This episode of HamTalk Live is brought to you
by Tower Electronics. For connectors, cables,
and more, call 920 -435 -2973 or visit pl -259
.com. And by ICOM, heard it, worked it, logged
it. Visit www .icomamerica .com slash amateur
for more information about ICOM radios. Here
we go, welcome to Amtopi Calling Let's Stop,
Neil's your guy Amtopi, here we go Hey everyone,
it's time for HamTalk Live. It's episode number
186, Augmented Reality in Contesting, recorded
live on Thursday, October 17th, 2019. I'm your
host, Neil Rapp, WB9VPG. Thanks for tuning in
to another episode of HamTalk Live. Tonight we're
joined by Jerry Ellsworth, AI6TK. and Amy Herndon
AI6ZU and we'll take your calls live in just
a few minutes. Last week Bill Stearns in E4RD
and Christian Kudnick K0STH were here to talk
about some of the October special events, specifically
Jamboree on the Air, the 100 watts and a wire
fallout, and School Club Roundup. So if you missed
that show you can listen anytime at HamTalkLive
.com or on your favorite podcast app or on YouTube
or you can catch the re -broadcast on WTWW 5085
a .m. Saturday evenings at about 630 p .m. Eastern
Time. Well get your questions ready to go for
Jerry and Amy. We'll be talking about augmented
reality tonight. the connection to amateur radio
and if you're listening to us live on Thursday
night You can give us a call after we talk a
little bit. We have a short interview But that
telephone number, let me go ahead and give that
to you So you can write it down and have it ready
to go or type it in it's eight one two net ham
one eight one two six three eight 4261. You can
also tweet us. In fact, we've got a couple of
tweets already. Our Twitter handle is at HamTalk
Live, so we'll be watching that throughout the
night as well. So we hope that you will ask your
questions here live with Jerry and Amy right
after this word from iCom America right here
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wire, a potato gun, and an idea. Ham Talk Live.
Thanks to Icom America for sponsoring the show
again tonight. Be sure you check out all their
great radios and accessories at icomamerica .com
slash amateur. Tonight our guests are Jerry Ellsworth,
AI6TK. She was born in Georgia and raised in
Oregon, and Jerry taught herself to program on
a Commodore 64 and never looked back. She entered
the computer business and has worked on many
projects revolving around computers and computer
gaming. Lifehacker named her as a modern -day
MacGyver because of her ability to hack a variety
of technologies, often with surplus or repurposed
pieces. She created her own chip building production
lab at home and has been working on augmented
reality. in the past few years and her latest
Kickstarter campaign has raised over one million
dollars. to build augmented reality systems at
Tilt -5. Amy Herndon, AI6ZU, is a prototyping
engineer and office manager at Tilt -5. Amy refers
to herself as the Swiss Army Knife on her LinkedIn
page. She jumps in and does whatever's needed.
She has a wide variety of abilities and is putting
those skills to use with Jerry dealing with everything
from scheduling to building prototypes and jigs.
She's been a builder for most of her life and
her interest in electronics also brought her
into ham radio and she has a solid collection
of HF rigs and likes to build antennas and it's
been great to talk with you both a little bit
tonight and I know things are busy but thanks
for taking time out to Talk to us a little bit
about your project and how it relates to Ham
Radio. So, Jerry and Amy, welcome to HamTalk
Live. Thanks for having us. Yeah, it's an honor.
Well, I have heard all about this Kickstarter
campaign for the augmented reality headsets and
that's gone really well. So, before we get into
the connection with Ham Radio, give us the latest
update on your project. Well, this project has
been going for quite a few years now. I've been
working in this space for seven or eight years.
I started off at a software company in Seattle
called Valve Software that hired me to research
how to make games more fun and bring everyone
from the grandparents all the way down to the
grandkids together to play games. Ultimately
they moved into virtual reality which is a different
type of technology that removes you from the
world and puts you into this whole synthetic
world which I wasn't a big fan of and so I started
a company to do augmented reality that keeps
you in the world but gives you, augmentation
gives you 3D elements in the world. It's been
a lot of work. It's not easy to introduce an
emerging piece of technology that has so much
potential impact on the world. We honestly believe
that in the next 20 years, this type of technology
will start to replace our phones, our computers,
it'll be our interface to everything in our life.
