so let's ban encryption domestically, including in the short-distance VHF/UHF band, to stay on Kim's good side?
    - GekkePrutser 6y ago
      It's not just that.. The thing is also that if everyone starts using encryption the community is gone. Right now at night we turn on the radios and check the local repeaters for activity and whatnot. Hear some interesting QSOs. If everyone is chatting encrypted this won't work. It also would enable people to use it as a free alternative for a commercial license - after all when it's encrypted we can't check that it's not used for such a purpose anymore. Using locations as you suggest isn't enough as it will need really targeted surveillance. Also, for a warehouse any of the free radio modes are more than sufficient in range. The ban on encryption isn't really much to do with espionage. Spies don't need a license.
brians 6y ago
Sure, a Kenwood TH-D74A can send messages over APRS. The older ‘72’ could too. So can a Yaesu FT-1DR. Plenty of cheaper devices can too. Now if you look at those, you’ll find some odd ideas—features like a built in 320x240 camera. They’re an odd mix of very young and very old tech ideas, because they’re the products of small engineering teams and weird budgets.
- NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
  Sadly, all those Kenwoods are now discontinued.
  - sobriquet9 6y ago
    AnyTone, TYT, Radioddity, Baofeng and other cheap Chinese radios ate Kenwood's lunch. For example, AnyTone D878UV has built-in GPS and can send APRS messages.
    - wl 6y ago
      The AKM factory fire is a more likely the cause for the D74's discontinuation than competition.
- throwaway3neu94 6y ago
  I would not recommend analog APRS for reliable text communication, or anything except periodic, unidirectional (radio to internet), fire and forget position/status/etc reports (for which APRS often can't be beat due its to extensive coverage in many regions). Instead, try DMR. Does voice, text and also digital APRS. Motorola and Hytera are probably the leading manufacturers of radios. Works direct and via DMR repeaters. If you have a repeater close by, you get worldwide radio to radio / talkgroup calling. Unfortunately both modes have many, many annoying quirks/constraints.
  - rsync 6y ago
    "Instead, try DMR. Does voice, text and also digital APRS." OK, but how do I physically key in the text message from the handheld device ? Is it the old-fashioned pre-qwerty method of pressing a number once or twice or thrice to get the desired alpha character ? Perhaps my initial question was not clear: In the most primitive of ways, how do I actually key in a text message on the handheld device ?
sobriquet9 6y ago
DMR radios support SMS. But without a keyboard or touch screen it's not particularly user friendly. And you can't use encryption.
throwawayboise 6y ago
Morse code?
- jimnotgym 6y ago
  I was reading through waiting for someone to say that. Morse is intelligible with significant background noise, has a tiny bandwidth, requires very low power and is pretty popular. However it is not that easy to learn....I certainly failed!
  - kwhitefoot 6y ago
    If it is that good surely a simple program could be used to generate Morse from ordinary text and text from Morse or is there some non-technical reason why Morse code has to be generated by hand?
    - Ccecil 6y ago
      Linked this above...but relevant here. https://preppcomm.com/ https://preppcomm.com/
    - jimnotgym 6y ago
      Most Morse is not generated by hand. The human ear tends to be much better at decoding it under sub-optimal conditions though.
myself248 6y ago
