HERMES radio enables voice and data communication over vast distances

Posted by SamuraiLion 1 day ago

Comments

Comment by wmchen 1 day ago

Original project page: https://hermes.radio/ (Code: https://mercury.hermes.radio/)

Organization page: https://www.rhizomatica.org/about/

My initial thought is that this is a cool way to try and get more resilient communications technology in the hands of those who need it most in the Global South, and it's awesome it was successfully used for a Pan Pan.

This reminds me of WinLink (an analogue to email on amateur radio), which I've heard is used by some Mariners. [1]

I'm aware that HERMES is essentially a SDR bundle/communication terminal (for a lack of a better term for a Raspberry Pi, a screen and an SDR), so it's not really re-discovering a well known amateur radio concept, but the hardware setup sounds a bit brittle on first glance, for what is essentially an emergency/critical communication application.

[1]: https://winlink.org/

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Comment by mesh 1 day ago

This is a cool project, but fyi, in the US, this would require a license to broadcast (not receive), and I am pretty sure encryption, even with a license, is not legal (again, when broadcasting from US).

And then only on certain bands:

https://www.arrl.org/files/file/Regulatory/Band%20Chart/Hamb...

Comment by rckoepke 10 hours ago

Just FYI, LoRa / LoRaWAN (Part 15) explicitly allow even unlicensed operators to utilize encryption. WiFi and Bluetooth, similarly, of course (also under Part 15). And surprisingly long range wireless network bridging like the Ubiquiti Building Bridge XG over 5GHz and 60GHz to bridge two building's LANs up to 500meters away. Part 15 also covers the unlicensed usage of the 900MHz band popular for citizen mesh networks at 2-15Mbps.

MURS (Part 95J) allows unlicensed operators to utilize encryption for digital data transmission as long as it's not encrypting voice communications, though it disallows store-and-forward packet operation and repeaters which makes doing anything similar to Reticulum/Meshtastic rather difficult.

For $400-800 nearly anyone can get a FCC Part 90 Nationwide Itinerant Data License which would allow them to do most of the "fun stuff" they might like to do for just $45-75/year, which is pretty darn affordable. Part 90 explicitly allows encryption, both of voice and data.

FCC Part 96 (CBRS) allows "unlicensed" (licensed-by-rule) operators to run their own private LTE/5G cell sites, if you have a WAN connection like Starlink or whatever. Obviously encryption is allowed.

Encryption is really only hard-banned for "amateur" radio (Part 97), and voice rules of Part 95 (i.e. CB / FRS / GMRS).

Comment by jcrawfordor 1 day ago

I would expect this system to ultimately be used under a commercial HF license rather than an amateur license, given the feature set and that it seems to have much more in common with military systems like ALE than amateur practice. That said, because of the scarce supply of HF bandwidth, commercial HF licenses are quite restrictive in the US. For the most part, you are only allowed to apply for one if you are an infrastructure operator that needs a contingency communications capability for disaster response. That said, the FCC has permitted experimental licenses for some commercial applications like high frequency trading, so perhaps the situation will become less restrictive over time.

That said, commercial licenses are not per-operator like amateur licenses, so you would potentially only need one to cover the entire network. Some of this is ultimately negotiated.

Comment by bityard 1 day ago

Correct. Encryption (or more specifically, obscuring the meaning of a message) is generally not allowed for amateur radio stations except in very narrow circumstances. So any hams using this would have to turn the encryption off.

However, it looks like this stack has encryption available as an option for stations who are transmitting sensitive data and are NOT operating under an amateur license. (Probably government-sanctioned communications or emergency humanitarian efforts.)

Comment by edg5000 17 hours ago

For drones, at least in the EU, encryption is mandatory.

Comment by nowittyusername 1 day ago

what would happen if you were to break that law? like im talking enforcement here not whats on the books.. for example torrenting and uploding copyrighted files is illegal but most people dont give a shit as enforecement is almost non existant. i know radio is taken more seriously then torrenting but this must also be very low on priority for the government unless you are jamming people or somehow stand out enough for anyone to care or notice....

Comment by asdff 19 hours ago

Effectively nothing. I dug into this and found this article (1) from earlier this month on the FCC targeting a couple pirate radio stations in and around NYC. It says they used field agents and FM directional finding equipment to locate the signals to specific property. Probably a big show of force operation on their part.

