Zero Retries 0148
2024-04-19 — Illuminating Discussion About Meshtastic on Ham Radio Workbench Podcast, M17 / SP5WWP Videos on M17 Remote Radio Unit
Zero Retries is an independent newsletter promoting technological innovation that is occurring in Amateur Radio, and Amateur Radio as (literally) a license to experiment with and learn about radio technology. Now in its third year of publication, with 1500+ subscribers.
About Zero Retries
Steve Stroh N8GNJ, Editor
Jack Stroh, Late Night Assistant Editor Emeritus
In this issue:
Illuminating Discussion About Meshtastic on Ham Radio Workbench Podcast
Steve Stroh N8GNJ and excerpts from HRWBM17 / SP5WWP Videos on M17 Remote Radio Unit
Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Web version of this issue - https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0148
Request To Send
Commentary by Editor Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Paid Subscribers Update
My thanks to Prefers to Remain Anonymous 27 for becoming a Paid Subscriber to Zero Retries this past week!
My thanks to Prefers to Remain Anonymous 28 for becoming a Paid Subscriber to Zero Retries this past week! PtRA 28 included this nice message:
I'm impressed by the range of information you are making visible to me.
Thank you PtRA 28!
Financial support is a real vote of confidence for continuing to publish Zero Retries.
Major Conference Countdowns
- Hamvention 2024 in Xenia, Ohio, USA on 2024-05-17 thru 19, in 04 weeks!
- HAM RADIO 2024 in Friedrichshafen, Germany on 2024-06-28 thru 30, in 07 weeks!
- JARL Ham Fair 2024 in Tokyo, Japan on 2024-08-24 and 25, in 18 weeks!
See other events at the Zero Retries Guide to Zero Retries Interesting Conferences.
Zero Retries 0147 Comments - New Record - 40+
I’m agog at the number of comments, and the number of commenters, resulting from the topics discussed in Zero Retries 0147. We commenters had (and as I write this mid-week, the discussions continue) wide-ranging conversation(s) about Amateur Radio data networks, exchanging a number of views. Honestly, that was incredibly fun to see the discussions - between subscribers. I really loved all that discussion - Thanks folks!
While the comment function works as (Substack) intended (light, focused comments), I found that the commenting in Substack quickly grew awkward as the topics diverged (forked) a bit, and it got harder to keep track of the discussion forks. And, only the commenters were aware of the discussion (if you comment, you receive notifications).
The amount of discussion that resulted from Zero Retries 0147 reminded me that I need to get busy on creating a Zero Retries discussion (mailing) list on Groups.io. That’s been on the Zero Retries “to do” list for a while now, but publishing Zero Retries every week, and working on the book, has kept me pretty busy of late. Given that there are > 1500 Zero Retries subscribers, a Zero Retries mailing list would immediately blow past Groups.io’s free tier (100 maximum), requiring a Groups.io Premium (paid) tier. Thus, that’s another expense in publishing Zero Retries that is offset by the wonderful folks who opt for Paid Subscriptions of Zero Retries.
I know that I ought to also create a parallel Zero Retries Discord server (discussion… not physical, but Discord calls a discussion group a “server”), but I’m not up to managing that and a Groups.io group quite yet.
Podcasts Need Transcripts
The first article, below, discusses a podcast, and thus this observation.
One of my frustrations about many podcasts is that they’re “audio only”, especially podcasts done by non-professionals. That is, no transcripts, few if any show notes, etc. But us Mac and iPhone / iPad users now have a solution to that issue - the Apple Podcasts apps now automatically (machine) generates a transcript of any podcast you listen to in an Apple Podcast app. Thus, that capability made a tedious task - teasing out the relevant portion of this podcast into text, easy easier, just search, copy, and paste. And copy and paste… and copy and paste…
To prevent copy and paste being too easy for entire podcasts, Apple limits the amount of text that can be copy and pasted from the Podcast app’s automatic transcript to approximately two paragraphs at a time. Thus to get the snippet of the podcast below required multiple copy and paste cycles. Tedious, but manageable.
In browsing a bit, Apple allows the podcast creator to access their transcription of podcasts to embed the (full) transcription into the podcast’s “page” via Apple’s podcast distribution. Thus podcasters don’t have to go to the expense of having their podcast transcribed; as I read it, that service from Apple is free.
Yes, I’m aware that there are dedicated transcription services out there for transcribing video and audio recordings, especially now in this era of good-trending-towards-great transcription using Artificial Intelligence techniques, but those are subscription services and I’m not quite to that point, yet.
Because I can now read / skim a transcript, a number of podcasts are now more accessible to me, such as the Linux in the Ham Shack podcast.
Overly Ambitious Article on Next Generation Concepts of Amateur Radio Repeaters
A lot of ideas about the future of Amateur Radio repeaters came together this week, but they were pretty disparate, so it was requiring significant butt-in-chair time to weave that article together into a coherent whole. But 15:30 on Friday keeps coming at me irrevocably, and the article was not yet in reasonable shape for publication. Hopefully I’ll have it complete next week for Zero Retries 0149.
In the meantime…
This week is bittersweet in our household - life can be way too short. Thus, after Zero Retries is completed, I’m declaring this a light “workweek” to make time for more fun, hands-on, doing Amateur Radio activities here in N8GNJ Labs.
73,
Steve N8GNJ
Illuminating Discussion About Meshtastic on Ham Radio Workbench Podcast
By Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Includes an excerpt from Ham Radio Workbench 205 - Guest Mark Herbert G1LRO, Ham Radio Workbench host George Zafiropoulos KJ6VU, and other HRWB co-hosts.
My thanks to Tom Salzer KJ7T for recommending the Ham Radio Work Bench (HRWB) podcast. They release new episodes biweekly, and discussions are often hands-on and technical, thus often Zero Retries Interesting… but the duration is sometimes 2 hours, and thus are challenging to make enough time for some weeks.
