Step by the IARU Open Innovation Zone, where we invite you to explore exciting projects from our community. From software-defined radio to powerful digital signal processing tools and captivating citizen science initiatives, you’ll witness the future of amateur radio unfold before your eyes.
Active members of our community will introduce you to their projects, expertise and inspiring stories that will ignite your imagination and propel you into your own exciting radio adventures. Discover the possibilities, connect with fellow enthusiasts, and be part of a revolution that pushes the boundaries of amateur radio.
This initiative is organized in collaboration with the ICSSW.
Program
We are happy to invite you to discover the following projects:
- The M17 Project
- SatDump
- GNU Radio
- Web Radio Control
- Charly 25
- SPINO
- MESHCOM 4.0
- YOLOn Air
The M17 Project : M17 is developing a new digital radio protocol for data and voice, made by and for amateur radio operators.
This freedom to build, understand, and innovate is core to amateur radio, but has been missing from the commercially available digital voice modes. This is part of why amateur radio digital voice modes have largely stagnated since the 1990s and we’re almost wholly dependent on commercial products that aren’t well designed for amateur radio users. M17 is about unlocking the capabilities that amateur radio hardware should already have. Led by Wojciech Kaczmarski (SP5WWP), M17 Project received ARRL’s Technical Innovation Award in 2021.
The team has received funding from the ARDC and is currently working on the OpenHT. The Team will showcase OpenHT and Module17 devices. Additionally, handhelds running OpenRTX firmware will be presented to the audience. OpenRTX is a free and open source alternative firmware for ham radios.
SatDump is a free & open-source software dedicated to receive, demodulate and process data from satellites. It is able to handle a very long list of meteorological or scientific satellites, compatible with most of the SDR receivers you can find on the market.
Alan, the creator of SatDump, will present and explain his software.
GNU Radio is a free & open-source software development toolkit that provides signal processing blocks to implement software radios. It can be used with readily-available low-cost external RF hardware to create software-defined radios, or without hardware in a simulation-like environment. It is widely used in research, industry, academia, government, and hobbyist environments to support both wireless communications research and real-world radio systems.
Marcus Müller, who contributes directly to the design of the GNU Radio project, will propose demos and tutorials to introduce the magic of this great open source application.
Web Radio Control is a project supported by the IARU “Shaping the Future” initiative. Web Radio Control allows you to operate your amateur radio station using a web browser. The built-in reservation calendar makes sharing of a club station effortless: operators may book the station for exclusive access. The actual software runs at your station on a Raspberry Pi, a credit card sized computer. You don’t need expensive radio equipment: a radio transceiver capable of computer control and a wire antenna are enough to get started! A specific program dedicated to the IARU Region 1 member societies is detailed here.
Mikael OH3BHX will present his tool on the IARU Booth.
Charly25 is a project created by Erwin (DL1FY), Edwin (DC9OE), Markus (DG8MG) and Markus (DG8GM), from the DARC club C25. The team started in 2014 to explore the capabilities of SDR technology.
The knowledge acquired over the years allowed them to build their own high-quality transceivers including all the bells & whistles commercial products would offer plus their own ideas on top. The Charly 25 project started with the idea to build a small CW-transmitter with a class E amplifier and the receiver was meant to be a realized using an SDR-Stick – the aim was to inspire our young members in electronics and telegraphy. In the meantime, the team ended up with a real SDR transceiver which covers all bands from 630 m to 6m and in the near future it will work up to the 9cm band (plus Oscar 100 of course).
The team will come to present their project.
SPINO is a versatile telecommunication solution suitable for nanosatellites and Cubesats. Operating in UHF and VHF bands, it features tight integration with amateur radio service and the worldwide amateur radio community. The development of the SPINO SC board was initiated by enthusiats involved in non-profit / educational space projects. Since 2019, the project is supported by the joint efforts of two non-profit organizations: AMSAT-Francophone (site.amsat‑f.org) and the hackerspace Electrolab (electrolab.fr).
The SPINO SC board features functions dedicated to the spacecraft infrastructure :
- Receiver function for remote control commands from ground…
- Managed or Autonomous beacon (support for OBC failure)
- Data stream (uplink and downlink)
- Antenna deploy support And functions dedicated to the amateur radio community :
- a versatile digital transponder
- a digital mailbox service
The SPINO SC board will be a pre-validated open source brick available off the shelf for any nanosatellites mission. Daniel F6JMV and Michel F1AFW will be on the booth to introduce the board and explain how it works.
MESHCOM 4.0
The Institute of Citizen Science for Space and Wireless Communication an innovative project called “MESHCOM4.0“, which is a very flexible and resilient Mesh-network based on an idea of Mike, OE3MZC, to use very robust and effective LoRa spread spectrum modulation in Amateur Radio.
MESHCOM4.0 allows for CHAT-type of data communication using your smartphone as user interface (APP by Rainer, OE1KFR). The MESHCOM4.0 software created from scratch by Kurt, OE1KBC, co-founder of ICSSW, and well known to the Amateur Radio community from his activities in DMR (IPSC2-server network), D‑Star, TETRA and other digital voice systems via HAMNET, is running on a variety of hardware boards, including ESP32 micro controller and SX12xx LoRa-Chipset, like Heltec, TBeam, LilyGo TLora and RAK modules.
The MESHCOM4.0 protocol is entirely based on the existing APRS-Standard protocol stack and fully compatible to transport short messages, position data, weather and telemetry data in correct format, that it can be shown on aprs.fi. (http://www.aprs.org/doc/APRS101.PDF). The mesh-architecture, which makes every user to act as an intelligent repeater, iss elf structuring and self healing and makes MESHCOM4.0 a very resilient communication toll for Emergency Communication situations (EMCOMM).
MESHCOM4.0 is operating primarily on 70cm band (433MHz) and with power of 100mW distances of 5km (urban) to 30km(rural) can be expected. The MeshCOM4.0 network is enhanced by a powerful backbone network using gateways connected via HAMNET or the internet. This allows to connect mesh-clouds of different cities in different countries over longer distance. It also allows for an informative DASHBOARD, that shows all active nodes , gateways and messages on the system. (https://srv08.oevsv.at/meshcom/#)
In the sense of “unified communication“ MESHCOM4.0 also offers interfaces to existing messaging systems like APRS, HAMMESSENGER, DMR, VaraAC and DAPNET, just to name a few of the possible future options. MESHCOM4.0 will also support CITIZEN SCIENCE approaches, by transmitting observations and warnings regarding extreme weather situations or earthquakes even from remote areas.
More developments are to be expected. Come and join the fun!
YOLOn Air
Today emergency communications are not only voices exchanges during a crisis situation, we can do more ! A lot of new technologies are available, but most of them are using internet or mobile datas to communicate. Why not let them communicate on our bands and try some experiments with them using our reliables systems to communicate ?
Let’s see together what we can do with AI, SDR and programming to improve our capacities in case of major crisis or to prevent it.
Enzo F4IAI will introduce you to Yolo (You Look Only Once) connected to GNU Radio