Open Research Institute / Weekly Reports

00:30 light hearted gathering
01:37 meeting starts
02:13 Matthew W. intro
04:34 Ken E. intro
06:47 what is our mission?
07:10 Michelle T. intro
07:22 Paul W. intro
08:42 James W. intro
10:32 Ed F. . intro
11:00 Open source academic work involving machine learning and Remote Labs

00:16 RFBitBanger surface-mount “assisted” kit for DEFCON
00:50 RF Village at DEFCON31 11-13 August 2023
03:05 RFBitBanger Project: Poster and Demo at DEFCON31
06:16 RFBitBanger by Dr. Daniel Marks, supported by ORI
08:20 Remote Labs South Updates
09:27 Radio Frequency Village at DEFCON31: Flamingo Hotel
10:34 IWRC2023 Little Rock, AR
11:10 Biohacking, Policy, and Aerospace Village at DEFCON31
12:48 https://github.com/OpenResearchInstitute/opv-cxx-demod
13:31 FPGA work at ORI
19:24 6 months! But, now the work is published properly.
21:17 Advantages and aspects of COBS protocol implementation
23:37 Formal verification and validation of COBS implementation
24:43 https://github.com/OpenResearchInstitute/cobs_decoder/tree/main/design_discussion
25:43 https://github.com/OpenResearchInstitute/cobs_decoder/
26:43 Thank you everyone!
27:30 (vivado project file is presented in parallel with raw source code)
28:09 Request: Updates about DEFCON from ORI
29:39 Getting the Open Research Institute github in better shape
30:37 Form needs to follow the updated function.
31:33 “Keep it all” vs. “New and Current”
34:13 Organization of the Documents repo: sponsored projects
34:51 We’ve added one board member and are looking for two more!
36:14 Financial side: doing pretty good
36:50 Project activity: very good across the board
38:55 Want to get involved?
https://openresearch.institute“Getting Started”

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Project roundup and Q&A
Summary of all the "big" projects at ORI.

Thank you to everyone helping to do ambitious open source digital radio work!

1) zc706 + ADRV9009 - hardware received and installed; Mathworks buildroot build in progress; errors
2) zcu102 + ADRV9002 - hardware received; not set up as of meeting start
3) Remote Lab South updates

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MATLAB class outline final review and Remote Labs updates.

MATLAB Course Proposal
Remote Lab Reports

0:10 Small talk
2:10 Meeting called to order
23:00 Caroushell Photos from @burningman

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0:00 Happy 4th birthday ORI!
1:15 FPGA Meetup for 7 March 2023

FPGA work at ORI - new station, Remote Labs South expansion, and more.

Greetings all! Updates from ORI about FPGA work.

FPGA Resource Utilization report, Remote Labus update, original music, and outtakes.

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Remote Labs and FPGA discussion for 31 January 2023

FPGA status and office hours dicsussion.

Updates and discussion about FPGA and Remote Labs work. Thank you for a great 2022! We will resume meetings on 10 January 2023.

Updates from the Remote Labs and FPGA Teams

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COBS Decoder, downlink on Pluto, and more.

wide-ranging discussion

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Action packed!

Encoder update, welcome to new team members, and Remote Labs reports.

Downlink Documentation and Remote Labs Updates

Measuring deviation limits on the MD-380 to see if it can be used for Opulent Voice.

Open discussion about the uplink and whatever participants want to talk about.

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Jump Links:
0:30 Reports Begin
2:30 f4pga possible use in Remote Lab South and open source FPGA tools
5:40 Versatune and Downlink transmitter updates
7:30 Versatune as Ground Station if DVB-S was used
8:40 Ham Expo Roundup
11:50 Simple FSK Receiver update. Original repo here: https://github.com/mcupro/simple-FSK
15:38 HEO proposal at JAMSAT member meeting and upcoming JAMSAT Journal
18:38 Need more people!
20:37 Conversation Rick Hambly and Open Source tools possibilities and directions. MATLAB, Octave, Python, and more.

