Episode: 4122
Title: HPR4122: The Conference for Creative Use of the Radio Spectrum in Open Systems
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4122/hpr4122.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 19:52:20

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4,122 for Tuesday, 21 May 2024.
Today's show is entitled, a conference for creative use of the radio spectrum in open systems.
It is part of the series Ham Radio.
It is the 220th show of Ken Fallon and is about 19 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, a call for presentations for spectrum is open.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and you're listening to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Today we've got an interview for you where two chaps are going to talk to us about spectrum 24.
First of all, introduce yourself, Kristoff.
Okay.
Where are you from?
Good day everybody.
My name is Kristoff.
Of course, I'm in Oscar November 1. How far are we from?
So that means I'm in Radio Amateur.
People might know if you have been to FOSDM because I kind of help out or coordinate the info booth that we have at FOSDM
or Amateur Radio.
Next to that, I also do an info booth on MakerFair.
It's in MakerFair Guns, which is in Belgium.
And I kind of try to promote Amateur Radio to the, wow, the alternative audience.
Let's put it this way.
Very good.
And we've already recorded our talk around the booths when we were recording shows on FOSDM.
So on the other mic, we have, is it Mike?
Mark.
Mark, sorry.
Mark.
My name is Action.
It's Mark Balmer.
My co-sign is Hotel Bravo 9, Sierra, Sierra Bravo.
So I'm also a Radio Amateur.
I'm from Switzerland, obviously.
And I got my license back in 1986.
So I have this co-sign for a quite fair amount of years now.
And as it is a hacker channel, it's probably nice to mention that I was one of the founders
of Carl's computer club in Switzerland.
And I knew the German guys, Stefan Bernierri and Bao Holland, who, unfortunately,
diseased personally very well.
And so we set up a dip on dance of the CCC in Switzerland.
And for my living, I'm a software developer.
I'm a long time open source developer.
I've been a member of the OpenVSD project where I did all the time signal stations stuff.
And later I joined NetVSD.
And I also have some code in FreeBSD.
I'm a member of freedesktops.org.
The guys that did the X-Window system.
And nowadays, more known for Wayland.
I'm doing a lot of post-cress.
And I've been many times to foster them.
Before I organized developer rooms there, deaf rooms.
That's the way foster them is organized.
And I'm working for about a year on an open source project to control amateur radio transceivers.
And I wanted to talk about this at foster them.
And I saw there was no deaf room for radio amateurism.
So I applied for one.
And that's how this story about the spectrum conference starts.
I applied for a deaf room for amateur radio.
And the guys at foster them told me,
look, we have now three applications.
Two for an amateur radio deaf room.
And one for a software defined radio deaf room.
Could you guys please sit together and make one deaf room that covers all of this.
And that's how I got to know.
Last year on the markers and we created this deaf room together.
And it was a huge success.
The room was crowded for the whole day that we run it.
They first allotted us half a day.
Then we got so many interesting proposals that we applied for a full day and we got that.
And it was really a huge success because we had the topics of software defined radio,
classic amateur radio and open source in one place.
And then I had the idea we must do a conference separate from foster them.
That's just for radio spectrum.
And I developed this idea in Brussels with Silva Azaria, Azaria,
who happens to be the president of Yahoo Region one.
And then we created this group and we are now a core team of four people.
Me, Silva, Kristoff and Vera were trying to make a nice conference later this year.
So that's my a little bit longer than usual introduction back to you, Ken.
Hi, that is an excellent introduction interview over.
Quick question.
So you're putting on a it's called spectrum 24 and the website is spectrum dash conference dot org.
So the several websites are there, but it's the one spectrum dash conference.
And it's got making waves on.
Why is it in Paris and not in Belgium or Switzerland?
How did how did that come about the location?
We were looking for a location and it happens that in the Rambo yeah.
That's the precise name of the location.
There is an old radio factory manufacturer for radios.
And this is now a compost style location for events.
And it might have helped that Silva's company is located there in this building.
And he had good connections.
So we can use very good.
This place for free.
So this is a conference.
This is a conference that you're going to be basically like for stem and everybody on how could public radio is bored to death with me talking about how great for stem is the open source community.
So what you what you guys are hoping to have here is like a for stem for the amateur radio community.
Am I am I right here and saying that you're a bit right.
Actually this the focus of the conference is for all users that can use the radio spectrum for free.
This is something very special.
The carriers mobile phone carriers they have to pay a lot to get their frequencies.
And we get a fair amount of the radio spectrum for free use that we can make a band plan which which operating modes on which frequency is.
And so on.
But then they have been emerging technologies like using Bluetooth and what not and there is a lot going on with open source systems software defined radio has probably redefined how we sync radio these days.
So we want to bring those people together who have an open mind and that's also the motto of the of the conference is bring together promote the use of the radio spectrum in open systems.
So that would also include you know people who are using CB radios for example or you know something that you don't need a license for Wi-Fi technologies Bluetooth to be all that sort of stuff everything.
And 24 by the way doesn't refer to 2.4 gigahertz but to the year.
And next next next year we respect to 25.
I will have another it will have another motto this year's motto is making waves so when we translate will be making ways.
And oh sorry I've got to mention for people it's on September the 14th and 15th in Paris so what could be what could be better.
But as Mark said that is more than just amateur radio if you think something like my stash thick which is one of those things that really pops up now.
Part of that runs on 869 megahertz which is not amateur radio but it's free.
So there are pieces of radio spectrum that are available to everybody and it makes sense to well look at what amateur radio does but also what people can do even if you don't have a license.
