hello
welcome to category 5 tv coffee break
this is bp9 and today i'm joined by
peter and it looks like it's just the
two of us today
so um uh we'll see what uh we'll see who
else shows up
uh peter i see you've got um you've got
some uh
some some stuff to show us go ahead
let's see what you got
it looks like that looks like uh uh
sockets and grommets and fun stuff like
that you know sealant and stuff
yep that that they have
been maybe you can see the pin plus
that's the multi-pin plug it
uh to carry the supply and
uh the four switching five switching uh
connections to it
okay okay he showed a job
yeah show us the box
it's quite heavy you know
wow and uh where are you gonna where are
you gonna mount that thing uh peter
and what's it for it's on the tower and
one on the two is with there's a uh
where the road where the um sit down
peter so we can see you
there you go sorry sorry about that
where where the widget there's a play
and underneath there's another play
around on
uh 90 degrees with that okay mount it on
there
you're gonna you're gonna stand it up
high then or do you have to climb to get
to it or
no oh no it's not very high it's
probably about body height
probably about weight side but it's not
okay to be turned up so i don't see
where the always
the oh it will the the so239 sockets are
going
right and uh that's going to be facing
down with the power socket
okay back into the thing
and and we got our guy uh not got it
we've been making pixie bees as well
i mean like that oh yeah yeah absolutely
using the good old laser printer method
no no yeah i know that you
my friend jim do for me because uh the
chemicals are a bit naughty and
uh uh i think this is how i've got the
cancer the first time though
there he is there's sober hello sobu
so peter carry on now yeah you didn't
tell us what that was for that's for
your
um antenna switching that's it uh
uh basically the local coupler the six
of them and
i don't buy a transistor
to switch the relay on the relay
resistance is about 80 ohms
it takes point one five of an amp at
twelve
okay
so the control panels in your shack and
then this thing is what does all the
heavy lifting
of switching the uh yeah the uh the
antennas right
yeah yeah that's right is it there'll be
a it's another uh
um photopolis on this as well to protect
uh
the property by using a raspberry pi
thing yeah
okay so you have so so why did you
mount the thing outside as that was so
you could only have
one coax running from your shack to the
to the tower
and then let it switch out to whatever
antennas you've got on the tower
yeah okay okay because you could have
run all those collapses right into your
shack right
but about problems with the wife because
you're going the obviously and
trips over but she does what she do
i don't just keep them behind the
greenhouse but uh it seems
so you know it's uh to make things a bit
neater so i want to run one guy could be
on the greenhouse everybody
is exactly that way you know yep you
have to check stanley at the moment
you probably know got a radio yeah yeah
yeah yeah
oh nice what is that a yeshu
or a kenwood or what a 102
yay 102 yeah it's well but it's got a
good receiver on there there's nothing
wrong with
yeah nothing wrong with old radios
nothing wrong with those i
i think it's got a good uh
across about uh uh in fact he doesn't
get caught what's up
so much it's yeah it's got bad stuff
we've got balanced mixer the bench fed
to the front so it's pretty
sure it's already pulled through i'm not
if a sure runs floor under watts and uh
and more
which they haven't got by their license
but we won't talk about that one right
right right
right yeah yeah yeah yep
so here's what i think the good thing
about old equipment uh
really all the equipment is that they
are not uh susceptible to uh damage from
solar storms and that can damage their
chips
because a lot a lot of old equipment
doesn't have a single chip in them
yes that's true they're all valve
they're all valve operated or yeah
that's got a transistor input transit a
radio bar
and a valve for a pa on it
most of the most radios these days have
the uh
the final transistors you know that
those those finals tend to be
high power transistors right you um
you do you agree peter or no yeah yeah
yeah
but now i don't know whether they're
susceptible to emp or
or anything like that so they're very
acceptable to everything those things
are
there they break
yeah yeah well yeah
it's always true all right so doug's not
here but i was going to show him
um the the keyboard that that i was
talking about last um
last week but i'll show you guys and
maybe doug cook and we'll catch up on it
later
there it is okay now on to the next
thing
what's that it looks like a wallet well
yeah i know
it looks like a wallet but it's not
everything
if i do that and then that what we get
is this and we go down to where it is
and it's called think outside that's the
brand
right and i think the full brand name is
think
outside the box but what happens here is
you
well i i need to do it so you can see it
you do that and then you do this
whoops and then the keyboard opens up
nice completely opens up to an almost
