3 ms·

I think if this interests you, you'll like the LoRa-based devices better. They're unlicensed, so you can encrypt, use it without a ham radio license, etc. LoR

I think if this interests you, you'll like the LoRa-based devices better. They're unlicensed, so you can encrypt, use it without a ham radio license, etc. LoRa is pretty proprietary which is evil and all, but the end result is good. Hackaday has some good example projects: https://hackaday.com/2020/04/25/a-lora-im-me-for-the-end-of-the-world/ https://hackaday.com/2020/04/25/a-lora-im-me-for-the-end-of-... https://hackaday.io/project/171790-armawatch-armachat-long-range-radio-messengers https://hackaday.io/project/171790-armawatch-armachat-long-r...

livueta 5y ago
Came here to post this; also, https://meshtastic.org/ https://meshtastic.org/. Still in (very) active development, but it genuinely works quite well and is very exciting. Imo lora and similar protocols are a great example of the innovation fueled by the existence of the ISM bands.
- spiritplumber 5y ago
  https://www.f3.to/cellsol/ https://www.f3.to/cellsol/ This one is geared towards low power consumption, for throwies.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Technically we could build something like LoRa on the amateur bands. It's a pretty basic protocol with up/down chirps. With the kind of power we can use compared to the ISM bands this kind of robust protocol would have a huge range.
- jrockway 5y ago
  To some extent, modes like FT8 have shown how effective modern encoding techniques can be. The problem, I suppose, is that FT8 is ridiculously structured; optimizing to the core the bare necessities of a QSO. I think that is probably the reason for its success; if I want to talk to people, it's easy to find them on the Internet. But accumulating QSOs is an achievement in and of itself, and something you can only do with ham radio, so the optimization is probably perfect. As someone who's had the most ham radio success with FT8, I do find myself asking "what if there is an emergency"? I probably won't have power for my computer, and WSJT-X is pretty cumbersome to use while mobile. So we should probably be looking into other technologies, but the old standby CW seems good enough, so nobody is really looking.
  - bigjimmyk3 5y ago
    Have you looked into JS8CALL? It uses the same bones as FT8 but allows for longer exchanges.

livueta 5y ago

Came here to post this; also, https://meshtastic.org/ https://meshtastic.org/. Still in (very) active development, but it genuinely works quite well and is very exciting. Imo lora and similar protocols are a great example of the innovation fueled by the existence of the ISM bands.

spiritplumber 5y ago
https://www.f3.to/cellsol/ https://www.f3.to/cellsol/ This one is geared towards low power consumption, for throwies.

GekkePrutser 5y ago

Technically we could build something like LoRa on the amateur bands. It's a pretty basic protocol with up/down chirps. With the kind of power we can use compared to the ISM bands this kind of robust protocol would have a huge range.

jrockway 5y ago
To some extent, modes like FT8 have shown how effective modern encoding techniques can be. The problem, I suppose, is that FT8 is ridiculously structured; optimizing to the core the bare necessities of a QSO. I think that is probably the reason for its success; if I want to talk to people, it's easy to find them on the Internet. But accumulating QSOs is an achievement in and of itself, and something you can only do with ham radio, so the optimization is probably perfect. As someone who's had the most ham radio success with FT8, I do find myself asking "what if there is an emergency"? I probably won't have power for my computer, and WSJT-X is pretty cumbersome to use while mobile. So we should probably be looking into other technologies, but the old standby CW seems good enough, so nobody is really looking.
- bigjimmyk3 5y ago
  Have you looked into JS8CALL? It uses the same bones as FT8 but allows for longer exchanges.