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Homebrew contest 1st place: Packet Radio Go-Kit with node.js Packet to Twitter bridge

Super excited (and rather surprised!) to win the 1st place prize in the Homebrew Contest at this month’s River City Amateur Radio Communications Society club meeting last night!

My entry was something I’ve been working on over the past few months on and off to get ready in time for this month’s contest. There were two parts to my entry:

1. A self-contained, portable 2m Packet Radio Go-Kit. I put this together using:

  • 10″ waterproof gear case (from MCM)
  • 2m HT radio
  • Raspberry Pi 3
  • 7″ touchscreen
  • a TNC-PI packet add-on board for the Pi, from Coastal Chipworks (which I assembled as a kit)
  • ax25 apps (for axlisten and axcall)

2. A Packet Radio to Twitter bridge (implemented using JavaScript on node.js). While the goals and benefits of a portable Packet radio kit are somewhat more obvious, writing an app that receives Packet Radio transmissions and then retransmits them as Tweets on Twitter doesn’t have many practical applications. The main motivation for this part of the project was that I thought it would be an interesting blend of old tech and new tech. The popularity of Packet Radio declined with the arrival of easy access dial-up information services and BBSes in the 80s and then access to the internet in the early 90s, so linking the two together seemed an interesting idea. Plus, it’s an interesting stepping stone and talking point from common-place tech used on our wireless devices today, with data communications enabled via Amateur Radio.

I put together a number of articles as I was assembling my project and working on the Packet to Twitter interface. If you’d like to read more, here’s links to my previous posts:

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River City ARCS weekly SSTV Net 8/30/17 9pm

This was my second time joining the weekly River City ARCS SSTV net and it had been a few weeks since the first time, so I had to go back and work out how I setup MMSSTV again. Since MMSSTV is a Windows app, on my Mac I booted WIndows 10 in Parallels and ran it from there. Unfortunately the combination of MMSSTV’s flaky soundcard settings and sharing a USB soundcard device with Windows in a Virtual Machine is probably not the best combination, but for future reference here’s the steps I used that finally worked:

  • Plug in the USB Rigblaster before starting Windows 10
  • From Mac System Preferences, Sound, set in and out to default mic and speakers, make sure Rigblaster not selected for either
  • Boot Windows 10 then from Parallels menu, Devices, Sound, select Rigblaster for both input and output
  • Start MMSSTV, go to Options, Setup MMSSTV, Misc tab, select Default for In and Out – this is shown in screenshot below:

The above steps seemed to work fine. Plugging in the Rigblaster after booting Windows 10 and then assigning it to the Windows 10 running VM when prompted by Parallels didn’t seem to work for me (although probably makes more sense), despite seeing the Rigblaster showup in the MMSSTV soundcard settings. No idea why this didn’t work.

Here’s a selection of the pictures received on the net this week:

Between each of these I was trying different settings and trying to get the Rigblaster selected in MMSSTV. By the time of the last couple of pictures sent on the net, I’d got the setting setup just right.

The River City Amateur Radio SSTV net is held weekly at 9pm, on the clubs 440Mhz repeater (which has coverage of Sacramento, CA and surrounding area). Details are on the club website here.

 

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Parallels 12 changing the boot order for a guest VM (settings list display issue)

Parallels 12 on MacOS has a curiously misleading UI issue on the VM configuration dialog, where the items in the left list are actually a scrollable list, but there’s no visual indication that tells you this:

If you click in the list to highlight an item, you can scroll the list up and down to reveal other items – in this case I was looking for the Boot Order setting, but it was displayed at the top of the list and I needed to scroll the list up to see it:

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Apple’s product design and attention to detail (the 1st gen Mac Pro)

There’s no mistaking Apple is second to none when it comes to product design. Their attention to detail can be seen throughout the design of their products, both inside and out. Sir Jony Ive was knighted for his service to the design industry in 2012.

Some details are surprising when you see them first hand, and the lengths that Apple goes to. Take for example the unique design of the case for the Power Mac G5 and first generation Mac Pro. It’s uniquely recognizable and even could be described as iconic. The design of the perforated ‘cheese grater’ grill is more than just aesthetics, it provides an essential purpose in the design of the cooling of the machine, allowing air to be pulled through the front grill in a number of distinctly controllable cooling zones through the case and allowing exhaust to exit the rear of the case.

At the rear is something interesting though, and maybe even overlooked. Power cords commonly called ‘kettle cords’ have been used to supply power to PC desktop cases for years, but what’s interesting about the power cord for the Mac Pro is that the plastic is molded with a flange that allows it to fit flush to the back of the case when inserted. A minor detail, but a perfect example of the lengths Apple goes to.

Here’s the cord/plug,

showing the surrounding flange at the back of the plug molding:

 

 

 

 

The plug inserted,

fitting flush to the back of the case:

Simple details, but details like this leave a lasting impression.

 

 

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