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  • The Data Slayer channel on Youtube made an interesting video about this recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vbl5FL-nsI
    by rambambram
  • On the etymology of the name of the project, see Greek mythology:

    > 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:

    * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(mythology)

    by throw0101c
  • There's an existing HF service called SailMail.[1] This is email for sailboats over HF. There are about 20 fixed stations around the world maintained by the organization. Cost is $275 per vessel per year. You can use 90 minutes of connect time per week. All it does is email over the HF links. There are now some satellite options which interoperate with it, but it predates those. There's very little infrastructure; the boat-side equipment is an SSB transceiver, and the shore stations are quite modest.

    It was set up by Stan Honey, who invented car navigation systems (Etak) and the thing that puts the yellow line on TV views of football fields (Sportsvision). He's into long-distance sailing, and wanted some basic comms that would work on most of the world's oceans.

    It's not that advanced technically. It just works.

    [1] https://sailmail.com/

    by Animats
  • Hi, I'm an actual licensed ham radio operator.

    'Encryption' in the ham space is defined as intentionally obscuring a message. Encoding data in a format is an extremely common practice. As long as the intent isn't to actually obscure your message, pretty much any digital format you can dream up is fine. The main method of email over HF, WinLink, is proprietary so IMO they don't even comply, but the FCC hasn't done anything so apparently it's fine.

    Enforcement in this space looks like hams reporting bad behavior to the FCC, and if the FCC decides to enforce they send a nasty letter, escalating until the offender's license gets revoked if they don't stop.

    This specific project is very cool. There's a lot of amateur radio emergency communications groups (EmComm) who use WinLink heavily, and IMO it would be better to use something open source.

    All the more reason to get my sBitx set up and play around with this.

    by SamBorick
  • > Why did you build in encryption that amateur-radio regulations in many countries don’t allow?

    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).

    by BlackRabbit1
  • 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.

    by j_not_j
  • 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...

    by mesh
  • 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/

    by wmchen

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