Feb 12, 2012
N7ICE experiments with a FLEX-1500 SDR (software defined radio) from Flex Radio Systems for the first time. This is the future of ham radio!
seen from United States
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seen from Burkina Faso
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seen from China
seen from Belgium
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
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seen from Canada
seen from India
seen from Somalia
seen from China
N7ICE experiments with a FLEX-1500 SDR (software defined radio) from Flex Radio Systems for the first time. This is the future of ham radio!
Tweeting v1a Ham Radio
When it comes to communications technologies, hams (amateur radio operators) are always innovating and usually ahead of the market because we can experiment with wireless RF networks and satellites without a significant investment of capital. Twenty years ago, Bob Bruninga created the concept of APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting Service). This service primarily does two things for the ham community:
1. APRS routes messages across a private packet network to other hams.
2. APRS supports GPS coordinates embedded in beacons (messages sent at regular intervals from your ham radio to the packet network)
Hams use APRS as a private SMS service where instead of using mobile telephones, we use radios. Hams also use APRS to see who is near them based on their last beacon with coordinates. Think Google Latitude and Twitter mashup for hams except even better because APRS can also calculate speed of travel and include presence icons to indicate mode of operation.
Ok, so enough with the history lesson - let's talk about tweeting with a ham radio. Did I mention earlier that I run a social network for ham radio operators called 73s.org? As one of the benefits of this social network, we allow hams to tweet from their radios just like most people have learned how to tweet from their phones via SMS (40404).
Well you probably guessed by now that this hack includes APRS and you're right. Hams can send APRS messages to "73S" which in turn posts a status message to 73s.org under the user account linked to the ham's callsign. If your 73s.org user account is oauthed with your Twitter account, these status updates are then relayed to Twitter from your ham radio! Here's the video: http://hambrief.tv/episodes/30
I hope that this post has peaked your interests in ham radio. It's easy to study and take the test to get your license and join the other 750,000 licensed amateur radio operators in the US and even more worldwide. Feel free to follow or contact me on Twitter with questions (@ChrisMatthieu).
73s de (from) N7ICE