And so the system's just glass as you slip on
in these 3D game characters or 3D objects can
just spring out of your table. So talking about
an emerging market, you have to get creative
about funding activities like this. So we chose
to go to Kickstarter, which is a crowdfunding
website that allows individuals like your listeners
to participate at whatever level they want. We
have some folks that are just pitching in a few
dollars to that just want to see this technology
live and then we have backing tiers that let
people actually get the headset that they can
use themselves and We've been going for 20 days
out of a month long campaign about I think so
ready me yeah around that yeah, and I think we're
approaching 1 .4 million dollars and we crossed
through The break -even point where we could
actually build the headsets and probably not
go bankrupt But we made no money. Yeah, that
was that was within 17 hours We're at 1 .4. We
might make a nickel In hardware you have to sell
a lot of units to just make any money and so
We're still looking for folks to help us out
and that are interested in being on the cutting
edge of this technology and You know help us
just keep the lights on and in the office and
keep food on the employees tables and And bring
this awesome. Yeah thing that we've invented
out into the world Well, I know you know we've
been talking you've been getting calls in the
middle of the night and not a whole lot of sleep
and quite a ride. So hopefully that comes in
and you're, like you said, you've got food on
the table and you can keep going and keep working
on this great project and really appreciate your
efforts in getting all of this going because
It's got a lot of promise to it and we're really
excited to hear about it tonight. Well, at Visalia,
you had some very interesting ideas on ways to
incorporate this augmented and virtual reality
technology into contesting. So let's talk a little
bit about bringing these two worlds together.
You've got augmented reality and you've got ham
radio contesting. How are these going to work
together? Well, I just want to mention one thing
before we go into that. I just was recalling
back to all of my Elmer's and ham radio mentors
when I was a kid around 1985 or so. And it was
amazing. I lived in this small town where there
were very few people that had computers. But
all the ham radio operators were on the cutting
edge and had computers. And I think that's the
really cool thing about ham radio operators.
They're always adventurous. They're always trying
to be ahead of the curve when it comes to technology
and communication. And this is a piece of technology
that's coming. and it's going to open up a lot
of possibilities for radio communication and
we're excited about what's possible in the form
of augmentation for contesting or just general
communications alone. But for one of the, at
Visalia I brought a very early prototype and
I put together a simulation of what it might
look like if you had a four square antenna with
four receivers and you did just a little bit
of math on the signals that you're receiving
on these four antennas and I showed Right on
the table. You saw a little house. It was in
3d You could actually reach out and it just looked
like you could touch it right next to the house
You saw the four antennas sticking up right out
of the table just like miniature version and
all around the antenna You could see cascading
in the signal strength from different signals
What's interesting about augmented reality is
because you get that extra depth to it and this
extra interaction You can actually reach in and
select things with your hands or with an object.
It gives you more information simultaneously
and so on this demo I put together you could
actually see the heading in which The signal
was coming in which antenna you would want to
select or where you want to point your antenna
It's very hard to actually see that kind of thing
on a 2d screen because you could see amplitude
poking up out of the waterfall that was coming
cascading in towards the antennas and you could
see the heading in which direction it was coming.
So you can imagine in contesting, you know, if
you're wanting to reach a certain part of the
world, you could actually take a look at, you
know, you can have your transceiver off to the
side and you can have your tilt five. Matt off
to the side and you could take a look at how
your antenna is performing and you can turn your
antenna you can see how your signal is getting
out in 3d and then actually like figure out if
you're aimed in the right direction if you're
heading towards that area of the world that you
want to pick up and You know, I could just imagine
it take it from there. It can make it so much
so much easier to actually see that when we were
talking last night With the folks on ham nation.
We're saying like you can imagine something like
a Google Earth where you can see the whole kind
of globe in front of you. You can spin it with
your hand and you can see how your signal strength
is getting out across the globe. And then how
neat would that be if the person that you just
connected with also had that ability and you
could actually reach in and kind of interact
with each other in real time while you're making
that connection? Yeah, so we have the ability
to track objects and hands and we have a wand,
a magic wand that you can use to select things.