full-size keyboard
now it uses it uses blue function keys
and green function keys to get you extra
functions all over the place here so um
i i promised him that i would try this
on the raspberry pi
and i failed so i i suck
[Laughter]
i am i am not very reliable apparently
this week
but i am going to try this uh sometime
very very soon
i don't know whether the raspberry pi's
or which models of raspberry pi
have a bluetooth adapter built in
or not because if you search on the
internet
and by the way to close it up you just
do this
click and then it powers off it runs off
some um uh
double ac aaa cells there are
two aaa cells in there so um
there are two aaa cells in there so that
um
we can what we do what we need to do
so reminds me of an old one a calculator
that we had at my old job
yeah it was uh um it was uh
it had a cover on it
and then and it had the cover had a
button
it was um it was uh i think it
either spring or it was some
mechanical uh resistance that that
when you you push the button
um the cover uh it
opens slightly and then it uh turn the
calculator upside down
ready for the cutlet to be used
way back when and i still have this
calculator i don't know if it's any if
it's still any good or not but
um way back when i bought a radio shack
calculator that ran off a solar cell and
the um and the the radio
what it would do is it would open up it
was the cover was integrated
it was a plastic cover or vinyl cover it
was integrated
and you could use any of the function
keys on the cover as well
in order to drive the calculator yeah i
still i still like it i i mean i
if i could use it i would uh i would
continue to use it
this one right there i've been it's
actually very similar to that
except that it had a a vinyl cover on
the back that was integrated that opened
up and you had more function keys on
that
and uh yeah and he has a solar
panel here it charges the the battery on
the thing i have had this for
uh 15 years and the battery is
still works so yeah and i think mine has
been closed for so long that um
i think the battery is no good in it
anymore because it only works now
when enough light falls on the solar
cell to actually drive the thing
to actually run it what you can do
lift that microphone up a little bit
peter yeah
bring the microphone to your mouth there
you go i used a
a computer battery and connector i've
got it here but it's somewhere around
uh connected to the um to the
calculator and it lost i never charged
it up yet
he's lasted forever on one charge
it looks mine looks similar to this but
it's not the same thing
this is an old palm pilot but it looks
similar to that can you get it
other things or something yeah
and uh they work well well on a batch of
time where they're connected well i was
trying to avoid
carrying battery packs around but um you
know i'm pretty much
my mindset on myself a flat battery on
one of these yellow
flat batteries yeah which is about about
a pack of cigarettes and it takes on to
the back
and yeah i never charge up yet
and i'm thinking about i'm thinking
about doing the same thing i bought a
battery pack off
amazon um and it just uh
see if i can focus you know i can't
because it won't
there we go there you go you can see the
inputs and the outputs now
the outputs i think are the um the large
usb
connectors over here and i think the
inputs are to charge it up
um and i would you know i would
plug this up to a raspberry pi or to an
arduino or
or to the phone to charge it up um or
if i'm going mobile with the raspberry
pi i would just
i would just use that as the power
supply
i was going to use that this is my uh
partner in a power bank it's a a very
big one you see
that's tiny that won't last you very
long
yeah but uh and your it's only for
emergencies and it came near my old job
and
um some of the staff were working with
me asked
asked me if i wanted it so there it is
of course yeah why not
yeah absolutely so sobu
okay sorry peter what were you saying i
said those calculators one job thinking
about running
around hundreds of marker apps and they
last for a very long time oh yeah
oh yeah the thing i really liked about
this particular calculator
is that it would easily convert degrees
minutes and seconds
to decimal degrees i love that i i
i you know if i had a calculator that
would do that i would hold on to it
and i've held on to this one for that
reason because it's so easy to convert
from one to the other
i'm weird what can i tell you i'm i'm
like that uh yeah
and uh once you have fun something
that really works and it does the job
there's no pointing and
throwing it away i i was doing a lot of
work with
um with plotting uh segments of roads
on on the screen for a mapping
application but most mapping
applications
use panels or tiles
of um of graphical
uh images right the closer you zoom in
the images that it displays are more
detailed
and the further you zoom out the less
detailed those images are but the images
are about the same size they take up
about the same
size on the screen well the application
i wrote many many many years ago
uses vectors because here in the states
you can get um
you can get what's called tiger line
