8 ms·

Back to the future: Are hackers the future of amateur radio?

168 points by austinallegro 2y ago

gunalx 2y ago
I do agree. amateur radio, can be so useful for hacking on custom protocols, and transferring data. It does not all have to be talking on the radio if that doe snot interest you. I also feel like a new generation is blooming.
jcalvinowens 2y ago
Playing with radios teaches you so much: no hobby has been more helpful for my career than ham radio. And it's such a broad hobby: you can make contacts just like your granddad on MF/HF CW today, and then on monster microwave arrays doing Earth-Moon-Earth with modern digital encodings tomorrow. You only need the one license.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- wepple 2y ago
  > Playing with radios teaches you so much: no hobby has been more helpful for my career than ham radio. Can you share some of the broad categories of things you’ve learnt?
  - btreecat 2y ago
    Not OP but some areas my ham ticket has helped me explore: - Antenna design - RF propagation - bandwidth - data rate - environmental effects - laws and regulations - encrypted comms - RF power vs antenna gain - connector types and quality - emergency comms And that's just with my basic tech license.
Animats 2y ago
Of course hackers need to know how radio works. They need to know how to break into WiFi, Bluetooth, and cellular comms, take over drones, break into RF-controlled industrial networks, spoof GPS, read RFID devices from a distance... None of that is in the ham bands. Few hams have enough RF knowledge to do any of that. Hams are mostly still at CQ DX, CQ DX...
mikewarot 2y ago
I'm glad to see that he mentions GNU Radio in his slides. It's amazing what you can do with it. I built a VOR receiver a few years ago. I'll migrate it to the new QT based display sometime this fall.
- lormayna 2y ago
  How hard was to create a VOR receiver with GNUradio? I really like the idea, but I found GNUradio very difficult to learn (and I have a master degree in Telecommunication Engineering). The basic things are easy, but when things becoming complex I am getting lost immediately. My side project, still unfinished since years, is to create a WSPR decoder in GNUradio
  - mikewarot 2y ago
    It took me a day of futzing around, and then a drive out to Chicago Heights and around the block where the VOR transmitter is. I manually tweaked the timing to adjust for the different delays in the detector chains.
polalavik 2y ago
Im a signal processing engineer by day focusing in comms. That is to say, I think radio is really exciting. I recently got my ham license for fun and boy is it fucking boring. It’s just a bunch of old dudes talking about where they are driving to and gate keeping the spectrum through repeater systems that you need to pay to be a member of or else you might get a stern finger wagging. From my understanding, ham radio back in the day was about tinkering. With the advent of Amazon and cheap electronics anybody can now get into it without tinkering at all. Would be nice to see people start tinkering again - really go crazy on protocols, experimental PHYs, etc. that’s the only way it’s ever going to be exciting again.
- nullc 2y ago
  Your mistake may be doing things you find uninteresting with it. There are experimental protocols and PHYs... you just don't (generally) find them on the VHF repeaters, which, I agree are super boring.
  - jvanderbot 2y ago
    I'd love to do more local / device networking, but I feel that's basically a solved problem. I can plug zigbee modules in all day and make serial packets bounce anywhere. Hackers are sparse geographically. It's not like my friend down the street would plug in his radio and we'd share packets. And if we did, why not use the internet? HAM has been a bit of a letdown to me, too. I had higher / hackier hopes for it.
    - falcolas 2y ago
      > that's basically a solved problem. ... why not use the internet? Pretty close to everything you can do with radio signals is "solved", just like almost everything you can do with computers is solved. But these problems have been solved by other people. Not you. What are your motivations for hacking at all? It's probably not because you're in entirely novel territory.
- red-iron-pine 2y ago
  > I recently got my ham license for fun and boy is it fucking boring. It’s just a bunch of old dudes talking about where they are driving to and gate keeping the spectrum through repeater systems that you need to pay to be a member of or else you might get a stern finger wagging. my experience, too. I did EW in the military and it was interesting-ish. decided to, a couple years back, get the license and play around, see if I could connect with some of the local Elmers -- and it was laaaaaaame. by comparison, other meetup groups like for drones, linux, or other nerdy-as-hell topics was still pretty lively. I went to some LUGs in Australia that were a straight-up blast, Linux trivia night in bars, etc. but ham was a snoozefest, and outside of doing some illegal-ass shit that the FCC would absolutely hammer me for, I can't think of anything cool to do with the license.
th0ma5 2y ago
I've barely done any contesting or public safety or really any rag chewing, but I got my Extra for digital RF synthesis experiments and digital modes just in case I want to do something in those extra bits of the bands. Lowfer people don't need licensed under a certain power and QRSS grabbers are an astoundingly neat thing for everyone licensed or not.