A unique feature of our system is you can actually,
you know, our system is based on this game board
that you open up and that's where all the images
show up. You can actually take your game board
sitting on your table, link it up to somebody
else's game board across the world and you have
this shared 3D space. So imagine hooking our
system up to the spotting networks. You make
a contact, then automatically you could see this
3D world. pop up and you can see exactly where
they are. It could load up Google Maps with 3D
view of the terrain, the location where you're
actually... Yeah, if they have a big tower there,
you could actually maybe see their tower, which
would be pretty cool. And maybe see the signal
strength coming off of their tower as well. That
would be pretty interesting. But then you could
take it to another level as well. So once you've
like... made your contact, you could actually
link your game boards together and have communication
over the internet where you could potentially
share 3D models. So our glasses have the ability
that you could digitize objects. So I don't know,
you get the new ICOM 7610 and you walk around
it and you digitize it into 3D and then you can
link up to your new friend you made and send
them a 3D model. And you'd be like, well, here's
where the cat port is on my new hot icon rig.
And we also, you know, I should clarify, like
a lot of this is like super early. There's got
to be like clever ham radio programmers that,
you know, are going to take on these challenges
and making the software tools like, you know,
the Joe Taylors and folks out there. And of course,
we're interested in that ourselves and we're
kind of poking it as well. But Yeah, we're just
talking basically about like this is the future
what it could be like There's a lot of interesting
things so You were talking earlier about you're
working with your school, and they're having
antenna problems One thing that I started working
on it's not complete yet is I wanted to pull
in NEC Antenna simulations and be able to build
complex antennas in 3d so you would use the magic
wand to drag in, in real time, drag in antenna
elements and move them around and constantly
be calculating the antenna. Gosh, I'm having
trouble to not enough sleep. Radiation patterns
as you move elements in real time and you could
just lean in to your table and you look at this
miniature version of your antenna and you can
actually see how moving these elements is changing
and also you could bring in Google Earth like
the terrain map and you could see like how the
terrain is going to affect your antenna and you
could set up like well I know we have high iron
content you could use the magic wand to paint
iron on the ground or I know the roof of my school
it has metal so I'm going to put aluminum on
the top of this and you can model your house
And you can see how these complex interactions
actually work in a very intuitive way that's
really hard on a 2D screen, but absolutely trivial
on a 3D screen. Well, it sounds like there's
endless possibilities and it sounds like we've
come a long way from playing GORF on a Commodore
64. Yep, yep, yep. And then there's a new...
We were just speculating last night about new
communication methods. Like we have slow scan
TV. We have fast scan TV. Why don't we have slow
scan 3D models? Like you just send out a 3D model
into the ether and people receive it and then
all the geometry gets recreated on your projection,
your game board right there in front of you.
So you could send a 3D scan of your ham shack
or your new rig or your new antenna design and
actually send the 3D models over the airwaves.
It could be a very interesting new way to communicate.
I like it. So how soon do you think this technology
is going to be available to start working on
these projects and when do you think that maybe
the connection to ham radio and the software
to do all of that will happen? What's your idea?
What's your guess? Well, if Jerry has her way,
it'll start happening. She's been meaning to
play around with her ICOM 7610. Well, I already
hooked it up, too. Yeah, she had it hooked up
and ready to go last week. Yeah, I had a 3D waterfall
hooked up to the 7610. Nice. It was really, really
nice. I have all kinds of ideas of stuff that
I want to do around that. This is actually something
probably very relevant to contesting. So I want
to have a 3D waterfall cascading away from me
on the table so I can see all the elevation of
the amplitude and I can just get in and kind
of see the signals. And what's interesting is
you can see more as code and you pretty much
can read the dots and dashes and spaces in the
waterfall. But I also want to record the entire
spectrum in time and save like a buffer. of,
I don't know, maybe 30 seconds into the past.
