Wetnet Brunch 26-Sept-2015

Thanks Ken for the NC@40 and NO@45 temperature switches.  Handy gizmos that I didn't even know existed.

Wetnet Brunch Report 19-Sept-2015

Brunch is always great fun - even if they had no Banana Creme Pie this week.


WSJT-X now has an auto-qso mode.   What took them so long?

Good to see our wandering ski board friend on his seemingly annual visit.

MonWyDaHoTa - no, I haven't figured out what that means either.

Learned of the Gamma Research power supply.   Special feature is that it uses capacitor technology to supply the peak current needed for a 100 W SSB or CW transceiver - but runs with much lower rated full duty cycle construction. Pricey but a small size.

  http://www.gammaresearch.net/hps-1a.html

I shared that both of the Elecraft K3S stations at Summer Gathering were using the recommended PowerWRX 12V SS-30DV supply.  It has a small size and built in power pole connectors.   Should be a lot lighter in a Go Box than a 7 A or 12 A Astron.


I brought the Dash Cam I picked up a few months ago to try and get working.  Ren shared the well done Dash Cam reviews at Techmoan.   (No - I didn't get mine working.  It keeps power cycling like it's not getting enough current.  Time to RTFM.)

The "Periscope" streaming video AP was demo'd.


It's possible to Screen share (VNC) between Mac devices - but what about Airplay screen casting?  We experimented.  No definitive answer yet.
(Update de Jeremy:  You want to use Airplay to stream your screen to someone else’s monitor?  Try Airserver: http://www.airserver.com/Mac  I’ve used it a couple of times to use a Mac laptop instead of an AppleTV off of my iPad.)

For your notes - the magic code at Jimmy Jacks is :  J..J..sGu..1

Bob has a new 820T2 RTL SDR dongle running and is now a master of signal scoping.   He claims he can't decode the 9600 APRS UHF packets by sight but I'm not sure I believe him.

It does appear that SDR#, the main SDR dongle software, is indeed supported and hosted by the Airplay folks at their site.  Many have websites on how to get started but it's still confusing and not straight forward.

Onward!

73,
Bill, WA7NWP

Pacific Northwest Things Digital

Upcoming:

• September 26 - Wetnet Brunch at Jimmy Jacks
• September 26 - Washington State Convention, Spokane Valley, Washington
• October 10,11 - Pacific Northwest VHF Conference, Issaquah, Washington

On the air:

• Monday evening at 8 PM - Puget Sound Digital Hams net - Digital Radio Fun with FLDIGI and EasyPal and FLAMP and FreeDV  On the WW7SEA machine at 444.550, tone 141.3

Groups:

• Puget Sound Digital Hams
• NWAPRS - Northwest APRS group - discussion
• NW-MESH - Yahoo group - some notes on a NW-Mesh wiki
• WETNET (SEATCP) - all things fun and digital - discussion

Resources:

• FLdigi, FLmsga, FLAMP - http://www.w1hkj.com/download.html
• FreeDV
• FSQchat
• APRS-messenger
• Winlink2K

Wetnet Brunch Report 6-Sept-2015

First things first...

  BANANA CREME PIE

Average turnout...

Bruce was using a 6 AH LiPo battery.  Looks like the idea RPI UPS.   Ordered one.  It will be interesting to see if these new-technology batteries will work in the severe winter conditions of my  unattended property monitoring project.

Reminded to pick up some personal: ID Labels from Mavericklabel

... more RSN

Wetnet Brunch Report 8-Aug-2015

Good to see Ken and Katelan...  Larry and Larry..   It was an average to better-than-average turnout.

Heidi once again keep the coffee cups full - not a trivial task..

Steve had an Ardrino Book - Arduino-for-Ham-Radio - a quick review shows some good stuff.  The article on Solar Panel monitoring alone make it worth it for me for my unattended properties monitoring project...  Author KW5GP Blog  Ham Arduino Information

Ken showed the GI.iNET router.  He reports it works well out of the box with the Microsoft USB camera.

Doug was running WSJT-X remotely at his home station.   Using Splashtop Streamer for PC and Splashtop Client for Android remote software as detailed in the latest - August  2015 - QST.
Got me hooked and I installed WSJT-X at home.  Were the bands really that bad?  (Doug says - "Yes, the bands really ARE that bad lately." )  Is my antenna really that noisy?   Both of the above?

Bob showed, and successfully flew, the $18 quad copter..   What a deal.  (Here's a link to ordering info)

John announced there will soon be an announcement...

I shared some Durian Pudding to mixed reviews...   It's an instant pudding available at most Asian food markets.  No - it doesn't have the unpleasant odoriferous qualities of the raw Durian fruit.

20145 Microhams Digital Conference notes and comments

March 21, 2015 at building 36.

add lots of good notes here...

SECN MP-02 Demo with N8GNJ

demo notes and thoughts here

After party - no pizza at Round Table but a Wetnet Geek Night dinner at Redmonds Claim Jumper.  Missed the pizza but it was a good gathering of the Wetnet group.

Wetnet Geek Brunch 2/25/2012

Good brunch today with medium turnout....  The WiFi lasted 'hours' which is a big improvement...

I showed the imic I picked up a couple nights ago at the Redmond Mac Store..    It's currently trying to receive WSPR on HF.   The install and hookup was painless - even on my 'vista' machine.  I say 'trying' because apparently there's a RTTY event this weekend and both 20 and 15 meters are very busy...

  http://wa8lmf.net/ham/imic.htm

Four out of five installed the D-Rats Beta successfully and exchanged our Hello's and Good Morning's via the WA7FW ratflector...   The application continues to improve.   I'll have it running full on on the home workstation now and will be getting the repeater (ratflector) running on both the home server and the (little white netbook) portable server.    If anybody wants the secret handshake to get the Beta - send me Email.   (Hey Ren - the unit's are configurable under Preferences...)

  http://d-rats.com/

I'm looking forward to trying the KISS packet mode of D-Rats with the Virtual Kiss port on BPQ32 - that should twist up the packets nicely.

Onward!

73
Bill - WA7NWP

Wetnet Brunch 5/24/08, Whisper, 6 meters, HDTV

It's been a while since I filled out a page with notes durning brunch. This was a good one... Here's the high points in no particular order:

• Whisper - It appears this is the hot mode on 6 meters these days. If I get an antenna at Seaside next weekend I'll be able to give this a try. Stan's article in ARRL mentions 30 meters but 6 meters (50.290?) is also used. So far the Diamond DP-GH62 looks like the best solution for a simple base antenna for Whisper and other
  
• US Cutter is a local company making good use of Ebay where a friend is working...
• We're about to pick up a digital converter box. Not that we really need it with cable, but it should give use some new channels that are only on the digital cable which we don't currently subscribe to. For a list of HD channels, I was told TitanTV is one of the best sites.
• Sprints decision to limit month bandwidth to a mere 5 gigabytes on their Aircard offering was causing some consternation. I have faith that competition between the vendors and newer technologies will enable us to put these silly limitations behind us.
• We're still looking for a solution to the USB cables for using the Nokia N800 as a host mode controller. I was going to get an adapter kit from the local Totem Lake Radio Shack but they had a different product then the one I saw in Factoria. Not only was it wrong, but $10 more.

More in a bit when i can finish this with my notes...