Category Archives: radio

HacDC Amateur Radio Club Announces Speaker Jim Cross

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HacDC’s Amateur Radio Club announces its first speaker, Jim Cross. Cross is the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) Maryland-District of Columbia Section Manager, and he will make a presentation on the ARRL and amateur radio communications in emergency response. The presentation will take place Wednesday, April 11 at 7:30pm at HacDC.

The ARRL is the largest membership association of amateur radio enthusiasts in the USA. ARRL is a non-profit organization, and is almost a hundred years old. The ARRL represents the interests of amateur radio operators before federal regulatory bodies, provides technical advice and assistance to amateur radio enthusiasts, supports a number of educational programs and sponsors emergency communications service throughout the country.

Amateur radio has consistently been the most reliable means of communications when other systems fail or are overloaded.  Jim will discuss the training, preparations and organizations in amateur emergency communications and how to get involved.

For more details, check out the event on Meetup.

XMPP Beyond Chat (Presentation by Arc Riley)

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HacDC is developing an XMPP stack to coordinate networked messages to and from microcontrollers over WiFi, serial, and radio. It will ideally enable a near plug-and-play way for people to network their microcontroller projects and display them at HacDC. XMPP is “an open, XML-based protocol originally aimed at near-real-time, extensible instant messaging (IM) and presence information (e.g., buddy lists), but now expanded into the broader realm of message-oriented middleware.” It serves as the backbone of Google Talk, for example. One of the first projects to be linked to our framework will be an ambient lighting system for the space.

On Thursday, August 12 at 7:00PM, as a part of the NARG meeting, Arc Riley will present on the some of the XMPP aspects of this endeavor and will discuss PubSub, Data Forms, and Ad-Hoc Commands. Any individuals interested in these interesting aspects of XMPP beyond chat are encouraged to attend, and, like all HacDC activities, the event is free and open to the public.

At the end of the presentation, we may do some code sprinting and ensure that those attending have access to the distributed code repository.

Radio: An Introduction

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Tuesday after the regular membership meeting, HacDC’s own Nate B will take the podium and present an unstructured introduction to all things wireless. This talk is intended for radio newbies, and non-members are welcome!

Whether you’re curious about wifi antenna building, or just not clear on the difference between AM and FM, bring your questions and don’t be shy! Gain a more complete understanding of how your cellphone and GPS work. Learn about signal and noise, gain and loss, and the factors that make or break a radio system.

If you’ve ever considered becoming an amateur radio operator (ham), this talk should teach you everything you need to know to pass the Technician (entry-level) license exam. Take a few practice tests right now, and write down the stuff you’d like clarification on.

If you’re planning to participate in the Columbia Heights wireless project, but have never deployed an RF link before, please try to attend.

The membership meeting will end promptly at 8:30pm, so the radio hubbub can commence. Location: 1525 Newton Ave NW, in the St. Stephen’s sanctuary.