AMBroS

Introduction

AMBroS = Autonomous Morse code Broadcasting System

Is Morse-Code on the way to die? It migh be, if not used anymore... To increase the amount of Morse code transmissions available to listeners, broadcast stations are needed that process interesting texts and transmit them for human ears: Morse-Code Broadcasting!

Although the running costs of a transmitting station (excluding mortgages and appreciation of equipment) consist only of the comparatively small expenses for electricity needed to actually transmit and control the transmitter, creation and assembling of transmission texts are quite expensive tasks, if done manually. Therefore, it is important to make this a process as automatic as possible, and AMBroS is meant to fill this gap.

AMBROS shall be a completely autonomous system, collecting textual data from different sources (online or offline), filtering them according to predefined rules, assembling the resulting texts into a contiuous transmission schedule, and broadcasting them via an attached transmitter system.

On the hardware side, only a low-cost computer and a suitable transmitter are needed. Depending on the chosen transmitter type, additional software drivers may be needed, to complement the core of AMBroS.

Roadmap

Initially, a demonstrator system shall be created, which is an assemblage of various scripts (shell, sed, awk, etc) capable of running at least a low-traffic AMBroS. This initial demonstrator may simulate the Morse code transmission, not yet relying on a real transmission system.

Once the demonstrator is running, its components may be gradually replaced by faster interpreted scripts or even compiled programs, while keeping the interfaces of the various components unmodified if possible. In addition, a demonstrator controlling a real transmitter shall be tested, be it on commonly available (free) frequencies, amateur radio, or any other radio service.


Information for Developers

Git Repository Structure

Scratch

In Scratch/, contributors may create personal files with names starting with their user/account name, to store notes and other personal and project related information. Please do not tamper with other people's files!

examples

examples/ contains sample or test configuration files

src

src/ contains scripts or (in a later stage) sources for compilation

morse

src/morse/ contains scripts or sources concerning Morse code generation


2014-July, Yargo Bonetti ( HB9KNS )