And I want to be able to reach in with my hand
and grab the waterfall and drag it backwards
and then be able to scrub it back and forth and
scroll it really slow. Like, what was it? Was
that a did or a da? Like, let me listen to that
a couple times. And I believe that when you start
to put those kinds of direct interactions with
the raw data that... Normally you have to use
buttons and knobs and stuff to manipulate. You
could actually just reach in, grab the audio,
re -listen to it, move it through at different
speeds until you pull out that call sign that
you missed, and then you can just give it a fling,
fling it back to the current time. To real time.
To real time. So that could be huge for contesting.
No more busted calls. Yeah, that's right. Just
listen to it over and over again So in terms
of like in terms of our hardware Some of our
early kits are actually going to start going
out in February of next year Folks can actually
start developing for it now if they want to they
don't actually have to have the the glasses or
our SDK in hand to actually start developing
for it we're actually going to be coming up with
some widgets that they can use and Our SDK works
with Unity and Unreal Engine, so whichever kind
of game engine somebody's using to do these types
of interactions, they can just take the widget
package, toss it into their project in Unity,
and get up and running before they even have
glasses. Our main shipment of glasses, the primary
shipment for the... less brave souls, like we
have it split into two levels. There's like the
super brave people that want to be very early
and deal with bugs and report bugs to us. And
then June, July, and we're moving into August
shipments now, we've been filling up all of our
shipment slots, is when the little bit more polished
version, we're not guaranteeing zero bugs, but
something that comes with games, comes with applications,
is gonna be ready. Now when do the ham radio
applications come? Well I think it's going to
evolve over time and they're going to start out
pretty simple. Certainly I'll take all my experiments
with waterfalls and multiple antenna signal strength
and just kind of put it out there into the public
domain. But once these are in the hands of clever
ham radio operators that want to be cutting edge
and explore this, we'll start to see the new
the new things, like the FT8, a 3D model, slow
scan, whatever. That's when it's going to get
really exciting. Yeah, what exactly do you anticipate
or expect the contesting community to put this
technology into use and run with it? What do
you think? People are probably going to get mad
at me for saying this. I didn't mean for that
to be a loaded question there. No, I think it's
hilarious. I'm relatively new. Amy and I are
both relatively new to the ham space. We come
in with all this piss and vinegar and excitement
about it and we go charging in like, wouldn't
it be great with all of this new technology?
Of course, there's always a segment of ham radios.
I've had my monochrome. You know, screen. You're
going to have to pry those tubes out of my cold,
dead hand. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. And I know there's
some of your listeners that are just railing
against this, and it's okay. FTA is going to
kill radio. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's okay. You
know, we're not going to replace contesting.
You can still use your paper logs if you want.
But I think there's going to open up, like, a
lot of interesting things. There's going to be
tools that are going to make Contesting more
efficient is one thing. And what I'm excited
about is I think there's going to be opportunities
to have more gamified versions of contesting.
Maybe, you know, there's lots of sprints out
there which are really fun. You go do a little
sprint and it's super casual. I think that there's
going to be more opportunities to have kind of
instant contests, maybe even contests that You
know, people that are using this cutting edge
technology can just log into a public lobby on
the internet, come up with their own rules, broadcast
it to the world. A certain number of people will
just jump on and for like an hour in the mid
afternoon, you know, it's slow scan 3D model
contest and whoever can receive the most 3D scans
of tulips. wins, right? And I think it can be
really fun and combine that with real -time scoring
so you can see how you're doing. Like right there
on your table you could see your ranking just
scrolling by. Maybe it's a vertical bar graph
like extending out of the table with all the
rest of the contestants. It could be like super
exciting and fun and instant feedback and I mean
Amy and I both have a background in the video
game industry and so we immediately draw like
these parallels and we're like, wow Why do we
have to wait a year to find out how we did in
that contest? Like we should know on the the
minute like how how we're doing instantaneous
real -time scoring yeah yeah i think that's coming
and i think that's also a way to get some of
the uh... the younger generation more excited
about uh... getting involved with ham radio as
well definitely put kids into our system you
could be showing them the most boring uh... education
module about you know we have examples of like
the intestine not the most exciting thing in
the world but kids are like wow combined this
radio you're gonna have kids lined up you know
20 deep to get on the system and and try to to
use it yeah the beauty of it is that you can
any number of people around the board at the
same time and they all get their own their own
view so You could have a bunch of people staring
at that waterfall or how that antenna is propagating
and everything else, and they'll all get to take
a look at it. It worked for me. 1985 or so was
probably when I met my first ham radio operators.