Because I’ve been trying to follow the progress of the G1LRO’s Universal Radio Controller, I made time to listen to most of HRWB 205 - Universal Radio Controller with Mark Herbert G1LRO.
There were many interesting discussion threads in this episode of HRWB, but one of the best bits was a brief, but pithy discussion of Meshtastic being contrasted with Amateur Radio, between Mark Herbert G1LRO and the HRWB host and co-hosts.
So I was thinking I'll probably put this [Meshtastic node] up on the roof and just leave it as a note to kind of help the mesh. It really comes back to the old days of Packet Radio, which I really enjoyed back in the 80s when this was the same thing, really. You were connecting, you know, computing devices together across AX25, and that was the same sort of thing.
You could hop through other people to get to your destination.
So I have to ask you a question. Since we're on the Meshtastic rat hole, and this conversation topic came up in a previous episode, and my comment about Meshtastic was it feels like a solution looking for a problem. And when I look at something like this, I tend to look at it two ways.
One is the technology. What is it? What does it do?
How does it work? And all that. And then separately, like, what would you do with it?
So the technology part I totally get. I mean, you know, put up a mesh radio, connect it to other radios, be able to send some data. That's very interesting to me.
However, on the other side, which is like to what end, I have no idea. So aside from the fact that you could put one up and connect to somebody else, do you have any idea of like what it would be useful for?
I think it's useful for getting people excited about this stuff, for one, because, you know, there's a community there and it's kind of a, it's like, it's almost like an underground community they can connect to and that they know something's going on, but you need to have one of these to be part of it. So I think it's really useful for like the Arduino generation because it is effectively an ESP32 and you use the same ID and everything. For forgetting that, I forget the Arduino generation interested in radio technology and communicating through radio.
So I think as a kind of gateway drug into amateur radio, this is fantastic because we can get some of those guys then pulled in and say, you know, you've built something, you understand the tech and you've got the buzz. Now find out what you can do if you get licensed and you can talk around the world and use some of the really exciting stuff that we're doing.
So actually as a motivator to get other people who may not be thinking of Ham Radio interested, so that makes sense.
And with that… I’m now convinced to get involved with Meshtastic.
There’s a precedent to this moment where Meshtastic as an “entry level radio technology” is rapidly becoming popular (bordering on wildly popular, at least among techies). The popularity of Meshtastic, and the enthusiasm of the Meshtastic users could “bleed over” into Amateur Radio. In the US, the Citizens Band Radio Service rose out of obscurity (it was created in 1945) and became rabidly popular in the early 1970s1. Having gotten a “taste” of the fun (and utility) of CB as entry level radio communications, many “CBers” became Amateur Radio Operators for the fun (and utility) of being able to use VHF / UHF repeaters2, do “skip” (and use more transmit power than 5 watts) legally, and many other activities in Amateur Radio. That “bulge” of new Amateur Radio Operators benefitted Amateur Radio enormously in numbers, in new talent, new energy in Amateur Radio, and in increased recognition of Amateur Radio in society.
Meshtastic is a perfect “easy entry point” into wide area data communications via radio for those that are comfortable with microcontrollers and embedded computers . Meshtastic’s concept, documentation, the robust technology (LoRa), and especially the many self-support communities, make it easy to “get on the air”. In the US, most Meshtastic activity is occurring on 902-928 MHz, which is overlaid between “Part 15” (license-exempt) use and Amateur Radio use. Thus there’s no license required to get active on Meshtastic, and that’s a huge advantage in getting people interested in wide area data communications via radio.
From the perspective of Amateur Radio, Meshtastic is “Amateur Radio data communications Lite”.
Like G1LRO, I now think that us Amateur Radio Operators that are active in data communications via radio should get busy and get online with Meshtastic and start participating with your local Meshtastic users. Make yourself (subtly) known as an Amateur Radio Operator, and be prepared for the inevitable inquiries from the most enthusiastic Meshtastic users about “well, how can I go to the next level” - faster speeds, more interesting uses, etc. Be ready with a story and applications such as a BBS, email, file transfers, etc. For example, the folks in the North Carolina Packet (NCPACKET) network, EastNet Packet Network, Southern California AREDN Mesh Network, and others could get involved in their local Meshtastic networks and offer mentoring to Mestastic users that wished to learn more about Amateur Radio.
I think the critical thing about inviting Meshtastic users to participate in Amateur Radio is to have something interesting online and operational that really is “next level” beyond Meshtastic to show to them, such as the networks in the previous paragraph. In my opinion, only having a few APRS digipeaters, Winlink RMS stations, especially with legacy packet radio (1200 bps AX.25) etc. won’t impress Meshtastic users too much. Also, there needs to be local documentation about “how to join in the fun”, such as the excellent “onboarding” documentation developed by Terrestrial Amateur Packet Radio Network (TARPN).
And, full disclosure, I’m not there yet in being able to offer the “next level” experience I described to Meshtastic users in my area. Nor is that infrastructure in place to offer an interesting “next level” experience… but I’ll be working on doing so. But in the meantime, I’m going to work on getting online with Meshtastic, mostly because I’m technically curious.
And, in transparency of how little I know about Meshtastic, in researching this story, I discovered that, in addition to the web app and apps for IOS (iPhone, iPad) and Android, there is a Meshtastic app for Mac. That’s going to make it interesting…
M17 / SP5WWP Videos on M17 Remote Radio Unit
By Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Wojciech Kaczmarski SP5WWP, the lead developer of the M17 Project, has been busy this week documenting the M17 Remote Radio Unit in two (to date) videos on YouTube.
The first video is SP5WWP's quick introduction to the Remote Radio Unit:
