Posted by SamuraiLion 5 hours ago
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/
And then only on certain bands:
https://www.arrl.org/files/file/Regulatory/Band%20Chart/Hamb...
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.
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.)
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-...
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).
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.
Usually it is for the uplink control for satellites. That you'd like to keep encrypted, so that someone does not hack your bird.
(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!)
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.
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).
> 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:
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.
For playing with ham radio, you can just play with ham radio, it's been done for decades. No encryption on ham bands anyway.
this just adds an encryption layer?
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.
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.