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All about orbits and earlier in the session the technical repository was established at https://github.com/phase4space/propulsion_subsystem_haifuraiya/tree/6.3c

This has all the high TRL EP work.

Open discussion at ORI office hours.

All of Open Research Institute's live demonstrations from DEFCON 30. Exhibit in @RF Hackers Sanctuary

See https://openrtx.org to support OpenRTX
see @M17 Project to find M17's videos.

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Open Research Institute at DEF CON 30

💬 DISCORD Invite - https://discord.gg/jCNdNPKygP

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🌎 Website: https://alexchaveriat.com
📧 Newsletter: https://newsletter.alexchaveriat.com
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📸 Equipment Kit - https://kit.co/alexchaveriat

Greeting in touch with the right FDA office. And progress on the lab physical plant for Remote Lab South.

MQTT approach to controlling the downlink circuits.

00:10 adjustment of orbits
01:06 engine repo upload?
01:15 communications block diagram
02:20 add QO-100 frequencies
02:58 failover switches
04:25 new orbits
07:15 prior HEO missions
08:00 timeline?
09:00 progress reports on comms
09:44 synchronization application
10:05 thermal
11:30 communications
12:12 thruster question
13:54 multiple spacecraft question
15:00 Lightsail comments
16:15 Closing and plan for the coming week

The modifications mentioned at the end of Part 3 to @M17 Project VHF/UHF narrowband have been completed. A 16kbps OPUS codec has been integrated. A variety of other changes to parameterize the codebase for increased utility and flexibility for space and terrestrial microwave band use have been made.

A channel impairment block added to the GNU Radio flow-graph. This is an over-the-air demonstration of a transmitter and receiver for Opulent Voice at 905 MHz, with the baseline16kbps OPUS codec integrated.

Flow-graphs and information about the simulators can be found here: https://github.com/phase4ground/documents/tree/master/Engineering/Uplink%20Modem/Simulator

More information about Opulent Voice can be found here:
https://www.openresearch.institute/2022/07/30/opulent-voice-digital-voice-and-data-protocol-update/

Thank you to all who support the work.

encoder read/write problem *solved*

Busy debugging day! Plus, polar codes, polyphase channelizers, and more.

Walk-through of recent work and planning for DEFCON RF Village poster.

Assembly, Acquisition, Access, Authentication, and Authorization for Amateur Radio and Amateur Satellite Services - what does it mean and what are we doing about it? Office hours discussion on our DEFCON 2022 poster for Radio Frequency Village.

DMA memory address bus error, comparison to PLUTO connections, and Remote Lab South construction and bacteriophage R&D (cross-posted)

Encoder integration progress, issue with building resolved.

Action items:
1) confirm tlast behavior out of encoder
2) model encoder timing performance - any need for superframes?

Part of the mandate to the AI/ML working group is to do a prototype to test AI/ML techniques of interest. Using ultrasonic sensors might be an inexpensive path forward. Here is what a possible testbed might look like.

Breakthroughs all around. Plenty of good news and presentations by the team.

Remote Lab South, Encoder progress, Decoder status, Scheduler work, and several other updates. Music by FirmWarez.

Uplink progress, Remote Lab South plans, and "can't avoid Petalinux" with the encoder side.

Encoder integration on the downlink, additional human resources, plans for Remote Lab South, uplink simulator and higher data rate operation, and more.

Walks through the creation of a Phase 4 uplink simulator using M17 signals in an FDMA scheme. Details at https://github.com/phase4ground/documents/tree/master/Engineering/Uplink%20Modem/Simulator

Walks through the creation of a Phase 4 uplink simulator using M17 as the signals in the FDMA scheme.

Details at https://github.com/phase4ground/documents/tree/master/Engineering/Uplink%20Modem/Simulator

Walks through the creation of a Phase 4 uplink simulator using M17 signals in an FDMA scheme. Details at https://github.com/phase4ground/documents/tree/master/Engineering/Uplink%20Modem/Simulator

Open source RF model for advanced digital waveforms, cool music, and more.

