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Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

#21

Post by edrxty »

generalizations wrote: post #13
jjoonathan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO that's a great way to set up a sandbox: it has built in crowd control and a mechanism to keep out flagrant abuse. Yeah, it doesn't scale to the moon, but that's the whole point: it's a proving ground, not a moon rocket.

It's not that it doesn't scale - it's just there's a reason people use letters to communicate and not postcards. People expect a modicum of privacy which ham radio, to its detriment, denies.

It also completely prevents any interesting radio experimentation. There isn't anything left on that frontier that couldn't be conflated with encryption.

Re: Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

#22

Post by BenjiWiebe »

edrxty wrote: post #17
sseagull wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am hoping they explained why. Most people who complain about the encryption regulation just completely disregard the reason for encryption in the first place (ie, all other regulations become unenforceable if encryption is allowed).

The unenforceable argument isn't really a thing. If we look at some common encryption standards, the call sign is in the clear as it has to be for routing. In the case where someone is swearing with their friends over an encrypted channel, it's just not a problem, no child will hear the swears without a quantum supercomputer. In the case where a business is illegally using ham bands to avoid paying license fees, they…

Yes, people are checking. Repeated abuse of ham radio (in the US anyways) will eventually get enough hams mad that they will report to the FCC, which does investigate and crack down from time to time.

No, it isn't an instant 100% chance of retribution.

Re: Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

#23

Post by alibarber »

tjohns wrote: post #14
abfan1127 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FCC rules won't allow encryption. I'm not sure why the rules were made originally.

Ham radio relies on self-policing within the community to ensure compliance with the rules - the biggest one being "no commercial use". The "no commercial use" rule ensures companies aren't using the limited ham radio spectrum as a workaround to getting their own dedicated license and frequency allocation. If encryption were allowed, there'd be no way for other users to verify whether traffic is commercial or not.

I always thought that encryption not being allowed was a way to discourage illegal commercial use of it.

No business wants their comms in the clear with no means of verifying the sender of the message - so ham radio would be useless to them.

Re: Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

#24

Post by edrxty »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #22
edrxty wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unenforceable argument isn't really a thing. If we look at some common encryption standards, the call sign is in the clear as it has to be for routing. In the case where someone is swearing with their friends over an encrypted channel, it's just not a problem, no child will hear the swears without a quantum supercomputer. In the case where a business is illegally using ham bands to avoid paying license fees, they…

Yes, people are checking. Repeated abuse of ham radio (in the US anyways) will eventually get enough hams mad that they will report to the FCC, which does investigate and crack down from time to time. No, it isn't an instant 100% chance of retribution.

People are checking FM because it's trivial. I have yet to hear of someone getting caught using digital encryption entirely through band monitoring (ie not doing something obviously stupid elsewhere like bragging about it on social media)

Re: Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

#25

Post by rsync »

mikece wrote: post #2

Texting via APRS has been a thing for about 20 years. It's also a fantastic way to publish both your phone number and the numbers of the people you are texting in an easy to skim format. Digital modes is one of the areas where the HN crowd could introduce significant advancements to Amateur radio (while pissing off all of the older HAMs who just want to talk about the weather on 40m).

"Texting via APRS has been a thing for about 20 years."

Yes, that's true.

If, by "texting", you mean either:

- A handheld radio attached to a laptop with a serial cable.

- One of two (three ?) models ever produced that allowed you to key in APRS with T9 typing on a number pad.

Yep, it's awesome.

Re: Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

#26

Post by hmrr »

rsync wrote: post #25
mikece wrote: post #2

Texting via APRS has been a thing for about 20 years. It's also a fantastic way to publish both your phone number and the numbers of the people you are texting in an easy to skim format. Digital modes is one of the areas where the HN crowd could introduce significant advancements to Amateur radio (while pissing off all of the older HAMs who just want to talk about the weather on 40m).

"Texting via APRS has been a thing for about 20 years." Yes, that's true. If, by "texting", you mean either: - A handheld radio attached to a laptop with a serial cable. - One of two (three ?) models ever produced that allowed you to key in APRS with T9 typing on a number pad. Yep, it's awesome .

Nailed it. It wasn’t and still isn’t useful or interesting because of the technical overhead of APRS reporting.

Much prefer delving into the weak signal modes. JS8Call is interesting http://js8call.com/

I wanted to write an iOS version of it. Just an iPad and a radio using the audio interface and you’re there. But I don’t have the time to do it.

Re: Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

#27

Post by jrockway »

83457 wrote: post #7
edrxty wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's safe only because nobody cares enough about ham radio to bother skimming anything. I've been pushing for encryption for years but just posting this well get a bunch of elmers posting upset replies. It's frustrating constantly being under the thumb of a generation that will not yield to progress

How would encryption work?

Encrypted communication is not allowed on the ham radio bands.

Re: Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

#28

Post by jrockway »

I think if this interests you, you'll like the LoRa-based devices better. They're unlicensed, so you can encrypt, use it without a ham radio license, etc. LoRa is pretty proprietary which is evil and all, but the end result is good.

Hackaday has some good example projects:

https://hackaday.com/2020/04/25/a-lora-im-me-for-the-end-of-...

https://hackaday.io/project/171790-armawatch-armachat-long-r...

Re: Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

#30

Post by tdeck »

mikece wrote: post #2

Texting via APRS has been a thing for about 20 years. It's also a fantastic way to publish both your phone number and the numbers of the people you are texting in an easy to skim format. Digital modes is one of the areas where the HN crowd could introduce significant advancements to Amateur radio (while pissing off all of the older HAMs who just want to talk about the weather on 40m).

I've sent an SMS over the APRS gateway using nothing but a cheap handheld radio and the APRSdroid app. The app can emit audible data chirps, so you just compose your APRS message, hold your phone near the radio, and push the PTT button. Not very practical, but there's no custom hardware or connector required!
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