Maker Faire Tips in QST

My article on Bay-Net's efforts to showcase amateur radio at Maker Faire Bay Area is in QST (January 2017 edition) hitting mailboxes and digital readers now.  I blogged about this year's project back in May 2016, and that article contains links to detailed materials and presentations.  We also talked Maker Faire with the HamRadio360 team in their late June podcast.

Special thanks again to my team that worked hard on this event: +Beric Dunn, +Bernard Van Haecke, +Derek Kozel, +Marcel Stieber, +Kenneth Finnegan, +Maria Pikusova, and Bob Somers.

Also in the article is an interview with fellow Maker +Jeri Ellsworth on her journey away from and (finally) back to amateur radio, and a cameo appearance by my youngest daughter Tara.

Talking Maker Faire and IMS2016 w/ George KJ6VU

This week's HamRadio360 podcast contains a segment where +Beric Dunn K6BEZ and I were interviewed by George KJ6VU about the Bay-Net amateur radio project at +Maker Faire and continues with discussion about the panel I moderated for the +IEEE International Microwave Symposium.  The audio for the panelist presentations is in the podcast, and the presentation PDFs are available online in my previous blog post.

Special thanks to Cale at HR360 (nee the +Fo Time Podcast) for covering this.

Bay-Net at Maker Faire 2016

Maker Faire 2016 in San Mateo CA is complete.  We got a lot of very interested visitors to the booth, and a good portion of them were either not hams or were "ham-curious".

This year's focus for Bay-Net at Maker Faire was Software-Defined Radio and our projects are loosely grouped into three subtopics:

• Show use of low-cost SDR hardware with microcontroller platforms, primarily Raspberry Pi.  These projects are primarily focused on doing basic tasks like filter analysis, receiving FM radio, etc.  We're also showing use of low-cost SDR hardware running with inexpensive Android tablets such as Amazon's 7" Fire which often sells for only $39.99 and can be used to build a basic spectrum analyzer.
• Show applications of SDR hardware running on microcontrollers to do things like build APRS trackers, run azimuth/elevation rotors for tracking satellites, receive ADS-B info from commercial aircraft, and more.
• Show higher-end commercial SDRs for performance applications such as monitoring LTE.

Special thanks to the team that worked hard on this event: +Beric Dunn, +Bernard Van Haecke, +Derek Kozel, +Marcel Stieber, +Kenneth Finnegan, +Maria Pikusova, and Bob Somers.  In the days to come I'll be posting links to info about these projects, so follow and keep watching this blog.

Presentations
Beric K6BEZ : "Getting Started With SDR"
Pieter KK6VXV : "Receiving WX Satellite Signals w/ SDR"

Software/Apps
SDRTouch - Spectrum Analyzer app for Android on Google Play
GQRX - Spectrum Analyzer app for Linux on gqrx.dk
GNU Radio Companion on gnuradio.org

Hardware
SDR dongles (RTL-SDR, NooElec, etc.) on Amazon
Raspberry Pi 3 on Amazon
Raspberry Pi Touchscreens on Amazon

Update 22-May - Added presentation from Pieter and link to SDRTouch.  
Update 23-May - Added team roster, hardware and software/app sources