Occasionally I get a chance to poke my head up and see what is new and different and occasionally I get asked if I know anyone that could help.  This is one of those cases.

I got a nice email from Mike Lebo, N6IEF, this afternoon, asking if I knew of any Open Source developers, interested in tackling a project that he has in mind, and he sent me along the guts of it. 

If you want to jump right into what he has in mind, he has posted it to GoogleDocs.  For the rest, let me paraphrase.  Mike is out to modify and write software needed to convert the analog voice of a ham radio operator into narrow band digital modulation and convert the received digital modulation into a selectable synthetic voice.

Now, I am sure you are asking: Why do this?

The bandwidth of voice is about 2,400 Hz. When speech is reduced to 125 Hz, the gain is 12.8 dB (19.2 times). Processing gain by a computer is cost free. This project receives weak signals 9 dB below the SSB (Single Side Band) noise floor of a radio.

 

OK, this is pretty geeky stuff!  (If you thought Amateur Radio was just a bunch of old white guys warming their hands over tubes, think again!)  Mike added, in his email: I want to do phone moon bounce and it is very hard with ssb.   Now that is really geeky.  (Yes, there is a whole subculture of operators that live to bounce signals off the moon to each other.)

So, if you are looking for a summer project and hacking the kernel just seems so ... yesterday, here is a perfect project for you to flex your muscles on.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have to crawl back into KVM.