Went to their ham shack. What did I find? Commodore
64s, IBM XTs hooked up doing slow -scan TV, and
they planted the seed. It took me... 25 years
30 years to finally get my license, but they
Just because they were so cutting -edge and it
was so exciting for me, you know It was ingrained
in my brain that yeah Yeah, well you guys were
reading my mind because I'm sitting here, you
know, I work with kids I work with school clubs
and I write about and talk about ways to get
young people involved in ham radio and and Contesting
is one of those things and and we've looked at
you know the the touchscreen radio and how you
know the touchscreen radio interacts better with
the young people because that's the technology
they're familiar with. And you're exactly right.
I think getting this more of a gaming type system
is going to be friendlier to the young people
who are doing those kinds of things already.
And we've talked on this show about the live
online scoreboard and how a lot of the college
level contests and school contests are using
the live scoreboard so that they can see in real
time how they're doing in the contest and I think
that's just going to continue to grow and grow
and then you put this this augmented reality
with it and it's just the possibilities are endless.
Yeah you could imagine like all kinds of ways
that you can gamify it even more if you had say
the 3D globe and you had to try to stack your
multipliers in 3D on the globe, right? So, like,
you find a region and you start stacking them
in a certain order and you can visualize, like,
well, if I contact someone with the letter A
in their call sign first, and then I then stack
someone with a call sign with the letter Z in
it, that... adds a more complicated multiplier.
And now we have this new dimension where we can
start to visualize how all the multipliers stack
together. And we can see in just a glance how
we're doing stacking multipliers in a certain
region. And you don't have to go over to a pen
and paper and start adding stuff up. It's just
a look away from the microphone, look over the
table, and bam, I'm getting all these multipliers
in California. I'm doing really good because
my bar graph is... Getting taller and taller.
Yeah, it's like an inch off the table. That's
great. And I know if I make it to two inches...
I mean, we're 3D. Human beings are 3D. We interact
90 % of the time in 3D. So bringing these interfaces
to radios and computing is just the natural way
to go. Yeah, and I totally agree. Gamifying,
like kids... There's not a kid out there that
doesn't play video games and they find out how
well they did in their online game within a nanosecond.
So if we could even get contesting so they could
get the feedback within a few minutes, that would
be attractive. And I don't care how much the
old timers scold me for saying they'll never
give up their paper logs. Contesting is a preparedness
drill, but it's also kind of a game, right? It's
just a game that's... It feeds that kind of that
nerd desire to collect things, you know You want
to collect as many as you as you can and and
that's that's an inherent desire that that they
use in games as well So, you know myself like
I love playing games like Elder Scrolls Skyrim
and I am I like to to hoard and collect as many
things as I can I got to meet the founder of
Atari a few years ago and we became friends and
at one point he pulled me inside and told me
he's like there's human nature in video games
and we discovered that at Atari and that's why
we were so successful. It's like it's human nature
like you know humans like to put things into
order, humans like to destroy things, humans
like to collect things. If you put a little psychology
into ham radio It could really Attract a lot
of people because they'll just make it that much
more fun. I Totally agree Well, this is so exciting
that we're way over time, so we're going to take
a break and we'll come back and we'll collect
some more points and we'll blow up some asteroids
and play a little missile command or something
when we come back right after this word from
Tower Electronics right here on HamTalk Live.
Hey honey, have you seen the PL -259s anywhere?
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coming to a hand fest near you, or online at
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amateur radio connectors. My, wherever did you
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-259 .com. or call 920 -435 -2973. Do we sell
PL259 connectors? Join the conversation. Give
us a call at 812 -NET -HAM -1. That's 812 -638
-4261. Now, here's more HamTalk Live. Oh yeah.