- genewitch 2y ago
  i'd never heard of this before... i'm allowed to transmit in the 600 meter band, this might actually be something interesting to do with that ability.
RobotToaster 2y ago
Meanwhile the RSGB won’t even let you take the foundation license test on linux, because they want to spy on potential members.
- jimhefferon 2y ago
  What does that mean? They want to use a cheat-discouraging browser?
- abstractbeliefs 2y ago
  You can do it in a virtual machine, and people frequently do. The software can't detect nor escape it. Unrelated (seriously), there's also OARC, the online amateur radio club. It's on discord (boo, proprietary), but it's got some of the most exciting projects and a really young crowd. I'd highly recommend it. https://www.oarc.uk/ https://www.oarc.uk/
- II2II 2y ago
  They want someone to invigilate the exam. That is reasonable, particularly since it appears as though in-person exams are still available. I'm not sure what the situation is in GB but, in Canada, the question bank (and answers) were publicly available from the licensing body when I took my exam. Under such circumstances, it would be trivial to cheat. (It was also quite handy. I made an online test generator for the club I belonged to so people could take practice exams to figure out when they were ready.)
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
lormayna 2y ago
What always surprises me on the ham world is the huge number of possibilities. Beside having voice QSO in HF or VHF, there are many other options: QRP and SOTA/POTA, digital modes, DYI antennas and radios, SDR, EME, identifying unknown and misterious signal, etc. What I don't like about the communities is that is mostly composed by grey hairs guy that are not really opened to change.
nanomonkey 2y ago
I haven't seen much innovation in the HAM spectrum, but I do some fun stuff done with Lora, and mesh networks by flashing routers with custom version of OpenWRT. Honestly I think the problem with the HAM spectrum is that it doesn't allow for (much) encryption and so much digital transmissions are hampered.
riffic 2y ago
I actually have a little ambition but maybe one day if I have energy I'll pursue an amateur radio art installation of sorts. The space seems ripe for this sort of energy.
- howard941 2y ago
  Tell me more
mccoyc 2y ago
Yes! RF is fun for hackers. Go get licensed. 73 de KQ4RLZ.
krupan 2y ago
Just renewed my license for the first time. That means I've had it 10 years. Problems for me: It's either really hard or really expensive to do basic stuff. Want to get on a repeater and chat? Great, a $20 baofeng radio can do it, but you have to get on the Internet to find the repeater frequency, offset, and tones, and then figure out how to program those into the radio. That either involves tedious button pushing on the radio, or getting a special cable, getting Chirp figured out and working with your laptop and radio and cable, and then figuring out the weird Chirp UI. You finally do all that, and then realize (as others have pointed out) that the conversations on the repeaters are lame. And then the radio is portable, but you can't charge it with a USB cable like everything else, or put in regular AA batteries. You take it camping and it dies after a day. Again, this is the most basic ham radio thing to do, lowest level of license required. It's not fun hacking, it's just annoying and discouraging. The alternative radios to baofeng are literally 10 times the price or more, and it's not clear to me that they make any of that any easier. Gear for HF (longer range) is a hundred times the price or more. I haven't even wanted to go there. Why isn't there a handheld radio that runs android and has a USB C data/charging port? Connecting to nearby repeaters based on GPS location could be automatic! You'd have all the young hams talking on the repeaters and things would start happening. That would be a radio that would actually be worth a license and a few hundred dollars
- lormayna 2y ago
  Buy a Quansheng uv-k5 radio. Is similar to Baofeng, but have a wider bandwidth coverage and you can charge with USB-C cable.
  - genewitch 2y ago
    i think i have a UV-something, but in general quansheng are far superior to baofeng vis a vis reliability, clarity and volume, and durability. When i'm in a machine room working on a repeater i want to be able to hear the radio, even if it falls 16'. on the antenna. THe only radio i own that's built more like a tank than my oldest quansheng is a motorola from the late 90s (VHF, NFM)
  - krupan 2y ago
aussieguy1234 2y ago
I read that licenses were some kind of security measure to prevent foreign spies from communicating using the radio back in world war 2. What's the point of even having licenses in the modern day? If you have to go through red tape to get started, it's little wonder usage is declining.
- genewitch 2y ago
  it's like $12 and taking a 30 question test, administered by local hams. I don't really consider that "red tape" usage is declining because radios are expensive because usage is declining. It's more fun to text and drive than talk on a walkie-talkie, smokey.
- crims0n 2y ago
  Because you don’t get free rein on the bands - there are frequency allocations, etiquette, power and mode limitations, safety to learn, etc.
Anastesia67 2y ago
[flagged]