However, the buck stops exactly there. It becomes the landlords issue, not the tenant who might be operating the radio, where the property owner is liable to be fined if they themselves don't shut the signal off after a certain amount of time. I would guess the FCC lacks the sensitivity to target the signal to a specific unit in a given building in order to issue the fine directly to the involved individual.

I guess the lesson is you can do whatever you like as long as you have the actual radio mast on someone else's property as they will get the fire if the FCC bothers to show up.

Makes me wonder about those old FM radio dongles we had for cars that lacked aux jacks or tape decks if those would technically be pirate radio. You'd have to set them to whatever open channel was locally available and they had actually pretty good range; I remember picking up my friends signal while I was driving behind them.

1. https://www.insideradio.com/free/pirate-radio-crackdown-puts...

Comment by mschuster91 10 hours ago

> Makes me wonder about those old FM radio dongles we had for cars that lacked aux jacks or tape decks if those would technically be pirate radio.

No. These generally are type-rated and carry a general license to transmit, their power is extremely low and unlikely to be a nuisance to others for that reason.

Comment by jasonjayr 7 hours ago

They are a nuisance when you drive by a car using them while you're tuned to the local college stations, and suddenly you're hearing one side of someone's phone conversation, or some other music.

Comment by wmchen 1 day ago

You're right that most amateur radio regulations are self-policed by other amateur radio operators, and true enforcement is probably rarer than folks like to imagine.

But depending on the environment (and noting that this project is specifically targeted towards communities seeking last-resort communication), there's definitely still risk, even if there isn't a spectrum authority with any real policing powers.

For example (and I say this speculatively), if you're broadcasting encrypted radio traffic in a conflict zone, it could be hard to differentiate between civilian traffic and military traffic happening on civilian bands, so you might be wrongly targeted by a drone strike.

If you already have a target on your back, radio laws can still be arbitrarily applied upon oneself, as in the case of Aung San Suu Kyi, who was once detained on the pretense of illegally importing handheld radios. [1]

[1]: https://apnews.com/article/aung-san-suu-kyi-myanmar-asia-ap-...

Comment by bmgxyz 22 hours ago

If you're curious what's allowed on the ham bands, have a listen to 7.200 MHz LSB. (If you don't have a receiver, try one on the web[0], such as this one[1].) As of writing, someone is spamming the channel with racial slurs and KKK propaganda using a soundboard.

In my experience, enforcement of the rules is unheard of.

[0]: http://websdr.org/ [1]: http://websdr.k3fef.com:8901/

Comment by driverdan 20 hours ago

It's not unheard of but is unfortunately rare. The FCC sent a nastygram to one of the 7.200 nuts recently.

Comment by bityard 1 day ago

In the US, FCC investigations are complaint-driven. Meaning, if you interfere with someone else's frequency, and they complain about it hard enough, the FCC will take an interest in you. Especially if you interfere with public safety. (But they will still go after the more flagrant and persistent abusers on the ham bands.)

Comment by aeturnum 1 day ago

In practice very little. The FCC tends to focus on long-lived stationary stations ("pirate" radio) with their few enforcement actions. That said it's important to remember that radio transmissions can easily be tracked to their source (doubly so with drones) and you should plan for that eventuality.

My sense is that at most you will be yelled at by HAMs - unless you are actually disrupting emergency communications. Ensuring radios can be used in emergencies is why licensing exists at all and people take ensuring it can be used for that pretty seriously (for good reason).

Comment by ErroneousBosh 1 day ago

> what would happen if you were to break that law? like im talking enforcement here not whats on the books.

In the UK, nothing. There are far more important laws to enforce.

You will get some fat whiny old guy bitching about it to anyone who will listen, but you literally could not pay Ofcom to take an interest, and there are only about two people in the whole of the UK who have the skill to do anything about it.

Comment by BoxOfRain 23 hours ago

Don't Ofcom still raid the odd shortwave pirate occasionally if they're broadcasting in one of the GMDSS bands? Fairly sure it happened to a station a few years ago but I could be misremembering.

Then again, as you say, they probably have much better things to do. Would be nice to hear more stations popping up on MW too as all the legit stations leave the band.