You're talking ham radio, baby. You're listening
to Ham Talk Live with Neil Rapp. Tower electronics
will be at Greenville, Tennessee this weekend
October 19th the ham fest there November 2nd
and 3rd in Lawrenceville, Georgia November 8th
and 9th Montgomery, Alabama, but you can visit
them anytime you like at PL -259 And HamTalk
Live, you can listen anytime you like at HamTalkLive
.com or we're on the air live every Thursday
night at 9 p .m. Eastern Time. And be sure to
check us out on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
And it's time for your phone calls and your tweets
right now. So if you have a question for Jerry
and Amy, give us a call at 812 -638 -4261. 3
8 4 2 6 1 it spells out 8 1 2 net ham 1 or you
can tweet us at ham talk live and if you're listening
to us on wtww or on the podcast edition we're
not here because it's thursday and we haven't
figured out time travel yet so we can't go back
and call all right well we're going to talk a
little bit about the home chip building lab first
we did have a tweet earlier so want to um scroll
back here and talk about that and and and um
armani uh here uh kf5 tyu um had a question,
and also wanted to give a shout out to the Texas
A &M Amateur Radio Club, W5AC, so we'll slip
that in there. But Armani wants to know, have
you already used Tilt -5 with software -defined
radio, or how could that option be made available?
Well, you've already added on the 7610, right?
Correct, correct. There's quite a few ways, if
you're a programmer and if you are good at that,
you can use these game engines. And so, it's
kind of unfortunate they're called game engines
these days because so many people use them for
professional applications as well. But these
game engines allow you to work in 3D in a very
easy way where you can... put graphics into this
virtual world and you can just place it with
pure measurements. So, for instance, when I did
the waterfall experiment, I just instantiated
3D objects that were slowly moving away from
me in this 3D world and then the way our headset
works is we have this really easy plug -in that
you hook to the game engine and as soon as you
put that into the game engine, the 3D graphics
just shows up. on the table and you can see it
in real time. And so there's a lot of things
you can do with SDRs. We did a demo piece of
software which took air traffic control data,
which came off the internet in that case. And
then we plotted it in 3D space. So you could
see a topographic map of a city and you could
scroll anywhere in the world and see real time
air traffic. over the top of the city. And so
you could see paths of where the airplane had
flown, little lines floating right up, right
in front of your nose in 3D space. You could
see the airplanes and you could walk around the
table and look at your city. You could zoom in
and you could see the different airplanes. You
could use our magic wand to click on the airplanes
and get the beacon data off of it, which was
really interesting. So imagine you could take
your SDR, pull down all that beacon data and
do it in real time just from your own antennas.
Or trains, for instance, have a lot of beacons
on them. You could be tracking trains and then
tracking locations on the table and see it in
3D as a little model railroad, but it's actually
real trains moving around. Satellites. You could
be pulling in all of the 3D data that's coming
down from satellites that are mapping the world.
It's just kind of endless how you can hook it
up to 3D. So Amy, do you have any thoughts? Oh,
that was fantastic. The air traffic control simulation
was really, really fun because you could actually
see the elevations of the airplanes as they were
moving around in the airspace. And so you could
see, you know, when you look at 2D, you can't
really tell if two planes look like they're overlapping
each other. You can't really tell like where
they are in relationship to each other but when
you look at it through our glasses you can actually
see oh that one's like actually flying really
low and the other one's flying really high and
you see them in that three -dimensional space
above each other. I think that's a great example
of you know the efficiency you can have when
you you bring in the third dimension for computer
displays you know 2d screens you know this air
traffic control like you have two dots on top
of each other are they Cliding in into each other
and going to explode or you have to actually
look at these numbers next to him like oh that
one's at a thousand you know meters up and the
other one's a hundred meters up and It's just
at a glance you can know I Mean so this type
of technology is going to be transformative way
outside of games and way outside of even ham
radio It's like the air traffic control of the
future is going to be people sitting with these
glasses on Making the world safer because they're
not going to confuse You know a digit of a number
on two dots on a screen Wow well Troy W9 KVR
has chimed in here and says crazy thought the
geoscientist in him says how about How RF is
propagating through atmospheric layers or meteor
scatter? Yeah, yeah, I mean I'm not an expert
Maybe Amy, you know more about atmospheric like
readings, but yeah, I know there's all kinds
of Beacons that they send out to try to measure
propagation and their satellites looking down
at the atmosphere You could imagine combining
all that data. That's a lot of it's readily available
combining that together to help predict how various
propagation is going to happen. Solar, like Kamathys
Kove could probably help this. Yeah, yeah, and
then aggregate all this data together and you
could have a propagation predictor that's really
intuitive to look at. It's like, oh, there's
an aurora event happening. I'm gonna point my
antenna north. I'm gonna try to do aurora skip,
right? So I think there's a lot of opportunity.
