Our guest speaker for the April 11th meeting will be Dave Schmidt (AI6VX), our club’s President, who will present “Meshtastic”.
What is Meshtastic?
A short description from Meshtastic.org: Meshtastic? is a project that enables you to use inexpensive LoRa radios as a long range off-grid communication platform in areas without existing or reliable communications infrastructure. This project is 100% community driven and open source!
?
A longer description teaser from Dave AI6VX: Meshtastic is open-source software that is installed onto an inexpensive micro-controller board which, using an on-board radio module, becomes a node that can pass text messages to another node.? A direct RF path between the two nodes does not need to exist!? Intermediate nodes will relay the message, using a routing table each node builds, based on the stations it can hear.
This ‘mesh’ arrangement is wholly crowd built, and does not rely on any existing communication infrastructure.? Only text-like messages are sent using an app on your phone.? No license is required if the radio module chosen uses the license-free ISM (instrumentation, science, medical) band.? Messages can be encrypted for privacy.
About Dave
Dave joined our club in September of 2018 and became a board member in May of 2021, taking Stewart Stone’s position when Steward moved to Arizona. He also became our club license trustee at that time. In June, 2021, after the COVID restrictions were relaxed, we had a picnic and announced the results of our recent election. Dave ran for and was elected to the board. In June of 2022, Dave was appointed ARRL Affiliated Club Coordinator by John Kitchens NS6X, ARRL’s Santa Barbara Section Manager. In November, Dave was elected as our Vice President and served from January 2023 to his election as President that November. Dave was re-elected as our President in November of 2024 and continues to increase our club’s membership as well as expand our club’s activities and community service.
?
Dave Schmidt’s AI6VX Bio
Dave has spent a lifetime of taking stuff apart and is pretty good at putting stuff back together. He loves building, troubleshooting and repairing all things electrical and mechanical.? He’s been commuting to Goleta since 1986, and in that time, he graduated from UCSB, worked as a chemist for an EV battery research company, then as a test engineer for a hard drive head manufacturer, Applied Magnetics Corporation, an optical networking startup company, Calient Networks and finally for the past 16 years at Teledyne FLIR, finally attaining the position of Director of Production Test Engineering. Within this time span, he also ran a home-based electronics side business for about 25 years, DSchmidt Technologies.
?
Dave’s life-long hobbies are electronics, computers, shortwave and scanner listening. Although he passed his 5 WPM code test in 9th grade, he never got his license as he didn’t think his parents would take him to Long Beach to take the written test.? Dave earned his technician’s license in 2000 just to buy a particular PCB layout software at a discount, then got his Tech/General/AE in 2017, FINALLY using his license for ham radio use.
For HF, he’s usually using FT8 on 10 through 80 meters using an EFHW antenna with 131' of wire strung across his yard. His antenna height is a paltry 15-20 feet high as he doesn't have tall trees in the yard. His HF rigs are an Icom 7300 (used most of the time), FT817, Yaesu FT891, Kenwood TS-430s, TS-520, or his QRP Labs QDX transceiver.
For VHF and UHF, he’s usually on 2M and 70cm on the SBARC or PVARC repeaters, or on DMR TG 31073. Sometimes he’s using his radio-less AllStar node, too. He has an Anytone 868uv, 779UV, TYT MD-380, TH-350, Radioddity GD-77, Kenwood 281a, Midland DBR2500, Yaesu FTM7250, and a FT-4XR.
?
When he’s not working with data, electronics, or wrenching on cars, he uses the other half of his brain trying to convince large animals to move in fancy patterns and sometimes sends them over jumps of various heights.
?
Here’s a table of our speakers and/or activities for this year (completed is grayed out):
?
73,
Robert Shank KM6RSS Vice President, VCARC
Robert Shank KM6RSS