This weekend, the South Eastern Amateur Radio Group (SEARG) will be on the air as EI2GEO from a site in Tankardstown, Co. Waterford. This site is within the the Copper Coast European Geopark which is located on the South East coast of Ireland. It extends from Fenor in the east to Stradbally in the west and as far north as Dunhill. The Copper Coast gets its name from the 19th Century copper mines that were once predominant in the area.
So the background is that I have a lovely little unit called a Mirabox but I need to update the kernel on it. 
I spent a good bit of time looking at various forums and eventually managed to piece together enough information to get a 3.9 kernel to boot for me.
First, I installed a cross compiler, then I built a kernel, with default options, like so.
PATH="/home/build/smile/armv7-marvell-linux-gnueabi/bin:$PATH" make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-marvell-linux-gnueabi- mvebu_defconfig
PATH="/home/build/smile/armv7-marvell-linux-gnueabi/bin:$PATH" make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-marvell-linux-gnueabi- zImage
PATH="/home/build/smile/armv7-marvell-linux-gnueabi/bin:$PATH" make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-marvell-linux-gnueabi- armada-370-mirabox.dtb
cp arch/arm/boot/zImage zImage-with-dtb
cat arch/arm/boot/dts/armada-370-mirabox.dtb >> zImage-with-dtb
./scripts/mkuboot.sh -A arm -O linux -T kernel -C none -a 0x00008000 -e 0x00008000 -n 'Linux-marvell' -d zImage-with-dtb uImage
This kernel booted, but could not find a root filesystem. After a spending a bit of time looking, I could not find a NAND driver, so I opted for a filesystem on MicroSD instead.
Next, I replaced the kernel configuration with the one in this post, and rebuilt it. While that was building, I followed the instructions in this post, to create the filesystem on a MicroSD card.
Finally, I dropped the uImage created above onto a tftp server, loaded it with
tftpboot 0x6400000 10.4.50.166:uImage
set bootargs 'console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/sdb2 rootwait'
bootm
and the result is a working system.
root@dreamplug-debian:~# cat /proc/version
Linux version 3.9.0 (root@ubuntu-smile-build) (gcc version 4.2.0 20070413 (prerelease) (CodeSourcery 2007q1-10. Marvell 2009q3-11 20090730)) #2 Fri May 3 15:27:05 IST 2013
root@dreamplug-debian:~#
A very satisfying way to finish up before a long weekend!
I was travelling with work most of last week, but set up my machine to see if it could receive AX.25 packets from and of the phonesat satellites (which have since de-orbited).
I was surprised to find these in my log when I got home
April 23rd:
1200mk: fm KJ6KRW-1 to CQ via TCPIP ctl UI pid=F0(Text) len 110 12:32:18
ÿ63$uc!<<*"%0-A//H>bY5l^lc=VB@*=$UTF1II3[bsRN#Y.Z2gks%/P#/@QBB0i \
\N!'pVc!(#KBzzzzzzzz!,,q[Ci:G.Ec5e;FD,5.@
1200mk: fm KJ6KRW-2 to CQ via TELEM ctl UI pid=F0(Text) len 161 12:35:40
ÿ5qjuM1K$e67WJJ/!*;TU:f^CP+D(TR!0REaSH12S!"T&n/J
1200mk: fm KJ6KRW-2 to CQ via TELEM ctl UI pid=F0(Text) len 186 14:04:41
ÿ5qjuL1K$e67YUmC!*;TU:f^CP+F4"f!0REaSH12S!"T&nfik7HU`uM""9LgtKV/\_ \
_!NgZ0$$$p<58LU+2f&Q+]BUjfK"_<7)l?Oj6ucc='X_AIM[\gZV7P5:QXgtFnd^K( \
@hIncI$`3+b+i^`_j+=O*\2JF9D7m#Q&$_[lH,]=6OKd'.2ZD?iU0ÿ
April 24th:
1200mk: fm KJ6KRW-2 to CQ via TELEM ctl UI pid=F0(Text) len 186 13:53:42
ÿ5qjuO2H!+97YUmC!*;TU:f^CP+F4"f!3u\,SH12S!"T&nOZ8[tU7mMI!>GZg:^,JP \
&ERJ!qB!Z.L;3chrqR,S]j-(S?E1-&kr.HR&?@8hKNdAYW'Nh]9p3&7
I was quite surprised to receive them as my set-up is not all that good on UHF.
In keeping in the battery longevity theme here and here, recently, Don, AB1PH posted to the Yahoo TH-D72 group about some testing he did with primary cell batteries in the BT-15 AAA Holder. Don compared Everready Ultimate Lithium (L92) batteries, to Duracell Alkaline batteries.
His TH-D72A was set-up to broadcast its location every 3 minutes. The Duracell’s lasted approx. 1h 40 minutes, with the Lithium batteries lasting approximately 7h. By any standard, approximately 4-5 hours is an appreciable difference, in fact that is almost equivalent to the run time of the original battery pack. Sure, they are more expensive, but, I know which I’ll keep spare.
I’m slowly working towards doing some experiments with mesh networking (OLSR) and Icom ID-1 D-star Radios in Digital Data mode. I’ve been wondering what coverage I would (should) see from a vehicle, back to one of the locations where I have an ID-1 in a fixed location (thanks EI3JB/EI8JA).
