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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/
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...
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.)
Usually it is for the uplink control for satellites. That you'd like to keep encrypted, so that someone does not hack your bird.
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....
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.
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.
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.
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..
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).
doesn't HAM radio already have a digital packet system that works like fidonet store-and-forward system?
this just adds an encryption layer?
AX.25 runs at 300 bps over HF while Mercury is 10x faster.
HAM radio isn't allowed to have encryption. (Someone can write a longer comment on why thats wrong.)
Depends on your jurisdiction. In Canada it's allowed if you publish your keys.
https://www.rac.ca/encryption/
Sounds a lot like something that could be used with https://reticulum.network to create networks that support multiple mediums.
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
The Data Slayer channel on Youtube made an interesting video about this recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vbl5FL-nsI
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.
On the etymology of the name of the project, see Greek mythology:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermes
Rough Roman equivalent:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(mythology)