MQTT and Node-RED over ham radio

[Edward Vielmetti]

Any other ham radio operators on the list?

I'm interested in figuring out how MQTT might work as a protocol over
amateur radio digital packet networks. It's low bandwidth enough that
it might even function OK over the very slow (1200 baud) VHF links in
my area, and it looks like the message passing aspects of it would
work well in this environment.

You'd then run Node-RED listening for inputs over radio and send
messages back in return. I'm thinking things like weather telemetry,
storm reports, and weather alerts might all be useful and suitable
data for real use. I don't know how you'd properly deal with the
fundamental broadcast nature of radio (vs. point to point nature of
most networks) but that's suitable for experimentation. Ideally you'd
get this all implemented with low power so you could have an automated
packet station running totally on batteries and portable as needed.

If anyone is interested I'm more than happy to think about this and
I'd be happy to work to exchange traffic and discuss this either on
this list or offline. If there's a lot of interest, I'd like to start
up a new mailing list to track it.

thanks

Ed KD8OQG Ann Arbor MI

--
Edward Vielmetti +1 734 330 2465
edward.v...@gmail.com

[Steven Keller]

I am a licensed ham but haven't operated in years.  (The lack of forward movement in high speed digital and modern communication protocols turned me off.)  

Anyway, I would think you would have to completely re-write the protocol.  You mentioned the broadcast nature of radio as one issue.  However, I think an easy protocol could be created to accomplish the same thing, as well as satisfy the FCC requirements for proper station identification.  If done right creating a gateway from radio to MQTT could be fairly easy.

Steve 

N9ZAP

[Dave C-J]

I'm not a ham radio person...

but one of the original remits of MQTT was for use over slow satellite links - hence the small header size etc etc... so it should be do-able.

[Stephen Wallace]

I have my ticket, but haven't actually used it (except to fool around a little with a UV-5R). I'd definitely be interested in projects that combined the two technologies. I am using Node-Red as the backbone of sensor monitoring system for my house which I can't be in fulltime. It would be interesting if I could publish updates via amateur radio, especially if power/net went down.

[Stephen Wallace]

Sorry--forgot to sign off properly.

73 KB1ZNG

[Steven Keller]

I guess I will need to dust off my 9600 baud TNC and radio and try to remember how to make it all work.  Do people still host bulletin boards with Ham Radio?  Or is everything APRS?

 

 

[Konrad Roeder]

Konrad, WA4OSH