TAPR DCC 2019

I’m trying to get back into updating this thing. I have a lot of cool projects completed/planned, so bear with me while the posts slowly trickle in.

The Tuscon Amateur Packet Radio (deep breath) Digital Communications Conference held in Romulus MI from 20-23 September featured the cutting edge of amateur radio technology. We haven’t quite made it to cell phones yet though.

Presentation

About the Conference

TAPR is basically the “secret club” of ham radio scientists. They present and share their work on everything from electric power, software defined radios, cubesats, propagation, or digital television over amateur radio. Some of the people here are like “celebrities;” even their callsign can be more famous than the PhD behind it.

My Presentation

Small Hamshield Demo Table

I decided to share my work on the AFSK Motion Detector mentioned in a previous blog post. As summarized in that blog post, it is a stepping stone for an eventual APRS tracker (post coming soon). I essentially urged the crowd to buy stock in Enhanced Radio Devices (the makers of hamshield), but stick to the examples because coding is quite a headache.

Other Takeaways

For being a technical hobby, amateur radio seems to be always about the people. Again, my Elmers Stephen KJ5HY and Kate KB2ZOO gave me tons of support for the event. Stephen (again) N7HPR, Bob WB4APR, and Kristina KD8OXT always inspire me with great ideas and professional research examples. I hope to see them again at Hamsci 2020!

Miscellaneous Pictures from DCC

There should be a youtube link of my talk here shortly. My published paper can be downloaded from my google drive here.