And of course you've got if you do I'm recently doing a series of home automation and as part of that you got the Bluetooth you got the Zigbee you got the Lauren Network Seagull.
All that sort of stuff that is license free yet at the same time very innovative and changing technologies that are marketing BS there but.
So you're on here to say that there's a call for presentations what what does that until the call on presentation how can you just give me a rundown on how the event is how much is going to cost.
How long it's going to be et cetera et cetera this will cost nothing because it's that's maybe we stole this idea from first time to make it free.
We want to also have a lot of young people there and so we will have two things we will have talks and presentations.
That's one thing and the other thing is we will have booths and a booth there is probably just a table where someone can present his stuff is a his homemade transceiver or a company could show off their products.
So it's a very open format we have never done this before obviously so we are open for suggestions and we have a contact point for people who want to present we will probably make a system of time slots.
So like we did at first time so a talk is like maybe 40 minutes or so and we will make sure there is enough pauses in between support for this hallway track so that people can interact and maybe also sit together at the table and hack on something.
The conference is kind also often incubator and we will see how this develops we will promote the conference during hammer radio and free day soften in tune I think that is where Yaru will have a booths and we will of course talk about this there and then we will see how it develops and maybe one little thing it's actually one hour away from.
It's not in Paris itself. It's a small village outside of Paris. What did I not mention Kristoff?
One of the things I like to write here is that it is not just a technical conference it's not just people talking about some SDR stuff or some FPGA that created.
Part of that is a non-technical thing where we actually can discuss on how to promote knowledge on radio.
When I talk about radio where I do workshops etc. I kind of have this thing that we never used more radio away let's put it away.
We are using more radio now than we ever did before so we have but you have start with Wi-Fi and bluetooth and you have open mobile internet to 3D before you 5G.
You have Lora, ZB, you have start light navigation, you have IoT stuff, you have probably PMRs, you have a new field communication, RFID etc etc.
So there is, when I first give a talk of workshop in Hacker Space, there is really a touch for knowledge on what is radio.
What actually is it?
And that's the other thing that we kind of have, especially on a radio computer, we still too much to think about this on a radio thing but there are a lot of appeals around that.
Going to make a community, developer community etc. which where you have people are really interested in what is radio.
And I think it's important. Just to look at what happened I think last week with GPS japping or the GNSS jamming and Stonia Finland.
Knowledge about what actually radio being, not radio but being radio communication, why is communication is something that is important and that is kind of missing here with a lot of people.
So we are trying to bridge, see how can we demitify radio, let's put it that way.
Oh, and then there is another thing, as I mentioned in the intro, I have been a radio amateur for quite some time.
And one thing that we want to start with this conference is that we as the radio amateurs start thinking about how we handle innovation.
When you think back about 30, 40 years, how this was organized and then we had the Yaru and we had the member societies one in each country.
And in the country we had smaller societies and this was building the amateur radio world so strictly a hierarchical system of societies with the advent of the internet.
And the ubiquity of networks and so on, this landscape of amateur radio has completely changed.
We are more organized today in communities and no longer in societies.
I am a member of a community that is interested in writing free software for amateur radio or another one might be interested in Laura.
So he will no longer look at the frontiers of his country and discuss Laura within his local society, but these communities they have become worldwide.
So the structure of amateur radio is one could say outdated, but still needed because we still have to talk to the local governments when it comes to regulations.
We have a way to address regulators, but then we have this second layer of organization these days, which is these communities.
And how can we handle this does it make sense that every country society builds up a educational website or should be handled is probably at a central level.
And so these are very interesting aspects that we want to discuss at this conference that have absolutely nothing to do with electromagnetic transmission.
Exactly, it is, I think I'm also in the PS7 camp and you've played, but I came to this hobby and I actually haven't met a contact at all yet, it's just super embarrassing, but there you go.
But I came to this hobby because with freely broken source software, you know, I understand the the layers of, you know, you turn power to the computer and chip start up.
But then you start looking at wife fire Bluetooth and my experience kind of stops stopped at that point and so much stuff has gone wireless now that the introduction to amateur radio was a natural thing for me as a hacker to do.
In order to basically find a community that is willing to teach me this stuff for free and there was amateur radio community. So as a byproduct of that, I have a license.
So that is something that I would be very interested in in exploring at this conference now, as he talked to himself.
Well, fancy going to Paris in September for a romantic weekend.
When you're asking this after doing an interview with amateur radio guys, I'm very suspicious, she says.
Anyway, anything else people, I think we more or less covered all the topics I wanted to talk about.
Do you have anything else that you'd like to bring to discuss?
So I can go ahead over the maybe the road map on a larger scale is now to promote this on at ham radio, then do the event in September.
And then when this works out well in next year is a 100 year anniversary of Yahoo, which is in Paris.
And then we will promote it there and we hope for a second edition in twenty twenty five.
Okay, perfect. So I'll just give people the information is going to take place in September of 14th in the 15th of this year, which is twenty twenty four if you're listening to this.
And it's close to Paris. There's called for presentations at the moment on the topics of spectrum access tools, software and harder infrastructure security and wireless hacking amateur radio strengthening the community of spectrum users.
And there will be boots as well. So the submission deadline is the 15th of July 2024.
And the announcements of the talks will be on the 31st of July and the conference again, as I said, will be on the 14th and 15th of September 2024.
Any information and requests you can go to info at spectrum dash conference dot org that's info at spectrum dash conference dot org.
And all the links to this will be in the show notes for this episode.
So with that, I'd like to thank you, Kristoff and Mark for your time in putting this conference together and taking the time out to talk to us here today.
Thank you. Thank you.
Okay, with that tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode of hacker public radio.
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