data
now i have an old set of data it's not
not current at all because i don't think
you can get them as downloads or
or on cd anymore um and you can only get
them by
by registering with their service um so
i i've stuck with an old i think it's
1997
version of that data the problem is that
when you zoom out
really really far like to cover the
entire united states
it has to retrieve the entire data set
of hundreds of millions of records
because
each piece of each segment of road
whenever the road changes direction
each segment of r that's two segments
right
and so if there's a curve there are like
10 segments to describe that curve
and so it has to retrieve every single
one of them even if it wants to display
them
you know the whole thing at
full resolution what i've got to figure
out a way to do is to
come up with a set of low resolution
points
that can be called at the
full you know united states so that all
i draw is just like the interstates or
something
and just intermediate points from one
major point to the other
that'll make the retrieval data set a
whole lot smaller
and it'll display much quicker as a
result so anyway
lots of fun yeah i do all kinds of i
don't do all kinds of weird stuff what
can i tell you
um um oh yes sober what i was going to
talk to you about what i was going to
mention to you
i did manage to get the client and the
server to talk to each other
i don't have the i don't have the
encryption piece done yet because i
decided what i needed to
to do was to uh uh implement and debug
the whole syncing
algorithm you know where the client
syncs up with the
with the server um so i'm still working
on that and i'm just leaving it
unencrypted for now but i do plan to
encrypt
but one of one of the things that i did
um when we talked
last week i absolutely agree with you
that the
encrypted package should be signed i
have no problem with that and i
ultimately want to do that but as an
interim since i haven't figured out how
to get around that
sometimes the signing works and
sometimes the signing doesn't
what i've done is is i'm making the
client solve a challenge that the server
sends based off of random numbers that
the server generates
at um in real time yeah
yes yes so the idea is the client says i
am user123 and the client and and the
server says
okay user123 prove it and
and and the server comes up with a
challenge that the client has to solve
based off of random numbers so it sends
so the server sends that challenge back
to the client
the client solves that challenge
and then uh sends its request at all in
the same
all in the same request and then the
server looks to see if the challenge was
correctly solved
and if it was correctly solved then it
says yep you're good
i'll accept your identity the thing is
that once i've
once i've implemented the encryption
that means multiple paths
multiple back and forth where the
server had to decrypt the packet
with the client's public key because the
client
encrypted with his private key and where
the client had to decrypt with the
service public key because the server
encrypted with the
service private key that makes sense
yeah you've got that backwards
yeah okay but the point is that they had
to use each other's key
to get the roundup to get the roundabout
um you know the back and forth to happen
multiple times the one having the the
private key
is the only entity who can and decrypt
anything used with that private key
so what you have what i think you're
doing is
um your client is using the service
public key
to create something that only this
correct yeah
correct yes yes otherwise i'm sorry if i
got it
i'm sorry if i got it the wrong way but
but the point of
the point of that conversation was to
say that there were multiple round trips
and both both sets of keys have to be
used in order for that
round trip to be successful that makes
sense
yeah i mean depends on what kind of
authentication you you use but yes
yeah because you're having your your
on the server and um
it makes the the server and
then the server knows that whatever is
as uh
signed by this key uh is coming from um
the owner of that key
and yeah oh yeah yeah i agree that i
that it should be signed but i haven't
got the signing part working yet
and when i resolve that issue then i'll
be able to
then i'll be able to to you know
properly say yeah this is this is right
yeah you can look over to the time when
you think it's
ready for someone else else to test and
you put it on put it on github or
something and then you get yeah yeah
300 tickets uh telling you how stupid
that was
yeah i i know i know i know i know but
the
the big key for me is to make sure that
the the data is encrypted
from them that's that's the first thing
i have to do
and some of those s 300 will have a
suggestion so over how you can improve
that and maybe someone will have a patch
uh that
uh maybe solves whatever problem is in
there yeah yeah yeah oh yeah
that's the beauty of open source right
you know throw it out there and
and let people let people mess with it
i i i
because this particular application
deals with really sensitive data i don't
think i want to put it on github but
i'm going to use at least two other i'm
going to build at least two other
applications that do not
require you know that do not transmit
sensitive information
so um i will likely put those up on
github
but this is exactly how the free
software
the world started someone has a problem
i mean they
try to solve that problem and then they
put the code out somewhere
linus told us who made the kernel that
most people are using and he had
a problem he needed a unix system at
home so he made the world under the
colonel himself
and then i always wanted to uh
um i hope that he will have the
opportunity to come to norway
one day i have the one question i always
wanted to ask him because in
the very first email he said
usenet posting sorry that he sent out he
said that
this is just a hobby
it won't be big professional like nobody
or what nobody will use this
right but he explicitly said that
it would be big and professional
like the gnu so i always wanted to ask
him
when will it be big and professional
personally like you well there didn't
now didn't canoe come about after linus
84 really
yeah yeah because when he made the
kernel
all the other tools that he needed to
have a working system was already
made they only elected a colonel yes
okay oh nice and they have they had
started on a kernel
this is which is called heard that the
new herd and it's still not uh
uh ready for use yeah yeah yeah well
why not use one that's already available
right i mean that's the whole
that's the whole point isn't it yeah so
they'd remember that
right that display thing was so good
that looks like a display
right you remember that you've got to
put that microphone near your mouth
peter because you've let it slip down
there you go yeah i think you've got
that headset on backwards i think that's
your problem
there you go there you go isn't that
easier
i remember the dvm thing i had to
measure in uh
uh um deep dbm of the sigma threads uh
yeah absolutely yeah well i well i did
either
the mark 2 version i got a low pass
filter on there
the reason is that because my wi-fi is
so strong it breaks through on the uh
if i connected it so i put a 30
meg uh bad bus filter on there to remove
db's above the north floor of my
receiver
you know and they make whatever they
want to make of that i don't like it
and did you know there was aurora the
other day as well here
i heard about that did you see it uh
no but we got the the rf effects of it
it was quite strong up here i thought i
thought it'd be pretty nice to say
apparently
you're able you were able to see it as
far south as london
from what i heard yeah for the weather
oh okay okay yeah that will explain it i
mean i'm in a good location where i am
but i do share every so often
i was checking the weather yesterday you
and london and all of england and
ireland was all covered up with rain
that's crazy that's nuts and
uh meters and
we had two propagations at the same time
which was weird
i was working germans via spread of key
okay yeah that was a bit weird but
anyway
all right we have to uh we have to close
it down so
uh um
peter mentioned and you mentioned that
it was a
raining i had my car on there
and on there to be fixed on uh
two days ago on the way back
it is um eight degrees below zero um
and it was raining oh no
in eight degrees below freezing and and
it was raining so
for some reason i am not surprised about
that because i've
i've heard that it is possible for it to
be too
cold to snow
no it's not too cold the the the thing
is that um in the
upper atmosphere in in in the cloud
layer
it can still be hot so it doesn't um
have time to uh to uh
change from water into a snowflake
the raindrops have to be kicked back up
into the atmosphere to stay up there
long enough
to freeze and come back
20 kilometers i had to stop uh twice
in order to remove ice from
my windshield that called it would it
not freeze then
um would it not freeze them when it hit
the windshield oh it did because you
removed the ice
yeah yeah it makes sense my kitty cat
says hello too by the way
that's the drive forward or tre uh uh
that name right apple
all right boys and girls it's time to
time to shut this down
i do not know what the situation is in
canada whether uh
uh whether robbie's going to have a show
on wednesday so
we'll find out on discord i'm sure so
we'll just have to see why
next week i am in the middle of uh
fixing my uh
backdrop because uh actually yeah up
until today i had to
set up two ladders in order to hold this
uh thing but today i
am um something i mounted the
pole on the roof but um on the ceiling
but i had to
extend it somehow i say so i'm in the
middle of doing that and oh the coffee
break is now
there we go am i back
i a peter was was dealing with a phone
call i had to
mute him off real quick so yeah and then
you muted yourself in the process
yeah because because the the list keeps
changing and and i went click and it was
clicked on the wrong one
so yeah all right we're out of here have
a great evening everybody or great
afternoon and thank you very much for uh
for hanging out with me for half an hour
or so
and i will catch up with you later bye
[Music]
oh