Comment by ErroneousBosh 12 hours ago

Yes, but then that's typical of the way laws are enforced in the UK.

If you're not actively pissing someone off, it is unlikely anyone will bother you.

No-one is going to give a shit about you running unattended digi modes on 80m except some guy who wants the exact same 3kHz out of 300kHz that you are using to moan about his sore feet to his pal across town.

GMDSS is considered Pretty Fucking Important, and messing with it will attract the attention of the Coastguard, who have the legal right to make even the Diplomatic Corps miserable.

Let me put it this way - when a defective navigation light ballast at a US-operated naval base on the Clyde was jamming 156.8MHz for about a ten mile radius, absolutely obliterating the distress and calling channel, Ofcom got involved, passed their findings onto the estuary radio control office, the RNLI, and the Coastguard, who had all been reporting an issue, and "gave advice" on further enforcement they could carry out. Within half an hour the nav light was shut down, after a phone call where the Coastguard explained that there were some very angry people on their way with a radio engineer who was about to put a Stihl saw through their fence and shut it off himself.

They were on that thing within the hour, replacing the lamp assembly and phoned estuary control before firing it back up, and peace returned to Channel 16.

Comment by zikduruqe 1 day ago

> except in very narrow circumstances

Usually it is for the uplink control for satellites. That you'd like to keep encrypted, so that someone does not hack your bird.

Comment by wiml 1 day ago

You really only need authentication for that, not encryption. MACs and such are okay on ham bands as I understand it. You just can't obscure the message. If you want a private channel to the exclusion of other people, license a frequency and pay for it. Spectrum is a scarce resource.

Comment by zikduruqe 10 hours ago

You have to encrypt it.

NASA requires any of its propulsive spacecraft within 2 million kilometers of Earth to protect their command uplink with encryption that is compliant with Level 1 of the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-3 (10). The FCC has also considered requiring encryption on the telemetry, tracking, and command communications as well as mission data for propulsive spacecraft, but decided not to incorporate a specific requirement at this time. A satellite with an amateur license cannot encrypt transmissions in any way and must consist of open information. The eligibility rules are listed in 47 CFR Part 97.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/97.211

Comment by _whiteCaps_ 1 day ago

Going to be super pedantic here - in ham radio you don't broadcast, you transmit.

Comment by kanbankaren 1 day ago

What is the difference between the two?

A ham operator might put out 20W of ERP while a radio station operates at 100W though international broadcasters use upto 500 kW.

Comment by drivers99 23 hours ago

Part 97 defines broadcasting as "Transmissions intended for reception by the general public, either direct or relayed."

Then there's a section that says:

> An amateur station shall not engage in any form of broadcasting, nor may an amateur station transmit one-way communications except as specifically provided in these rules

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/part-97#p-97.113(b)

Since "broadcasting" is prohibited (except for the exceptions), there is a distinction. There actually are a number of exceptions that allow different kinds of one-way transmissions though.

Comment by mesh 23 hours ago

In the US with an amateur radio license you can have one to one communication (transmit) but not one to many (broadcast).

Comment by lacunary 21 hours ago

hmm, been a minute since I got my ticket, but neither calling CQ nor working a net seem like one to one.

Comment by amatecha 17 hours ago

The difference is the intent - calling CQ is the protocol for seeking a contact to communicate with. It's not broadcasting because you're trying to establish comms with someone, and not disseminating information "one-to-many". Running a net inherently intends to engage in contact with numerous stations - by definition not "broadcasting".

Comment by scarecrowbob 20 hours ago

Isn't it the case that it's not a CQ unless someone responds?

Like, the response is kind of important for either a CQ or a net... whereas if I broadcast a pirate radio I am doing what I am trying to do just by sending.

Comment by lacunary 19 hours ago

yes I think two-way vs one-way communication is a good characterization

Comment by sitzkrieg 18 hours ago

the intention is to make a contact, not disseminate one way information. that is broadcasting

Comment by subscribed 15 hours ago

> What is the difference

Except the CQ you only transmit for the specific recipient.

I believe broadcasting in one way only (there's no conversation part).

Comment by mesh 1 day ago

Yes! Broadcasting is prohibited!

(and this all reminded I need to renew my license which I haven't used in about 8 years! Looks like I also need a refresher!)