hard to see on a 2D screen and understand all
that data, but you start putting all these layers,
you know, stacked on top of each other, and you
just can appear in and look at it. It's like,
oh, well, tropospheric ducting, like there's
this, you know, used weather satellites, like,
oh, there's these atmospheric, you know, things
going on that would be good for tropospheric
ducting, so. Let's give it a try and gives you
more opportunity to have fun and talk and gives
you more opportunity to have people on the other
side to actually hear you because if you're all,
you know, looking at the same data. Yeah, and
then combine that with the ability to see how
efficiently your own antenna is getting out there
and being able to aim it in the direction that
you need to aim it to be able to do those types
of things. Seeing that in 3D is going to be incredibly
helpful. Yeah, yeah, we're just starting to see
glimmer of this. Both Amy and I do quite a bit
of FTH and think that's quite fun. I think it's
DxMaps. hooks into the spotting network plus
takes all the data off your FT8 rig and shows
you lines on a flat map of where your signal
has been heard. Now imagine combining that into
more of a 3D map and you could have algorithms
in your computer to start to calculate, well,
most likely you're doing some kind of skip off
the atmosphere and that's why you're only seeing
signals in this region of the United States and
then it's bouncing and then going to another
region. Could help you to understand like You
know what's happening with your signal in more
real -time just through these spotting networks
And maybe it'll be encourage people to put more
spotting networks up and we'd have even more
data to work with Again endless possibilities
here, I think Of course I said some great ideas
there too. I have to mention. I mean I'm talking
like When I worked at Valve Software, I like
to say I got to see 20 years into the future.
We're only seven years into what I got to see
through this boot four stuff we did. We're talking
very aspirational. It's going to take a lot of
clever ham radio operators working with these
augmented reality systems to make this happen.
It's not going to happen on day one, but for
you adventurous folks, you can go to our Kickstarter.
It's tilt five on Kickstarter. Just spill it
out. And you can be on the bleeding edge of working
on this stuff. Yeah, and we'll kind of recap
that again here at the end. And if you've got
a few minutes, I don't want to take too much
of your time, but we'll go over a little bit
here if you can stick around for a little bit.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. You have us all night. Oh, no,
we can't do that. But let's squeeze in a few
other things here because, you know, one of the
things that I always hear is, well, you know,
if she started building chips at home in the
garage, you know, she must know what she's doing.
So tell us a little bit about how that all went.
Oh, so I worked for many years as a chip designer.
And so as a chip designer you sit in front of
a terminal you type a lot on a keyboard and you
use a mouse every once in a while and then you
Send your electronic files off to this chip foundry
somewhere in the world and like this chip comes
back to you in a little plastic package and you
never really Do anything like with the silicon
so I'm like I really want to understand how this
process works, like I want to touch these wafers.
And I have a YouTube channel, Jerry Ellsworth,
if you look me up on YouTube, where I try to
distill down complicated science and do it at
home in the garage. So all kinds of optic stuff,
laser things, sometimes I'll do art projects.
Mag loop, for the people that are gonna call
in and ask about the second video on the mag
loop, someday it'll come. You don't need to call
in. But this is one of those things. It was a
real stretch for me. So I started buying every
book I could on semiconductor process and started
researching. I started off with fairly modern
books where it's like you got to have class one
zillion clean room and you have to have millions
of dollars of equipment to do it. And then I
started looking at books that were much older
and got books from the 70s and the 60s and 50s
and I got really fascinated You know You look
at a book from the 60s. It was not clear how
Integrated circuits were going to come about
there were a lot of crazy ideas that these scientists
were working on and they were doing them pretty
much on Work benches with no clean rooms and
with really simple gear and then very much like
how I got into electronics. I went out and I
looked for mentors that were experts in the area.