I got back from a trip today, grabbed an ID-1, an Omni Antenna, Laptop, a short bash script I wrote to ping and record replies along with a GPS position, and an old GPS-18 puck. All the nodes have fixed IP addresses so the script is quite simple, ping host A, if A replies within 2 seconds, record the next position output from the GPS, try the same with host B, loop forever, nothing fancy or terribly accurate.
As I only have two nodes set-up, and without much preparation (shutting down chatty applications), I persuaded SWMBO to do a short (war)drive, while I kept an eye on the laptop.
This first picture below shows (the red dots) the coverage from Nicky, EI3JB’s place (roughly at the 8 in the R708 closest to the top). Note the few packets recorded in Tramore, shortly after I left my own place.
The second is obviously from my place, as it is much more centred on Tramore.
Nothing really ground-breaking in either picture, but useful to help visualise potential coverage nonetheless. There is a huge black-spot on the section of road just leaving Tramore, as far as Ballykinsella (L4061 on the map). This is of no surprise, as it is a tough location for 430Mhz signals to get out of. What was surprising though is the packets received from EI3JBs location out in Tramore.
Next steps are to get EI8JA up and running, and complete a more thorough survey.
Now though, it is time for a beer!
Well, we made it to 2013. First up on the radio agenda this year was the January Irish Radio Transmitter Society 80 Meter band Counties Contest.
I hadn’t planned to enter the contest this year, but, the day before, I suddenly found myself with that afternoon free. I was invited along to the QTH of Liam, EI8BLB to operate his station along with EI8JA and EI3JB.
I brought along my roadkill linux laptop with yfktest on it for logging.
Yesterday, I received a card from “Kappy” WA4WTG, for 6Y0A, confirming Jamica as a new one for me (thanks Kappy). Kappy collects stamps so I took a bunch of stamps I had from Christmas cards and other received QSL’s and sent them onto him. In return 6Y0A was the first card I received in 2013.
While recording the card in my log, I was thinking that it would have been useful to have yfktest ‘tick off’ the counties as we worked them in the contest last Tuesday. So I had a quick look at the code.
It turned out to be pretty straightforward, as there was examples there already that I was able to follow, so that change should be in the repository come the summer IRTS 80m Counties Contest.
A very happy new year and wishing you good DX for 2013.
To borrow a phrase from Darren, G0HWW. I did a bit of bodging of yfklog over last weekend. I couldn’t figure out how to get the existing code to talk to qrz.com, so after a bit of bodging with the Ham::Reference::QRZ; module, it now pulls the basic information from qrz.com, name, address2 (Town), operator class, grid, iota, state, qsl manager, and pops them into the relevant places in the log. A productive few hours!
I’m hoping to do the same for hamqth.com and, when I have a patch ready, Bob,W9YA will hopefully submit my changes assuming he deems them useful.
Another minor modification I made was to change the sort order of the exported online log, threw a bit of php at it, and now my most current contacts appear at the top of the output file.
So, having moved the garden shed and the PV panels in August/September 2011 to a more sun friendly position, I was pretty sure that there would be more output from the system over the next 12 months. Now, that 12 month interval is just coming to an end.
When I checked this evening, the average power generated 24×7 for the last 12 months as per rrdtool is 40 Watts, with a peak of 357 Watts. Which equates to approximately 350kWh, or somewhere between 70 and 90 Euro worth of Electricity for the year.
So in short, yes there was an increase in output, an approximate 42% increase in average power and a 100% increase in peak power. At least now I can tell myself it was worth the effort!
So there I was a few weekends ago, wandering around the indoor hall at the UK’s National Hamfest (held just outside Newark). I had just left some items at the Bring and Buy, was browsing the stalls and I came across the stand of the Group for Earth Observation, where I stopped for a chat with the two guys on the stand.
I used to be a member quite a number of years ago until, for whatever reason, I lost interest, after a short chat, I purchased a few recent copies of their quarterly magazine and headed into the crowd. On the ferry home I opened them for a look and instantly thought I had to make an effort again.
So, when I got home I joined GEO (again), found my old licence and login details for Eumetsat. Downloaded and compiled xrit2pic and put my licence to use.
Once Mr B. drops me back my Ezcap eztv 688, I will have to try it on good old APT.
Thank you GEO for re-kindling my interest (though my wife may not agree. Hmmm… I wonder if she would mind me putting up a dish for EUMETCast reception. ).
About 9 Years ago I got involved in IrishWAN. It was great fun at the time getting links set up, upgrading to the newest and coolest kit, helping others get nodes running, getting new people connected, all who hadn’t a hope of getting Internet from any available commercial offering.
For some months, before Eircom enabled the local DSL exchange, one of the only ways to get Internet in my town was through a WiFi node on my roof, 5.8Ghz Backhaul, 2 x 2.4Ghz Access.
Recently the last person that was using my node for Internet access moved over to a 3G dongle, so today I pulled the plug on the node, and took down the last of the WiFi antennas.
One of the Westflex 103 cables has been re-used for a 70Mhz (the Amateur Radio 4 Meter band) antenna that I put up today, the other is now spare. Surprisingly enough both seem perfect after 9 or so years exposed to the elements, as was the 2.4Ghz Omni-directional antenna from Wi-Pipe. Now I just need to “upgrade” to a 70Mhz radio, and the fun begins again…