168 points by austinallegro 2y ago

I do agree. amateur radio, can be so useful for hacking on custom protocols, and transferring data. It does not all have to be talking on the radio if that doe snot interest you. I also feel like a new generation is blooming.

jcalvinowens 2y ago

Playing with radios teaches you so much: no hobby has been more helpful for my career than ham radio. And it's such a broad hobby: you can make contacts just like your granddad on MF/HF CW today, and then on monster microwave arrays doing Earth-Moon-Earth with modern digital encodings tomorrow. You only need the one license.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
wepple 2y ago
> Playing with radios teaches you so much: no hobby has been more helpful for my career than ham radio. Can you share some of the broad categories of things you’ve learnt?
- btreecat 2y ago
  Not OP but some areas my ham ticket has helped me explore: - Antenna design - RF propagation - bandwidth - data rate - environmental effects - laws and regulations - encrypted comms - RF power vs antenna gain - connector types and quality - emergency comms And that's just with my basic tech license.

Animats 2y ago

Of course hackers need to know how radio works. They need to know how to break into WiFi, Bluetooth, and cellular comms, take over drones, break into RF-controlled industrial networks, spoof GPS, read RFID devices from a distance... None of that is in the ham bands. Few hams have enough RF knowledge to do any of that. Hams are mostly still at CQ DX, CQ DX...

mikewarot 2y ago

I'm glad to see that he mentions GNU Radio in his slides. It's amazing what you can do with it. I built a VOR receiver a few years ago. I'll migrate it to the new QT based display sometime this fall.

lormayna 2y ago
How hard was to create a VOR receiver with GNUradio? I really like the idea, but I found GNUradio very difficult to learn (and I have a master degree in Telecommunication Engineering). The basic things are easy, but when things becoming complex I am getting lost immediately. My side project, still unfinished since years, is to create a WSPR decoder in GNUradio
- mikewarot 2y ago
  It took me a day of futzing around, and then a drive out to Chicago Heights and around the block where the VOR transmitter is. I manually tweaked the timing to adjust for the different delays in the detector chains.

polalavik 2y ago

Im a signal processing engineer by day focusing in comms. That is to say, I think radio is really exciting. I recently got my ham license for fun and boy is it fucking boring. It’s just a bunch of old dudes talking about where they are driving to and gate keeping the spectrum through repeater systems that you need to pay to be a member of or else you might get a stern finger wagging. From my understanding, ham radio back in the day was about tinkering. With the advent of Amazon and cheap electronics anybody can now get into it without tinkering at all. Would be nice to see people start tinkering again - really go crazy on protocols, experimental PHYs, etc. that’s the only way it’s ever going to be exciting again.

nullc 2y ago
Your mistake may be doing things you find uninteresting with it. There are experimental protocols and PHYs... you just don't (generally) find them on the VHF repeaters, which, I agree are super boring.
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  I'd love to do more local / device networking, but I feel that's basically a solved problem. I can plug zigbee modules in all day and make serial packets bounce anywhere. Hackers are sparse geographically. It's not like my friend down the street would plug in his radio and we'd share packets. And if we did, why not use the internet? HAM has been a bit of a letdown to me, too. I had higher / hackier hopes for it.
  - falcolas 2y ago
    > that's basically a solved problem. ... why not use the internet? Pretty close to everything you can do with radio signals is "solved", just like almost everything you can do with computers is solved. But these problems have been solved by other people. Not you. What are your motivations for hacking at all? It's probably not because you're in entirely novel territory.
red-iron-pine 2y ago
> I recently got my ham license for fun and boy is it fucking boring. It’s just a bunch of old dudes talking about where they are driving to and gate keeping the spectrum through repeater systems that you need to pay to be a member of or else you might get a stern finger wagging. my experience, too. I did EW in the military and it was interesting-ish. decided to, a couple years back, get the license and play around, see if I could connect with some of the local Elmers -- and it was laaaaaaame. by comparison, other meetup groups like for drones, linux, or other nerdy-as-hell topics was still pretty lively. I went to some LUGs in Australia that were a straight-up blast, Linux trivia night in bars, etc. but ham was a snoozefest, and outside of doing some illegal-ass shit that the FCC would absolutely hammer me for, I can't think of anything cool to do with the license.

th0ma5 2y ago

I've barely done any contesting or public safety or really any rag chewing, but I got my Extra for digital RF synthesis experiments and digital modes just in case I want to do something in those extra bits of the bands. Lowfer people don't need licensed under a certain power and QRSS grabbers are an astoundingly neat thing for everyone licensed or not.

genewitch 2y ago
i'd never heard of this before... i'm allowed to transmit in the 600 meter band, this might actually be something interesting to do with that ability.