Want to join? https://openresearch.institute and click Getting Started

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Updates about the FPGA work going on at ORI.

Paul KB5MU demonstrates the M17 transmit modulation from a TYT MD-380 handheld transceiver modified with open source OpenRTX firmware. Versions from April 30 and May 5, 2022, are compared.

Both versions display an anomaly during the first few seconds of the first transmission after powerup. This anomaly is clearly seen on a Rigol RSA5065A spectrum analyzer.

The Rigol instrument also has a Vector Signal Analyzer mode, which displays a one-dimensional constellation diagram for M17's 4FSK modulation. This analysis clearly shows that the April 30 firmware version produces inadequate frequency deviation, about one-third of nominal. The May 5 firmware version corrects this problem.

The VSA analysis also shows that the signal from the May 5 version is not as clean as it might be. A signal from a reference GNU Radio flow graph is shown for comparison. The reference signal has much more precise modulation of the four nominal tones. This may point to a further issue with the OpenRTX firmware, or a limitation of the MD-380 hardware, or perhaps a weakness in the test procedure due to the much stronger signal from the MD-380 as compared to the ADALM Pluto SDR used to transmit the reference signal.

OpenRTX: https://openrtx.org

OpenRTX firmware for M17 on MD-380: https://github.com/OpenRTX/OpenRTX/

Hardware modifications required for OpenRTX on MD-380: https://openrtx.org/#/md380_mods

M17 Project: https://m17project.org

Open Research Institute: https://m17project.org

Progress and presentations!

Team meets up and talks about the past week's work, what's coming up next week, and if they need any resources or have any roadblocks.

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Greetings all! This is the FPGA Stand-up meeting for 12 April 2022.

Good news - a proof of concept for the DVB-S2 encoder is working. A major component of the FPGA design for the downlink has been validated.

Format is:
1) What did you do this week?
2) What are you going to do next week?
3) Roadblocks?
4) Need any resources?

FPGA Standup for 29 March 2022.
Plenty going on! Thank you to everyone for the very hard work in getting P4DX on the air.

FPGA team reports in for 15 March 2022.

FPGA meeting! end-to-end P4DX.

Project meeting about the AmbaSat re-spin (board moved to 70cm)

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Remote Labs and FPGA Stand-up meeting on 15 February 2022.

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Plenty going on! Stand-up meeting for 1 February 2022.

FPGA Stand-up meeting for 25 January 2022.
Progress on integrating custom IP with the ADVR9371.

FPGA Stand-up for 18 January 2022.

Stand-up meeting for 11 January 2022.

1) What have you done?
2) What do you have planned?
3) Any resources needed?
4) Any blockers in your way?

Here's a few meeting videos from over the holidays. ORI was on reduced hours for the winter break. Lab maintenance, hard drive replacement, and NFS mounted file system work continued. Thank you to all our volunteers and supporters for a great 2021.

Open Research Institute FPGA Stand-up meeting for 4 Jan 2022.

We're moving AmbaSat to 70cm, improving the power supply, advancing the technology readiness level (TRL), and looking at how to use it as a modular component for larger spacecraft. Learn more by joining the mailing list and Slack at https://openresearch.institute "Getting Started".

Links from today's video:

From Suoto : https://trello.com/c/uUPCPAFh
From Abraxas3d : https://youtu.be/vjfRI1w_dSs
From Abraxas3d : https://www.openresearch.institute/board-of-directors/

Second Orbit Workshop after Debris Mitigation meeting with FCC on 28 October 2021.

9 November 2021 FPGA Standup meeting from Open Research Institute. Backlog task review and discussion.

Weekly FPGA stand-up meeting at ORI. This week we talk about Remote Lab repairs, and Andre successfully completed LDPC work and is starting on more GSE blocks.

Remote Labs West server disk repair, DVB-S2/X GSE receive blocks in GNU Radio crossover, LDPC presentation, M17 integration, Bugs fixed in LDPC encoder, and ZC706 scheduling.

