Our Next Meeting: Wednesday 18th October 2017 Linux/Ubuntu Update

At our next meeting we'll take a look at the final Beta of Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) before it is released to the world the following day.

Artful is a standard 6 monthly development release rather than a Long Term Support (LTS) and therefore allows Canonical to introduce new features and technologies - and this release a big one in the form of a new Desktop environment.

Ubuntu has shipped, by default, with the Unity desktop shell since 2011 but announced earlier this year a shift in focus away from maintaining an independent desktop and a switch to GNOME 3 in the 17.10 release cycle.

At the meeting we'll preview Artful release together with the Ubuntu take on a Desktop environment. and also look at some of the other under the hood changes including a switch to netplan for network configuration.

Gareth also has some YouTube links around model railway control and the very much more budget end of SDR we didn't have time for at the last meeting which are shown below.

On the subject of last months meeting - I'd like to thank Duncan again - I thought it was excellent, very in depth, but I know others including Paul also communicated how much they enjoyed it.

Gareth

I also have some software details for Model railways and telescopes control which we did not get to last time.

Peter

Our Last Meeting: Wednesday 15th September 2017
Alternative software applications :Model Railways, Amateur Radio and Telescope control etc.

We were pleased to welcome Martin from the EAUG club who had made a long journey from Brentwood.

Duncan provided all of the presentation for this evening on Amateur Radio in the form of Software Defined Radio (SDR) and since his contribution was so detailed, interesting and informative we became engrossed and ran out of time for the other topics, apart from a brief discussion about railway modelling since we all had memories of early train sets which were DC driven with their speed controlled by voltage. Later the engines all had chips installed with address codes and they could be individually controlled, the track voltage was then a constant value.

Duncan then went on to discuss an interest in Amateur radio and had purchased a Software Defined Radio this is driven by an app downloaded from

http://sdrplay.com running on either an Raspberry PI 1 or 2. Duncan played a YouTube video of an interview with the developer Jon Hudson describing the system. Basically the RPI1 ,2 or 3 has an aerial input all the frequencies are generated in software. The App gives a quite complex desktop (dashboard) which allows setting of the frequency spectrum covered and the selectivity and amplitude of the signals being observed. This is effectively a spectrum analyser.

(Being able to scroll through frequency bands with a mouse on screen is so totally different to the my old days of slowly turning a tuning knob to pick up one station at a time and then being completely dependent on the sound output. (Ed.) )

In this system you can set up a scan of a completed amateur band like 14.1 to 14.5 MHz and let it show any signals which appeared and with no receiver drift- Amazing!

In the case of the RPI1 and 2 this gives the cheapest way for a wireless listener to obtain a sophisticated receiver. Duncan admitted he is still learning to drive the software which has various filters which can be set up.. They can be purchased for £160 from http://nn4f.com for the RPI2 with SDRUno v1.1 version software.

The radio can be used from very low frequencies up to 2GHz (thereby missing the mobile phone coverage) and will accept AM and FM and DAB. I think he also mentioned SSB (single sideband). You can use a bias-T aerial input which would allow power to a mast head amplifier and there are multiple aerial inputs. Unfortunately since we were indoors and only using a short 1 m aerial reception was not great. Duncan managed to show local DAB channels, MW transmission and TV channels.

The software is being actively developed and the RPI2 Pro version has more features.

ICENI Future programme

	ICENI Future programme 2017/2018
2017
October 18th	Linux /Ubuntu updates.	Gareth et al
November 15th	Slide/Video Evening	All
December 20th	Gadgets and Party Evening	All
2018
January 17th	Winter Social Evening - The Wooden Fender, Ardleigh (Provisional)
February 21st	Arduino/Raspberry Pi / BBC :Microbits	All
March 21st	Backup systems - Cloud/ CCTV, Acronis	All
April 18th	AGM - Virtual Reality and secure password storage	All
May 16th	Computer surgery evening	All

Meetings are now on the Third Wednesday of the month unless otherwise stated.

Our meetings are held at the Bourne Vale Social Club, Halifax Road, Ipswich IP2 8RE , for a map and other details please see the website.

http://icenicomputerclub.org.uk

Membership fee currently £10, visitors free.

Special Notice - Insurance

"ICENI does not have any Insurance cover for computers or other equipment so please be advised that you bring machines to the club at your own risk."

However many household insurance policies will include cover away from home often with no increase in premium. (Ed.)

Our Website and Email

Our website URL is

http://icenicomputerclub.org.uk

Email to: iceni@woolridge.org.uk

I am open to suggestions on what people would like to have included in the website. If anyone would like a copy of the CD of our old newsletters this could be arranged.