[FOSDEM] requirement to start a devroom

[Kristoff]

Hallo Martin,


(inline reply)


On 06-07-17 20:47, Martin Braun wrote:
> On 07/01/2017 12:10 PM, Kristoff wrote:
>> Correct. In fact, the ham-radio infobooth we have had started out as an
>> idea of some people who participated in the SDR devroom in 2014.
>>
>> But, as also replied by Daniel, amateur radio is more then
>> signal-processing (SDR). There also is (e.g.)  digital voice, digital
>> keyboard-to-keyboard communication modes, weak-signal communication,
>> satellite-trackers, mesh-networking, repeater-linking-networks, and many
>> other things.
>> But I do agree that the ham-radio topics do overlap quite a bit with
>> existing devroom: the SDR devroom, the EDA (electronic-design
>> automation) and the "embedded" devroom.
>> Another element in this is that the SDR devroom is already quite loaded.
>> Adding ham-radio-but-not-related-to-sdr topics to that devroom is
>> probably not a good idea.
>>
>>
>> So I am still a bit puzzled on how to see this and how to do this the
>> best. (hence my question here).
> As the guy who's organized the SDR track for the last few years, I would
> have appreciated if you had pinged me on this too.

To be clear, it wasn't me who linked the "ham-radio" with the SDR devroom.

I understand the confusion by certain people (after all, both have the 
name "radio" in it), but -as mentioned- my idea is about the ham-radio 
related software that is not SDR related: digital-voice, digital-modes, 
pskmail, mesh-network, radio-over-ip, remote station-control, ...

The ham-radio info booth we have had at fosdem started out as a small 
"get together" by a number of hams who visited the SDR devroom in 2014 
(or was it 2013?). The last think I want to do is "compete" with the SDR 
devroom. That is surely not my goal.



(...)

> Now, of course you're right that ham software includes more than just
> SDR, but if you've followed the SDR track in the last couple of years,
> you'll have noticed that we have all kinds of talks, including
> FPGA-specific ones, embedded Linux, and other non-DSP talks. Besides,
> our mission was always to get people from various communities together,
> such as telecomms, DSP, academia, and also hams.

Well, to be honest, the last two years, I had a fulltime job maning the 
infobooth  (sometimes you need to make choices in life :-( ) so must 
admit that I have completely missed outmost all talks.


But, as mentioned, one of the main reasons I queried about the 
possibility for a ham-radio devroom was simply not to "highjack" the 
sdr-devroom. There is quite some ham radio-related application that do 
not fit in the "SDR box".



> To be clear: I realise you weren't criticizing the SDR devroom or
> FOSDEM, ...
Thank you. That was indeed not my intention at all :-)

> but rather making a suggestion. Creating a ham-specific devroom
> would mean, though, cancelling something else. So what should it be?
> Python devroom? Or the embedded devroom?
The reason I queried about this was -as my original mail mentioned- 
simply to get an idea what would be the requirements to do this, this to 
determine if it would make sence to talk about this wil certain 
developers I know.

Let's start there.



> Cheers,
> Martin
Cheerio!
Kristoff