Music is A Clone of Herself by Thirty Day Notice, available at Magnatune.com and, yes, properly licensed for use here on this video.

FPGA Standup. End-to-end demo, and continuing M17 integration.

Open Research Institute FPGA stand-up meeting for 12 October 2021.

Stand-up meeting for FPGA work at Open Research Institute.

https://www.openresearch.institute/getting-started/

1) Ensure sufficient architectural clarity for daily development work
2) Ensure the technical roadmap is clearly defined into sub-projects and communicated with the wider community. In particular, we will aim for concise definitions of development steps that interested members (or prospective members) can get involved in.

Links mentioned today:

https://github.com/phase4ground/documents/tree/master/Engineering/Requirements/Architecture

https://github.com/phase4ground/documents/tree/master/Remote_Labs

Can OpenCPI work for ORI's FPGA work on Phase 4 Ground and Space? We talk details OpenCPI's Aaron Olivarez.

Authentication and Authorization discussion held right after the FPGA Standup on 21 September 2021.

Welcome to the weekly ORI FPGA Standup meeting!

Visit https://openresearch.institute/getting-started to find out how to get involved.

Greetings from Open Research Institute!

We are a a non-profit research and development organization which provides all of its work to the general public under the principles of Open Source and Open Access to Research. We're primarily focused on digital communications work for the amateur satellite and terrestrial services.

We believe that the lack of accessibility and access is a threat to both critical infrastructure and our economy and we're doing our part where we can to address that. Our activities range from technical work to regulatory work to practical initiatives such as the Engineers General program, citizen science initiatives, and more.

We emphasize accessible, equitable, and open access to advanced technology for non-profit and educational purposes. Most modern communications technology is possible today from significant public support in the past. Someone has to close the loop and make sure we fully enable public and educational participation.

Directors decide things and set policy. Directors can be as hands on or as hands off in organizational activities as they prefer. Organizational structure is very flat. ORI consists of teams formed around projects and goals. We generally use Agile methods to organize work. Participants, once they agree to the developer and participant policies, which includes a code of conduct, then usually join a project. We publish work as it is created and give regular presentations at conferences throughout the year, like TAPR DCC.

So, what do we do?

FPGA design and development for microwave band multiple-access amateur communication systems. This work delivers a hardware prototype that can be integrated as a satellite payload or as a terrestrial central node. Work is carried out by an international open source team using resources like the ORI Remote Labs, and taking advantage of community assets like Vivado floating licenses, and more. The hardware prototype is on the microwave bands at 5 and 10 GHz. If you have the skills or interest, you are welcome to join.

ORI is the fiscal sponsor of the M17 Project. This exciting project offers an amateur open source VHF/UHF digital voice and data service that can be used today. Multiple hardware options are available or in rapid development.

AmbaSat Inspired Sensors. Taking the Ambasat open source satellite project, we add a microwave beacon to the sensor array, and develop a path forward for amateur deployment of the main board.

ORI does regulatory and legal work. On 2 September, we received the third and final, in a series, regulatory result from the US government on a year-long effort to free the amateur radio satellite service from ITAR and EAR. Open Source Satellite Work is Free of ITAR and EAR, and publication rules have been clarified. This is the best possible result. The entire body of work, from CJ request to advisory opinion, is donated to the amateur community at no charge.

https://github.com/phase4ground/documents/tree/master/Regulatory

Current regulatory and legal work concerns Debris Mitigation and open source.

The IEEE Space and Satellite Symposium is a half-day virtual event on 30 October 2021, and all recordings will be available. The theme emphasizes the intersection between amateur radio satellites and Information Theory, which involves the study of digital codes and modulation. IEEE Computer Society and Information Theory San Diego Chapters are co-sponsoring the event. Open Research Institute is the logistics sponsor.

Speakers so far will present work on QO-100 narrowband modulators, link budgets for a new approach to Ambasat, Information Theory with respect to music (!), and open source LDPC work targeting FPGAs.

