FreeDV Sunday net - moved to 7.197

For a few weeks we've run in to analog traffic when using 7.177 so today we moved to 7.197 and the frequency was clear so I think we might stay here in future. Most stations figured out that we'd moved so we had a good rollup and an interesting discussion about the proposal to report centre frequency rather than dial frequency in future.

It was noted that Icom radios have an option to tune to the centre but most of us have turned that off.

FreeDV reporter was a little unstable today.

Stations on the net included VK2AWN, VK2BLQ (combination digital voice and valve audio with 6AU6 and 6AQ5), VK2KNC, VK3FC, VK3GTP, VK3JCO, VK3KEZ, VK3ZTR, VK5AG, VK5ABE, VK5FD, VK5JPL, VK5RA and me, VK3TPM.

iPhone mount for monitor top - 3D print

In a video call with a friend recently I noticed that the video was noticably clearer than normal. They were using an iPhone as the camera rather than the camera in the monitor. 

It didn't take long to use TinkerCad to design a simple mount for my monitor. I've made it public here. 

The phone sits nicely with the camera used in this mode just above the monitor's build-in camera.

Here's the device. After the first prototype I went back and angled the phone forward a few degrees.

I use two of these but you can get by with one. My monitor is about 18mm thick so you might need to adjust the hook part for your monitor.

3D printers are such a useful thing in the world.

PicoRX SDR software for a Raspberry Pi PICO

Amazing work by Jon Dawson at 101 Things and others to bring a very capable SDR to the RaspberryPi PICO.

I've forked the project here and had claude write some very useful documentation on the user interface operation.

It sounds great:

You might notice that my display is offset two pixels to the left. The solution is to select the OLED type of SH1106 instead of the default SSD1306. (It seems they are frequently substituted).

Jon's blog post here is very good reading.

If you're interested in building one of these, I'm not aware of anyone selling these boards - you might try contacting the Manly Warringah Radio Society or it's pretty easy and low cost to upload the gerbers from VK2ARH (he designed this board) git repository and get them made.

I've recently ordered Jon Dawson's board from JLCPCB and the price for 5 was US$5 + shipping. (Shipping costs significantly more than boards).

Sunday FreeDV net - diversity of software

A terrific net this morning on 40m here in VK3. We had stations in VK2, VK3, VK5 and VK7. Stations were using not just FreeDV 2.3.1 but also the macOS FreeDVNeo and the Thetis SDR software. One was listening on an SDR that decodes RADE at the Nepean Men's Shed.

There was some SSB partly overlapping our normal frequency of 7.177 so I moved up 2kHz to 7.179. Most people realised but at least one didn't and when they transmitted interfered. In future I'll be careful to move at least 3kHz away. Lesson learned.

Here's some of the stations on the net, if you haven't heard RADEV1 this will give you a good idea of how it typically sounds.

Stations on the net included: VK2AWN, VK2BLQ, VK2DWG, VK3FAR, VK3FC, VK2KNC, VK3GTP, VK3JCO, VK3JF, VK3KEZ, VK3ZTR, VK5ABE, VK5FD, VK5RA, VK7HOB and me, VK3TPM.

Thanks to Stephen, VK2BLQ, for sending this clip of his reception of me in Sydney (about 1000km away).

Tech Talk on ABC Radio - Apple's developer announcements

This week on Nightlife Tech we discus the announcements at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference. iOS 27, macOS 27 and the others will ship to users in a few months. The Siri features Apple showed two years ago seem to be real this time and the overreach in the Liquid Glass user interface design is being dialled back to be more usable.

In other AI news, after the success of the SpaceX IPO, based largely on future profit from their AI component, the other AI companies - OpenAI and Anthropic - are also planning their own IPOs. One model, "Fable 5", from Anthropic was released and then withdrawn for non-US citizens and this highlights a risk to Australians who rely on AI cloud services not controlled by us. Listen here: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/nightlife/nightlife-tech-talk-with-peter-marks/106805414 

Sunday FreeDV net - very interesting discussion

A terrific net this morning in south east Australia. Amazingly there has been mobile FreeDV activity during the week! Most people are now on 2.3.1 which resolved a Windows audio issue.

Stations heard included VK2BLQ, VK3APG, VK2AWN, VK3FAR, VK3FC, VK3GTP, VK3KEZ, VK3PTR, VK3YSA, VK5ABE, VK5JPL, VK5RA, VK2DWG, VK2KNC, VK5FD, VK3JCO, and me, VK3TPM.

Several stations said that they'd like an option in the FreeDV app to auto-start the Modem at launch. This is particularly helpful when operating on headless, or small screen Raspberry Pi. I've raised a feature request here but it needs some more backers. Please add your email if you support this.

FreeDV Neo - native macOS client for FreeDV RADE V1

Built for my own entertainment but might be of interest to other macOS hams. FreeDV Neo is enough of an implementation of FreeDV RADE V1 to be usable on air. More info here including a download link. 

This app is not officially supported and you should first use the official FreeDV app from the project.

Tech talk on ABC Radio - SpaceX IPO, emergency communications & PCs going ARM

This week on Nightlife Tech Talk with Philip Clark, we discussed the US$1.7 Trillion valuation of SpaceX (if their IPO goes as planned), NVIDIA's announcement that they're getting in to the personal computer CPU market with an ARM based chip that seems influenced by Apple Silicon, and if you go in to the Australian outback there's a good saftey reason to carry a recent cell phone from Google or Apple. Listen here: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/nightlife/nightlife-tech-talk-with-peter-marks/106751536