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Comment by tarxvf 1 day ago

https://n5dux.com/ham/files/pdf/Data%20Encryption%20is%20Leg...

Comment by Razengan 14 hours ago

> encryption is not legal (again, when broadcasting from US)

What the fuck... How did you Freedom snorters let it get that way, god

Comment by SamBorick 8 hours ago

Hi, I'm an actual licensed ham radio operator.

'Encryption' in the ham space is defined as intentionally obscuring a message. Encoding data in a format is an extremely common practice. As long as the intent isn't to actually obscure your message, pretty much any digital format you can dream up is fine. The main method of email over HF, WinLink, is proprietary so IMO they don't even comply, but the FCC hasn't done anything so apparently it's fine.

Enforcement in this space looks like hams reporting bad behavior to the FCC, and if the FCC decides to enforce they send a nasty letter, escalating until the offender's license gets revoked if they don't stop.

This specific project is very cool. There's a lot of amateur radio emergency communications groups (EmComm) who use WinLink heavily, and IMO it would be better to use something open source.

All the more reason to get my sBitx set up and play around with this.

Comment by j_not_j 1 day ago

If it's a matter of life and death, such as offshore fishing, you probably want a real commercial service.

Like Garmin (Iridium based texts back and forth) or Zoleo. These are physical units that may offer texts or just a simple "sos" button.

Or a recent iPhone will communicate with Starlink, or T-Mobile offers a similar system for Android phones and is also based on Starlink. These can exchange texts which is much more reassuring than a simple sos button.

Of course offerings outside the US may be limited or entirely absent.

Comment by reaperducer 1 day ago

If it's a matter of life and death, such as offshore fishing, you probably want a real commercial service.

Like Garmin (Iridium based texts back and forth) or Zoleo. These are physical units that may offer texts or just a simple "sos" button.

Prohibitively expensive, and also not available to 90% of the planet's commercial fishermen.

For them, an iPhone can be an entire year's profit.

The people in TFA aren't going to be featured on The Deadliest Crab.

Comment by markdown 1 day ago

These are essential for remote solo hiking.

Comment by BlackRabbit1 1 day ago

> Why did you build in encryption that amateur-radio regulations in many countries don’t allow?

Encryption (in terms of hiding messages) is forbidden mostly.

But everything else is allowed: hashes, signing, etc.

Even the legislators really understand it. They are allowing encryption for remote controlling ham satellites. With proper signing even that would not be necessary (with only exception of key rotations maybe).

Comment by Animats 15 hours ago

There's an existing HF service called SailMail.[1] This is email for sailboats over HF. There are about 20 fixed stations around the world maintained by the organization. Cost is $275 per vessel per year. You can use 90 minutes of connect time per week. All it does is email over the HF links. There are now some satellite options which interoperate with it, but it predates those. There's very little infrastructure; the boat-side equipment is an SSB transceiver, and the shore stations are quite modest.

It was set up by Stan Honey, who invented car navigation systems (Etak) and the thing that puts the yellow line on TV views of football fields (Sportsvision). He's into long-distance sailing, and wanted some basic comms that would work on most of the world's oceans.

It's not that advanced technically. It just works.

[1] https://sailmail.com/

Comment by throw0101c 1 day ago

On the etymology of the name of the project, see Greek mythology:

> Hermes (/ˈhɜːrmiːz/; Ancient Greek: Ἑρμῆς) is an Olympian deity in ancient Greek religion and mythology considered the herald of the gods. He is also widely considered the protector of human heralds, travelers, thieves,[2] merchants, and orators.[3][4] He is able to move quickly and freely between the worlds of the mortal and the divine aided by his winged sandals.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermes

Rough Roman equivalent:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(mythology)

Comment by rambambram 1 day ago

The Data Slayer channel on Youtube made an interesting video about this recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vbl5FL-nsI

Comment by leguy 9 hours ago

Could this realistically be bundled on a low powered IoT device to communicate small packets of information to a remote server? Edit: And does it inherit the coverage of ham radio? meaning, the network coverage is already in place?

Comment by wmf 1 day ago

Coincidentally I looked into this the other day and the fastest mode is 3 kilobit/s. Great for email but it's not going to be an Internet connection.