Two pieces of space and satellite themed music will premier as part of the event, and there will be an Information Theory analysis of the work. If you have ever wondered what the connection between math and music looks like, then this is your chance.

Talks in development address the connection between amateur radio and the Mars helicopter team, the role of amateur activity in commercial work, and more.

Register at https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/280774

Volunteer at https://forms.gle/4UXvYeszrU1rgJxH6

Event Page at https://www.openresearch.institute/space-and-satellite-symposium-the-role-of-information-theory-in-space-with-special-emphasis-on-amateur-radio-and-amateur-satellite/

ORI is funded by your donations, Conference Badge sales, Yasme Foundation, ARRL Foundation, and ARDC.

ORI works with TAPR in several areas, most visibly in support of DCC and at HamCation. TAPR is a wonderful organization to work with. We are looking forward to another joint forum in Florida. If it's in person then there might be a special event or contest. If it's online again, then you will find us there.

Want to get involved? Visit https://www.openresearch.institute/getting-started/

Thank you to TAPR DCC organizers for another great year of talks and open source amateur radio work.

Reports from the past week, plans for next week, any roadblocks, need any resources?

FPGA Standup... and then right into Office Hours!

Our upcoming Space and Satellite Symposium: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/280774

Get Started at https://openresearch.institute

FGPA Stand-up meeting for 24 August 2021.

All welcome at Getting Started http://openresearch.institute

Attending technical contributors: Jonathan Corgan, Steve Miller, Ed Wilson, Wojciech Kaczmarsk, Mike McGinty, and Rob Riggs from M17.

Support staff: Michelle W5NYV from ORI.

We have at least two technical questions that need to be answered.

One directly affects the protocol definition. There are differences of opinion on the end of stream, or EOS. There are multiple ways to do this and all of the different ways have assumptions, axioms, stipulations, and reasoning behind them. If all we do today is clearly identify several methods that can then be tested in simulation and over the air, then that is a huge step forward. Documenting all of the choices and showing the process of decision making is of great value to the community.

The other question affects usability, testing, verification and validation for the silicon path, and that is bit error rate testing. Team to discuss an approach to BER.

Weekly FPGA Stand-up meeting for 17 August 2021.

Figuring out Petalinux, supporting Zedboard, Remote Labs DC, and more!

Check us out at https://openresearch.institute

Join us for an ORI Office Hours about Openrotor! Recorded during Ham Expo August 2021.

https://github.com/phase4ground/openrotor

FPGA Standup meeting at Open Research Institute for 10 August 2021.

Progress on Analog Devices related work, discussion about Remote Labs South, and planning for Ham Expo.

FPGA Standup meeting at Open Research Institute for 20 July 2021.

Open Research Institute's FPGA Stand-up meeting for 13 July 2021.

29 June 2021 FPGA Stand-up meeting from Open Research Institute.

FPGA Standup meeting for August 2021 Sprint.

FPGA Standup meeting for August 2021 Sprint.

Here's a progress update on our multimedia beacon project, going on the air at 10 GHz and providing advanced digital broadband microwave opportunities for people interested in learning more about DVB-S2/X transmit and receive.

Codenamed BeacRon, in honor of Ron Economos, who advises the work, the project transmits a signal that bridges the gap between "nothing" and the satellite downlink that we've been hard at work to deliver.

This beacon relies upon GNU Radio, a relatively inexpensive computer, a relatively inexpensive SDR, and some relatively expensive RF hardware from DB6NT.

This update is mainly about the transport stream, which has a lot to do with the formatting of how the data is delivered over the air.

The traditional DATV approach is to use MPEG as the transport stream. This is the traditional video stream, like in broadcast television. We specify GSE, or Generic Stream Encapsulation. This allows any packetized data. It reduces the overhead and allows for a lot more freedom. There are so many really fun things that we can do as hams here.

But we have to get from zero, to fun and accessible digital downlinks somehow. This beacon project is one of those steps along the way.