Seriously! I keep feeling the same lack. I want something in the form factor of an early Blackberry or something. I'd love it to have three radio decks: One ham transceiver, so I can use direct APRS-or-whatever with other nearby nodes or digipeaters, though I know the antenna will suck. One Bluetooth, so it can act as the QWERTY UI for a more powerful radio that lacks a decent keyboard (or as a generic peripheral for other projects). And one Part-15, perhaps LoRa or something, so it can also operate in an unlicensed mode with Meshtastic or something as the protocol over longer range than Bluetooth. I'm pretty sure I could design the hardware, both the electronics and the enclosure, but I can't code my way out of a wet paper bag, so that's sort of a non-starter. The bigger question question is, why doesn't this exist yet? Are there HTs with native Bluetooth so the texting UI could be implemented as a phone app? I know there are some with Bluetooth for other functions but I'm not clear on whether they can act as a KISS TNC over SPP. If so, that would be a great interface to standardize on, implement the phone app for testing, then turn it into a physical gizmo to enjoy longer battery life and cheaper/rugged hardware. Then as a next step, bring the Part-97 hardware into the gizmo.
- vvanders 6y ago
  Check out the M17 project, they seem to be making inroads in that area. https://m17project.org/ https://m17project.org/ Mobilink tncs are really nice but you're still limited by APRS.
  - ac29 6y ago
    M17 sounds cool, but as near as I can tell you cant just buy some hardware for it. Its still a plug your PC into a generic radio technology (which is fine, but some people just want to spend the money to get a working all in one solution).
- sobriquet9 6y ago
  I played with Meshtastic and was disappointed with range. I did not really expect miracles given LoRa's limited power, but 50 yards with direct line of sight was underwhelming.
Mister_X 6y ago
I would love to see that Incorporated into a 2 M transceiver because I'm not aware of any commercial Ham radios that natively send text (yet). But during emergency nets some of us use Fldigi (short for Fast light digital), a free and open-source program which allows an ordinary computer's sound card to be used as a simple two-way data modem. The software is mostly used by amateur radio operators who connect the microphone and headphone connections of an amateur radio SSB transceiver or an FM two way radio to the computer's headphone and microphone connections, respectively. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fldigi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fldigi It can be difficult for some to get set up and properly configured, but once it's working, it will transmit text messages without major errors under the noise floor, i.e. can barely hear it because of all the white noise. It does cause complaint's when used on voice simplex frequencies and repeaters. It sounds worse than packet radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_radio which I kind of like hearing.
- uncledave 6y ago
  APRS / SMSGTE: https://smsgte.org/ https://smsgte.org/
  - Mister_X 6y ago
    Thanks, I'm well aware of APRS, it's a neat technology, I know many Hams who use it, but don't feel the need. I travel long distances on my motorbike as often as I can, I go naked, no phone, no eletronics except my 2M transeiver and point and shoot camera.
    - vel0city 6y ago
      Well, you're asking for amateur radios which natively send text, and there are many amateur radios which natively support APRS. APRS can send text. Hitting an I-GATE, they can send and receive SMS. So from my Kenwood TH-D74A I can natively send and receive text. There are many radios out there which natively support APRS, which means they natively support text. Many other radios can natively support this text functionality. It seems like its the thing you were requesting in your earlier comment, but you're brushing it away. What is APRS lacking in terms of text transmission?
Ccecil 6y ago
https://preppcomm.com/ https://preppcomm.com/ Company local to me makes these. I haven't tried one but it looks interesting. I did some rework on a couple of their prototype boards. edit: TLDR; it is a morse code transceiver