Comment by kragen 1 day ago

I haven't used this radio, but I have definitely used a 2.4-kilobit-per-second internet connection productively. Raw TCP/IP with SLIP or PPP will work, and with VJ header compression it works reasonably well. What won't work well is loading a web page with a bunch of images and a megabyte of JavaScript.

Comment by nowittyusername 1 day ago

If you have local stt and tts voice stack on the phone, this would be very useful as the interface to talk to your agent back at home. All inference happens on your local machine while the actual information is sent via text. said text is then processed by your phone via tts as output, same for your voice as input (asr). this project is actually something ive considered doing myself as my voice agent is almost done and ive wanted to take a look and see if i could have acess to him from anywhere in the world..

Comment by BlackRabbit1 1 day ago

If you want to have internet everywhere there is Starlink. Competing against it as hobbyist is a waste of time.

But having a small, low-power, lightweight messenger that uses an extremely robust (and thereby slow) mode to send and receive messages is an interesting niche. For VHF/UHF/SHF you can use LoRa.

Comment by Mainan_Tagonist 15 hours ago

Technologically speaking, Starlink is the way to go.

Economically, Starlink and its subscription model cannot compete with a hardware cost only mean of communication where all elements are modular in this particular context.

On the other hand, even people in remote communities will also end up getting hold of a cheap smartphone that they would like to connect to the internet

Comment by sitzkrieg 18 hours ago

its a less compatible winlink at best

Comment by Panda_ 1 day ago

Sounds a lot like something that could be used with https://reticulum.network to create networks that support multiple mediums.

Comment by rambambram 1 day ago

I did not yet watch the full video, but Data Slayer on Youtube made a video about this, I guess. It's at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vbl5FL-nsI

Comment by nunobrito 14 hours ago

Reticulum creates networks but over radio the bandwidth is so limited that what you can realistically send are just messages.

There are more efficient protocols like APRS and more recently XPRS.

Comment by LennyHenrysNuts 19 hours ago

Compatible with ham radio

encrypted

One of these things is not like the other.

Comment by SuperMouse 16 hours ago

Still can use all other fancy technologies as long you are not hiding data: Signing, Hashing, etc.

Comment by anonzzzies 13 hours ago

Maybe i'm blind, the article starts with performance in bits/s for 'competitors', but then I cannot find the performance of this solution?

Comment by Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 19 hours ago

You can see it in action here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2_nYNLXh_w

Comment by Mainan_Tagonist 15 hours ago

Very interesting that the setup uses a mag loop for antenna.

Comment by ajsnigrutin 1 day ago

Considering the state of the higher bands lately, i'd stick with commercial solutions like garmin inreach for any kind of emergency situations.

For playing with ham radio, you can just play with ham radio, it's been done for decades. No encryption on ham bands anyway.

Comment by ck2 1 day ago

doesn't HAM radio already have a digital packet system that works like fidonet store-and-forward system?

this just adds an encryption layer?

Comment by wmf 1 day ago

AX.25 runs at 300 bps over HF while Mercury is 10x faster.

Comment by iamnothere 23 hours ago

Ham is not an acronym, no need to capitalize it. It’s slang for an amateur radio user.

Comment by transcriptase 18 hours ago

On the other hand it annoys some of the most insufferable humans on the planet. As a ham who’s not a boomer who would gladly die with the airwaves silent but compliant with rules and regulations established assuming usage of the spectrum would grown instead of dwindle I encourage it. Fuck ‘em.

Comment by BlandDuck 1 day ago

Ham radio also has the FT8 protocol which is optimized for bad signal to noise environments, but has low bandwidth. However, using this protocol a 10Watt radio has global reach under the right conditions, which is pretty mind boggling.

About encryption, the US rules are that you can use digital protocols but you must publish the specs so anyone can, in principle, decode the signal.

Comment by cge 1 day ago

>the US rules are that you can use digital protocols but you must publish the specs so anyone can, in principle, decode the signal.

This restriction does not appear to actually be enforced, eg, if I recall correctly the VARA HF/FM modes do not have published specs anywhere near sufficient to decode them, to the point where there are projects trying to reverse engineer them.

Comment by fragmede 1 day ago

HAM radio isn't allowed to have encryption. (Someone can write a longer comment on why thats wrong.)