RobotToaster 2y ago

Meanwhile the RSGB won’t even let you take the foundation license test on linux, because they want to spy on potential members.

jimhefferon 2y ago
What does that mean? They want to use a cheat-discouraging browser?
abstractbeliefs 2y ago
You can do it in a virtual machine, and people frequently do. The software can't detect nor escape it. Unrelated (seriously), there's also OARC, the online amateur radio club. It's on discord (boo, proprietary), but it's got some of the most exciting projects and a really young crowd. I'd highly recommend it. https://www.oarc.uk/ https://www.oarc.uk/
II2II 2y ago
They want someone to invigilate the exam. That is reasonable, particularly since it appears as though in-person exams are still available. I'm not sure what the situation is in GB but, in Canada, the question bank (and answers) were publicly available from the licensing body when I took my exam. Under such circumstances, it would be trivial to cheat. (It was also quite handy. I made an online test generator for the club I belonged to so people could take practice exams to figure out when they were ready.)

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

lormayna 2y ago

What always surprises me on the ham world is the huge number of possibilities. Beside having voice QSO in HF or VHF, there are many other options: QRP and SOTA/POTA, digital modes, DYI antennas and radios, SDR, EME, identifying unknown and misterious signal, etc. What I don't like about the communities is that is mostly composed by grey hairs guy that are not really opened to change.

nanomonkey 2y ago

I haven't seen much innovation in the HAM spectrum, but I do some fun stuff done with Lora, and mesh networks by flashing routers with custom version of OpenWRT. Honestly I think the problem with the HAM spectrum is that it doesn't allow for (much) encryption and so much digital transmissions are hampered.

riffic 2y ago

I actually have a little ambition but maybe one day if I have energy I'll pursue an amateur radio art installation of sorts. The space seems ripe for this sort of energy.

howard941 2y ago
Tell me more

mccoyc 2y ago

Yes! RF is fun for hackers. Go get licensed. 73 de KQ4RLZ.

krupan 2y ago

Just renewed my license for the first time. That means I've had it 10 years. Problems for me: It's either really hard or really expensive to do basic stuff. Want to get on a repeater and chat? Great, a $20 baofeng radio can do it, but you have to get on the Internet to find the repeater frequency, offset, and tones, and then figure out how to program those into the radio. That either involves tedious button pushing on the radio, or getting a special cable, getting Chirp figured out and working with your laptop and radio and cable, and then figuring out the weird Chirp UI. You finally do all that, and then realize (as others have pointed out) that the conversations on the repeaters are lame. And then the radio is portable, but you can't charge it with a USB cable like everything else, or put in regular AA batteries. You take it camping and it dies after a day. Again, this is the most basic ham radio thing to do, lowest level of license required. It's not fun hacking, it's just annoying and discouraging. The alternative radios to baofeng are literally 10 times the price or more, and it's not clear to me that they make any of that any easier. Gear for HF (longer range) is a hundred times the price or more. I haven't even wanted to go there. Why isn't there a handheld radio that runs android and has a USB C data/charging port? Connecting to nearby repeaters based on GPS location could be automatic! You'd have all the young hams talking on the repeaters and things would start happening. That would be a radio that would actually be worth a license and a few hundred dollars

lormayna 2y ago
Buy a Quansheng uv-k5 radio. Is similar to Baofeng, but have a wider bandwidth coverage and you can charge with USB-C cable.
- genewitch 2y ago
  i think i have a UV-something, but in general quansheng are far superior to baofeng vis a vis reliability, clarity and volume, and durability. When i'm in a machine room working on a repeater i want to be able to hear the radio, even if it falls 16'. on the antenna. THe only radio i own that's built more like a tank than my oldest quansheng is a motorola from the late 90s (VHF, NFM)
- krupan 2y ago

aussieguy1234 2y ago

I read that licenses were some kind of security measure to prevent foreign spies from communicating using the radio back in world war 2. What's the point of even having licenses in the modern day? If you have to go through red tape to get started, it's little wonder usage is declining.

genewitch 2y ago
it's like $12 and taking a 30 question test, administered by local hams. I don't really consider that "red tape" usage is declining because radios are expensive because usage is declining. It's more fun to text and drive than talk on a walkie-talkie, smokey.
crims0n 2y ago
Because you don’t get free rein on the bands - there are frequency allocations, etiquette, power and mode limitations, safety to learn, etc.

Anastesia67 2y ago

[flagged]