Name: June 8 - TARPN Off-The-Grid Text Messaging
Start: 2017-06-08T19:00:00-04:00
End: 2017-06-08T22:00:00-04:00
Location: The Frontier at RTP

At the June TriLUG meeting I will show what a $150 starter TARPN station looks like as well as a multiple-link network node used to tie several destinations into a single Raspberry PI. I’ll bring some sample antennas. I may even be able to show communications from a station set up at the meeting into our existing 42 mile wide network.

In 2014 I started creating the TARPN web site to promote a technology, philosophy, and system for promoting and building a scalable digital communications system with education as a major purposes and with the goal of having Raspberry PI users communicate over distances of hundreds of miles by stepping through intermediary stations, all built by hobbyist volunteers using equipment located in our homes or at sites the participants control.
TARPN’s buzz-phrase is "off-the-grid text messaging". We communicate entirely on hobbyist controlled networks, mostly located in our homes. Internet is neither required nor desired. The challenge and reward is doing it on our own. This also gets us some extreme educational opportunities. See our web site at TARPN.NET

Bio:
Tadd Torborg is a Firmware Engineer presently consulting to a startup company in Austin TX from an office at First Flight in RTP.

We’re using WiFi and “UWB” transceivers for indoor asset tracking. I have been a small systems microprocessor programmer since 1982 starting with the RCA 1802 CPU for E-Com in Stirling New Jersey. My first microprocessor programming job and my first packet radio project were both in 1982 at E-Com where they were using packetized messages sent and received on CATV lines. I’ve been working in digital radio communications for about half of my working life and in microprocessor programming for bare metal systems for 30 of the past 35 years. I’ve been using Amateur Radio for digital radio communications between computers since 1981.

“Packet networking over ham radio": http://tarpn.net/t/packet_radio_networking.html
Local Raleigh ham radio info: http://torborg.com/a

My first computer KIM1 by MOS Technologies uses 6502 CPU, same as Apple 1 and Apple 2 computers. I bought this in 1978 for $190 + $30 for a plastic box.
I wrote a touch tone decoder, morse code sender, telephone pulse dialer, a couple of games and learned how to do memory busses. Coding was involved writing separate functions in memory, with space in between for expansion room. Code was entered using HEXidecimal machine instructions.
The code space allowed for about 400 instructions in 1K of RAM. Watch out, the stack, limited to 256 bytes, wants to gobble up part of that.

My hobby is Amateur Radio. My FCC issued Amateur Radio callsign is KA2DEW issued in 1979 when I lived in Mendham New Jersey. I’ve lived in Wake County for 10 years, married with two adult children, and I’m 57 years old.

Tadd / KA2DEW
tadd@mac.com
Raleigh NC FM05pv

Brian Gerard

Triangle Linux Users Group

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June 8 - TARPN Off-The-Grid Text Messaging 

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