by rsync 6y ago

swiley 6y ago

lots of people are using a PC or phone running the software and either connecting that to a radio via the line-out port or using an SDR.

177tcca 6y ago

Are we done caring about the restriction on encryption? I'm down.

throwaway3neu94 6y ago
No, we aren't and we like it the way it is. The last thing ham radio needs is corporations just taking our bands, or ham radio getting banned in unstable countries over espionage concerns. If you want encryption, use a cellphone, LoRaWAN etc.
- 177tcca 6y ago
  But...there's tons of projects already in use which use protocols that, if the regulatory body isn't following every open source project & actively updating their intake tools, effectively act as encryption schema.
  - throwaway3neu94 6y ago
    Could you give me an example or two so I can better understand what you mean? You're not entirely wrong, an undocumented plaintext protocol is functionally not much different from encryption. However, those which are legitimate (ie, just undocumented, not intentionally encrypted/obfuscated) don't tend to cause problems as only one or few ham devs would be using them. They can only get widespread adoption by other hams if they are documented. So this regulates itself. A corporation, on the other hand, is not like some ham dev coming up with their own protocol. They can design their own protocol, and then roll it out on thousands (or much more) of transmitters. So just one corporation can cause quite a big problem, with zero public documentation. The laws as they are, together with direction finding skills, are the communities only (legal) tool to defend against that. That does not mean hams don't see the value in encryption. I do! But it's a trade-off, and I think this is the only way it can work. The legal change I would like to see is explicitly allowing cryptographic signatures. Right now it's a grey area (likely legal, but not court tested)
    - 177tcca 6y ago
      Great points, especially, > They can only get widespread adoption by other hams if they are documented. > So this regulates itself Until the first project gets traction that allows you to easily drop in public/private key encryption of payload.
      - throwaway3neu94 6y ago
        I'm not sure what asymmetric encryption has to do with this. There are already protocols that are widely used in ham radio that support encryption. For example, DMR supports encryption (because DMR can also operate in commercial bands, under different laws), it's just not used for ham radio and I've never seen a ham turn it on. Wifi supports encryption, and ham radio operators using it in ham radio bands (with more power) actually turn encryption on but document the PSK publicly (in an attempt to keep the non hams out, but make the encryption more an encoding that anyone could decode). In my experience, ham radio operators generally roughly follow the rules.
        6y ago
- f-- 6y ago
  I hear this argument a lot, but it feels like a weird back-justification for the restrictions imposed by the government. Yes, encryption would make some enforcement actions slightly harder, but we tolerate it in plenty of other settings where you have a constrained, shared resource. Wifi comes to mind. Nobody gets upset that you can't examine your neighbors' packets to make sure they're following the law or not using the spectrum for a purpose other than "bona fide" home wifi. Even though the wifi spectrum in urban areas is far more crowded than ham frequencies. For much of the hobby's history, the government was deeply distrustful of amateur radio. They flat out banned all operations during WWI and WWII. And a lot of ham radio folks reminisce about the good old times when the government had listening stations and amateur radio enforcement operations throughout the country, and would knock on the doors of any amateurs who did anything wrong. Well, they funded that not because they shared your passion, but because they wanted to keep Soviet spies at bay. The ban on encryption was supposed to serve the government's interests, nothing more. If you worry about corporations misusing the spectrum, it's sufficient to require identification in plain text; if somebody is using amateur callsigns but sending 9-to-5 chatter on a fixed frequency every day, and you pinpoint it to a local warehouse, that's more enough for enforcement action, right? Except... there is almost no enforcement these days, because the Cold War is over and the government lost all interest. Ham radio getting "banned in unstable countries" seems like a whimsical concern, too. First, many other countries do not restrict encryption the way US does. Secondly, in the era of the Internet, mesh networking, ubiquitous smartphones, etc, ham radio hardly registers on the radar for most governments. Maybe in North Korea... so let's ban encryption domestically, including in the short-distance VHF/UHF band, to stay on Kim's good side?
  - GekkePrutser 6y ago
    It's not just that.. The thing is also that if everyone starts using encryption the community is gone. Right now at night we turn on the radios and check the local repeaters for activity and whatnot. Hear some interesting QSOs. If everyone is chatting encrypted this won't work. It also would enable people to use it as a free alternative for a commercial license - after all when it's encrypted we can't check that it's not used for such a purpose anymore. Using locations as you suggest isn't enough as it will need really targeted surveillance. Also, for a warehouse any of the free radio modes are more than sufficient in range. The ban on encryption isn't really much to do with espionage. Spies don't need a license.

brians 6y ago

Sure, a Kenwood TH-D74A can send messages over APRS. The older ‘72’ could too. So can a Yaesu FT-1DR. Plenty of cheaper devices can too. Now if you look at those, you’ll find some odd ideas—features like a built in 320x240 camera. They’re an odd mix of very young and very old tech ideas, because they’re the products of small engineering teams and weird budgets.

NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
Sadly, all those Kenwoods are now discontinued.
- sobriquet9 6y ago
  AnyTone, TYT, Radioddity, Baofeng and other cheap Chinese radios ate Kenwood's lunch. For example, AnyTone D878UV has built-in GPS and can send APRS messages.
  - wl 6y ago
    The AKM factory fire is a more likely the cause for the D74's discontinuation than competition.
throwaway3neu94 6y ago
I would not recommend analog APRS for reliable text communication, or anything except periodic, unidirectional (radio to internet), fire and forget position/status/etc reports (for which APRS often can't be beat due its to extensive coverage in many regions). Instead, try DMR. Does voice, text and also digital APRS. Motorola and Hytera are probably the leading manufacturers of radios. Works direct and via DMR repeaters. If you have a repeater close by, you get worldwide radio to radio / talkgroup calling. Unfortunately both modes have many, many annoying quirks/constraints.
- rsync 6y ago
  "Instead, try DMR. Does voice, text and also digital APRS." OK, but how do I physically key in the text message from the handheld device ? Is it the old-fashioned pre-qwerty method of pressing a number once or twice or thrice to get the desired alpha character ? Perhaps my initial question was not clear: In the most primitive of ways, how do I actually key in a text message on the handheld device ?

