Our team spent three amazing days at the HAM Radio Friedrichshafen event. We had a real lot of traffic. Thank you for stopping by and for all the questions that you had! Big shout out to DARC guys, especially Jann Traschewski DG8NGN, for providing space for our booth.
M17 Foundation attendees:
OpenRTX booth:
Vlastimil OK5VAS recently tested the GNSS module. Unfortunately, the module used (Quectel LG77L) does not obtain a fix, even when enabled for 30 minutes, outdoors.
The most suspicious part, and likely culprit, is the path between the antenna and the module:
When measured, S11 (from the GNSS module’s perspective) looks like this:
Many thanks to Martin OK1WPM, who helped measure the antenna path both with the cover removed and with the chassis held in place.
A quick ad hoc fix before Friedrichshafen ham fair is to place an additional capacitor along the coplanar waveguide:
Some more experimentation is required. Keep your fingers crossed! See you in Germany!
News from Tom, N7TAE:
Version 1.4.2 of mvoice is now available. It pulls the https://m17-project.github.io/hostfiles/M17Hosts.json file to initialize the reflector selection drop-down menu. A GIANT Thank You to Jim N1ADJ for setting this up!
More details: https://github.com/n7tae/mvoice
It took us some time, but here’s a quick update on where we’re at with the LinHT Rev B hardware tests:
New, M17-related functions include:
More info: https://github.com/OpenRTX/OpenRTX/releases/tag/v0.4.4
I’m happy to announce release 0.5.0 of my M17 Go tools project at github.com/jancona/m17 with some significant updates!
Three hardware platforms, full M17 feature support
m17-gateway now supports three different modem/hardware platforms:
All three give you the full M17 feature set, including voice, SMS messaging, and GNSS-based station position mapping — features that many other M17 hotspot platforms don’t support.
Both the SX1255 and MMDVM platforms support full duplex operation, which means they can be used as full M17 repeaters — not just hotspots. If you’ve been thinking about putting up an M17 repeater, this is a viable path.
Getting started
The easiest way to get a working hotspot is DK1MI’s installer script, which sets up m17-gateway along with a web dashboard. If you just want the gateway itself, pre-built .deb packages for arm64 are on the releases page, or you can build it yourself from the instructions in the README.
Also in the project: an experimental messaging bridge
There’s also a new and very experimental tool called m17-bridge that connects M17 SMS traffic to Discord, IRC, and APRS. It’s not ready for production use yet, but in the next month or two I plan to stand up a public example node so folks can experiment with it. Stay tuned!
Latest release is v0.5.1. Full source, docs, and binaries at: https://github.com/jancona/m17
We finally have the first fully assembled LinHT Rev B PCB.
The board powers up correctly, the ATTiny power-management firmware is working, and the PMU logic now controls the startup/shutdown sequence as intended.
USB-C charging is also working as expected, and the whole device can be powered on with the rotary ON/OFF switch.
We also confirmed debug UART from the SoM is available on the Kenwood connector and works with common Baofeng-style USB serial adapters.
There is still a lot of work ahead: update the Linux device tree for the new Rev B pinout, validate all new peripherals, and fully test GNSS, the RF power amplifier stage, and the rest of the hardware.
Stay tuned.
Today, we have received a set of three Rev B boards. They will be tested in the coming days. Stay tuned!
What’s new in Rev B:
– redesigned power supply
– internal RF power amplifier (~5W at 435MHz, CW)
– improved RF receiver path (added variable attenuation)
– GNSS receiver
– battery charging through USB-C
– cleaner layout and grounding
Photo courtesy of Vlastimil, OK5VAS.
News from Andreas OE3ANC:
I just uploaded a new image for Rev A
- Latest versions of LinHT repos
- Removed gr-bokeh (this removes nodejs dependencies which makes build faster)
- Updated raylib (new lic hash)
- Changed default sample rate to 125k
- Creating /var/lib/linht folder for gui_test sqlite
The new image can be downloaded here: https://m17project.org/linht/experimental/
Flashing instructions: https://wiki.m17foundation.org/index.php?title=LinHT
This is how the display looks like now:
Rev B is still in the works. Stay tuned for more updates.
