I’ve been seeing the odd bit of #meshcore activity out and about but the density of devices/repeaters is a bit too low in my bit of IO81. Time to get something installed!

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hah, I plugged the #3dprinter into a smart plug I had last used for a lamp…. so my shutdown automation turned it off when I went to bed! Good test of resume, which seems to have worked :alex_crazy:

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After years of umming and ahhing I finally got a 3D printer.

First big job is printing an enclosure for it, and so far things have been seamless!

#3dprinting

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I just spent much longer than I care to admit trying to use a USB-C power cable for data :alex_sigh:

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I definitely must not buy more screwdrivers…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpMtg03CQOg

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The latest episode of Amp Hour is on visualising EM fields in blender and other open tools, it’s absolutely fascinating:

https://theamphour.com/695-making-the-invisible-visible-with-sam-aldahar/ https://www.youtube.com/@samerps/videos

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Today I learned that Microsoft Defender generates an (informational) alert if you plug in a Flipper Zero!

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Happy to report that much lunchtime work talk went pretty well! Had about 30 people watch, and some questions.

I had a weird glitch in iA Presenter (I love markdown presentation tools so was playing) where the images disappeared, but it has decent version control so I was able to recover.

Anyway, slides and speaker notes are at: https://files.hackerific.net/ham-radio-2025-03-28.pdf (54MB!)

I mainly added the notes to save me if I got stuck, so then I spoke a bit more than planned, and 30 mins was a bit short :alex_grin:

I polished up the text and posted it along with slides to my blog https://blog.hackerific.net/2025/03/29/ham-radio-not-just-for-old-men/

@jamesb@ian haha thanks, those were the stats I could find! I’m getting pretty close to 45 myself!

Tempted to see if ofcom can give me any better info.

@jamesb ahh yeah, that might help a lot, but it’ll be a while assuming they keep to the plan at https://www.ofcom.org.uk/spectrum/radio-equipment/licensing-updates/@ian

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I’m giving a #talk on #hamradio in a few weeks at work, and I’m planning to focus on networks, experimentation and digital modes.

My hope is that I can break the prevailing view that radio is just about old men chatting, by showing a bunch of things software engineers will be interested in.

Luckily there’s so much to talk about that picking what to exclude is the problem!

I think I’ll cover:

• SDRs + construction

• 44net

• meshtastic

• and then a bit on licensing in the UK.

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Hey, @M0YNG do your awesome @alex custom emojis have a license? I’m wondering if I could use a few to mark outgoing links on a radio website.

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