We start out with MPEG as the transport stream and show the transition from constant coding and modulation flowgraph to attempting a variable coding and modulation flowgraph.

Pre-computing the samples helps make things work on a Raspberry Pi 4.

Summary of the Remote Labs West Lab PC Build.

Cubic Heavy Open Number Center, or C*H*O*N*C, is available for remote work. It's best equipped for DVB-S2/X experimentation, verification, and validation.

Here is a brief report about the Open Research Institute DVB-S2 beacon project. This is on 10 GHz and will allow people to experiment with both MPEG and GSE transport stream transmissions.

Initial discussion about M17 Integration into P4DX uplink with members of both teams.

Jan King, Wally Ritchie, and Michelle Thompson discuss orbit strategies and other subjects during an ORI Office Hours recorded 12 May 2021.

Learn about some of the equipment in Remote Labs for FPGA development.

Open Research Institute Office Hours for 7 January 2021

Project discussion and Question and Answer

0:10 Taxes, US Form 990, and things generally on track
1:50 Default Digital Downlink, Beacons, and keeping it simple
12:35 10/24 GHz dual-band feed update and test plan
18:27 Additional Link Budget in excel and potential port of this budget to Jupyter Notebooks
24:17 Remote Labs update and access method discussion, including mosh.org, VISA, and what's next.

Thank you to all participants and enthusiasts! Find out more at https://openresearch.institute

Specification of M17:

https://spec.m17project.org/

P4DX architecture document:

https://github.com/phase4ground/documents/blob/master/Engineering/Requirements/Architecture/20200902-AREx-System-Architecture.pdf

M17 is P4DX native digital uplink protocol.

There are at least three use cases of M17.

One, 9600 bps voice for VHF/UHF.

Two, the idea of 9600 bps data or packet mode, also VHF/UHF.

Three, higher bitrate mode for microwave.

There is a data type specifier in the current specification. Reserved protocol types are RAW, AX.25, APRS, 6LoWPAN, IPv4, SMS, and Winlink.

What we're talking about today is what, if anything, needs to be added to the specification in order to enable high bitrate operation for microwave, and also to figure out if anything needs to be done for IP over M17 or M17 over IP.

From Slack:

Ron

What needs to be defined is how to do IP over M17. In the M17 specification, there's a protocol identifier for IPv4, but that's it.


And here is a review of the conversation from 2021. This was the starting point for the conversation in this video recording.

Ron

M17 supports IPv4, but I'm not exactly sure how. The M17 specification seems pretty vague on that particular point

Howie

Assume we consider M17 stream mode operating in an FDM manner with a receiver for each uplink channel. Each channel can be given a GSE label that could map to an uplink center freq. The 4FSK modulated data is demodulated but not decoded. Instead, the data streams are clocked into individual buffers and used to generate the GRE frames. The idea is to keep the M17 frames intact so that on the ground earth station the demodulated data is identical to the uplinked frame which can be processed by the existing M17 decoder software. You listen to a channel by selecting the label for the stream you want to listen to. The limiting factor becomes how fast you can assemble the uplink channels into GRE frames.


I don't think there is any need or desire to use anything other than native M17 on the uplink. While GSE is normally used for IP transport I think we could put the M17 frames into the GSE data field. At that point the only overhead is on the downlink with the addition of the GSE headers and LSF management. I have not looked closely at the sizes of the required fields are or how much processing it would take to multiplex multiple uplink streams into a composite downlink. At this point I am just brainstorming.

Anshul

looks like we don't need IP as an intermediate step. I agree with @ab2s that there is no need to use anything other than native M17 on the uplink. GSE should encapsulate M17 frames and produce BBFRAME as it normally does for IP packet.

It implies we will be not using any IP stream/packets on uplink. Everything uplink will be M17 based.

Do you see any concerns here . Else, I will proceed with implementation of GSE block in firmware keeping this decision in mind.

3 August 2020 Weekly Report Video presentation.

Walk through of resources available for prototype fabrication.