Hi Zane, I can't give you any specific recommendations as I only dabble with Linux and amateur radio together sporadically. They do go well together, but recently I have been taking just the radio to mountain tops to see who I can speak to.
Perhaps your basic message (apart from FLOSS is useful, versatile and free) could simply be that there *are* amateur radio applications for Linux that are well-supported and well-used. Off the top of my head the common applications that crop up regularly are Xastir for APRS, fldigi for data communications, CHIRP for managing radio channel memories, and <your favourite logging program>. Most applications for Linux have Windows counterparts, or Windows versions (or vice versa). APRS is a treasure-trove of stuff to talk about which could take up a whole talk by itself, so maybe you want to talk about the stuff that goes with it, such as 'soundmodem', which is a program that uses a soundcard to generate and decode the audio tones for data transmission, and 'hamlib', which is a 'do-everything' glue layer that tries to abstract all the different radio interfaces and command sets into a common API. For APRS we usually need a map, and the OpenStreetMap project (osm.org) is a great source of free map data (and rendered map tiles). OSM itself is of course Open, and has been built using Open tools by people who embrace the Open philosophy. Unless you yourself are a ham then you won't be demonstrating much in terms of live operating, although it is perfectly legal for you to receive and decode amateur transmissions. You could show that a PC running Linux is just as useful as a Windows PC, and that most of the things a Windows user would expect to see are available on Linux too, such as web browsers, mail clients and an office suite. Personally I am happy that Linux and Open Source exists. Derek mentioned the URI radio interface. It's basically just a sound card. I was able to make my own similar interface with a USB sound card, and attach a transistor to one of the GPIO lines on the USB sound chip which can be used to turn PTT (push to talk) on and off. Because the source code for soundmodem and hamlib is open I was able to add code to allow these programs to activate PTT using this GPIO instead of the more common method which is to use a control line on a serial port. You simply can't do this with proprietary software (although I'd make it clear that there is plenty of Open software for Windows too). I am also working on supporting the Yaesu VX-2r radio in CHIRP, but that's going, um, very slowly. So, there's a ton of stuff out there, with friendly supportive people on email lists and forums. If you spread awareness then maybe the audience will be interested enough to try it. Maybe you could find a ham 'liveCD' (or any liveCD I suppose) to show how people can play with Linux without disturbing anything on their hard drive. HTH, Andrew On 24 April 2013 08:20, Derek Smithies <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > There is work been done to asterisk to add a radio channel, and combined > with a USB 1 device (which has ptt and other io features) > allows one to link analog radio to a computer network. > > https://allstarlink.org/usbradio.html > http://www.dmkeng.com/URI_Order_Page.htm > > Digital radio, where one connects to a motorola/kenwood repeater is > problematic. The protocol they use is proprietary. For Motorola repeaters, > there > is a network protocol that carries voice +data. (IPSC). In theory, it > could be reverse engineered. However, I can think of better ways to spend > my time. > > Cheers, > Derek. > ================== > > On 24/04/13 00:34, Zane Gilmore wrote: > > Greetings, > I have been asked to do a talk on FLOSS to one of the HAM radio clubs and > would appreciate some pointers on some of the software that might be > pertinent for them. > > The FLOSS side of the talk is no problem but I thought that some > discussion on some of the FLOSS software that is used in this space might > get them more interested than just a political discussion on the benefits > of FLOSS (though they will be getting that as well :-) ) > > So I know for a fact that there is at least one of you that has a HAM > radio interest (Andrew) and I would appreciate a few few pointers in the > right direction. > > > _______________________________________________ > Linux-users mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users > >
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