sobriquet9 6y ago

DMR radios support SMS. But without a keyboard or touch screen it's not particularly user friendly. And you can't use encryption.

throwawayboise 6y ago

Morse code?

jimnotgym 6y ago
I was reading through waiting for someone to say that. Morse is intelligible with significant background noise, has a tiny bandwidth, requires very low power and is pretty popular. However it is not that easy to learn....I certainly failed!
- kwhitefoot 6y ago
  If it is that good surely a simple program could be used to generate Morse from ordinary text and text from Morse or is there some non-technical reason why Morse code has to be generated by hand?
  - Ccecil 6y ago
    Linked this above...but relevant here. https://preppcomm.com/ https://preppcomm.com/
  - jimnotgym 6y ago
    Most Morse is not generated by hand. The human ear tends to be much better at decoding it under sub-optimal conditions though.

myself248 6y ago

Seriously! I keep feeling the same lack. I want something in the form factor of an early Blackberry or something. I'd love it to have three radio decks: One ham transceiver, so I can use direct APRS-or-whatever with other nearby nodes or digipeaters, though I know the antenna will suck. One Bluetooth, so it can act as the QWERTY UI for a more powerful radio that lacks a decent keyboard (or as a generic peripheral for other projects). And one Part-15, perhaps LoRa or something, so it can also operate in an unlicensed mode with Meshtastic or something as the protocol over longer range than Bluetooth. I'm pretty sure I could design the hardware, both the electronics and the enclosure, but I can't code my way out of a wet paper bag, so that's sort of a non-starter. The bigger question question is, why doesn't this exist yet? Are there HTs with native Bluetooth so the texting UI could be implemented as a phone app? I know there are some with Bluetooth for other functions but I'm not clear on whether they can act as a KISS TNC over SPP. If so, that would be a great interface to standardize on, implement the phone app for testing, then turn it into a physical gizmo to enjoy longer battery life and cheaper/rugged hardware. Then as a next step, bring the Part-97 hardware into the gizmo.

vvanders 6y ago
Check out the M17 project, they seem to be making inroads in that area. https://m17project.org/ https://m17project.org/ Mobilink tncs are really nice but you're still limited by APRS.
- ac29 6y ago
  M17 sounds cool, but as near as I can tell you cant just buy some hardware for it. Its still a plug your PC into a generic radio technology (which is fine, but some people just want to spend the money to get a working all in one solution).
sobriquet9 6y ago
I played with Meshtastic and was disappointed with range. I did not really expect miracles given LoRa's limited power, but 50 yards with direct line of sight was underwhelming.

Mister_X 6y ago

I would love to see that Incorporated into a 2 M transceiver because I'm not aware of any commercial Ham radios that natively send text (yet). But during emergency nets some of us use Fldigi (short for Fast light digital), a free and open-source program which allows an ordinary computer's sound card to be used as a simple two-way data modem. The software is mostly used by amateur radio operators who connect the microphone and headphone connections of an amateur radio SSB transceiver or an FM two way radio to the computer's headphone and microphone connections, respectively. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fldigi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fldigi It can be difficult for some to get set up and properly configured, but once it's working, it will transmit text messages without major errors under the noise floor, i.e. can barely hear it because of all the white noise. It does cause complaint's when used on voice simplex frequencies and repeaters. It sounds worse than packet radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_radio which I kind of like hearing.

uncledave 6y ago
APRS / SMSGTE: https://smsgte.org/ https://smsgte.org/
- Mister_X 6y ago
  Thanks, I'm well aware of APRS, it's a neat technology, I know many Hams who use it, but don't feel the need. I travel long distances on my motorbike as often as I can, I go naked, no phone, no eletronics except my 2M transeiver and point and shoot camera.
  - vel0city 6y ago
    Well, you're asking for amateur radios which natively send text, and there are many amateur radios which natively support APRS. APRS can send text. Hitting an I-GATE, they can send and receive SMS. So from my Kenwood TH-D74A I can natively send and receive text. There are many radios out there which natively support APRS, which means they natively support text. Many other radios can natively support this text functionality. It seems like its the thing you were requesting in your earlier comment, but you're brushing it away. What is APRS lacking in terms of text transmission?

Ccecil 6y ago

https://preppcomm.com/ https://preppcomm.com/ Company local to me makes these. I haven't tried one but it looks interesting. I did some rework on a couple of their prototype boards. edit: TLDR; it is a morse code transceiver