So I started talking to some folks that worked
at companies like Fairchild and National Semiconductor
back in the 60s and 70s. And they took me under
their wing and told me a lot about how the process
worked. And then I got on eBay and started buying
surplus gear and trying a bunch of things. And
I bought wafers off of eBay in various places
and started experimenting It took me five years
and I had actually right next to all my gear
I had a mason jar that was completely full of
little pieces of silicon where I'd done experiments
and none of them have worked and it actually
came up to this one point after hundreds or I
Mean maybe even a thousand little experiments
that one of my mentors is like just explained
to me exactly what you're doing just In every
detail and so I go I grow oxide on the wafer.
I etch the wafer I put the diffusion source on
it. So I pre dope it I etch it I patent blah
blah blah and then I etch all of the oxide off
and I put my metal contacts down and He kind
of laughs and he's like, oh, that's such a newbie
mistake Like everyone that back in the day knew
you can't have a PN junction Exposed on the surface
because you have dangling bonds and the electrons
will just jump across the PN junction you need
to leave your oxide layer on and It's like that
one little thing like so I immediately went home
Did a transistor left the oxide on worked perfectly?
Well air quotes perfectly none of my transistors
work perfectly because there's dirt and sodium
in them and all kinds of contamination But it
worked Then I made YouTube videos about it and
then I made a simple little integrated circuit
and ring oscillators and fun stuff like that
But yeah, it was at least five years of research
and I love projects like that. I did another
one like that before transistors came along there
was this magnetic logic which used just toroids
very much like the Chokes that you use the toroids
you use in balance but with special properties
to them and It was going to be the replacement
for vacuum tubes in computers. So I spent years
researching this and I did a video on how magnetic
logic works and that's super satisfying for me.
Wow, incredible. That is just, it's such a maker
-builder thing to do and you're ahead of the
game on that. And it helps me in my career. I
can't tell you how many times when I'm working
on a professional project, even the augmented
reality headset, I did much of the optics. I
would not be prepared for doing this level of
complex optics if I hadn't spent decades building
and experimenting and being super curious. Tie
it back to ham radio. That's what ham radio is
about. Even if it's just making a simple dipole
like having that intuitive feel for how Cutting
wire and putting it together and having these
complex interactions Against the ground like
even with tilt 5 you're not going to be able
to simulate it perfectly you got to get out there
and learn that intuitive feel of like I built
it now it doesn't work why and then Having those
mentors around you and knowing to go find those
mentors Mentoring is one of the critical things
in ham radio and I think it's really Where there's
Starting to be a real push now. It seems like
there's there's a push in that direction and
I hope that that That comes through. Well one
other one to ask. Oh, go ahead One thing if you
don't mind if I like throw this in because I
think I think about this a lot and almost makes
me get teary -eyed when I think about it. So
all of my ham radio mentors took all this time
in the 80s to teach me electronics and they encouraged
me to get into ham radio. They're all silent
keys now. But they don't even know how successful
I became and that they planted, oh god I am getting
teary -eyed, they planted the seed in me. be
a mentor and to Get into ham radio later Yeah,
and I think it's so important for for me and
everyone else to know that you know Sometimes
it doesn't feel like you're succeeding and mentoring
young folks But you're planting that seed and
someday when you're long gone pushing up daisies
You're gonna make a big impact in their life
Well one last thing that I want to ask and I
want to direct this to Amy Because she's the
the self -proclaimed Swiss Army knife here How
do you how do you How do you keep up with her
and how do you go from answering the phone to
building a prototype? So I have kind of a pretty
varied background. I've always been a builder
maker myself my entire life. In fact, I think
I was using most of my dad's tools when I was
a kid more often than he was and he'd always
get mad at me because he'd come into the garage
and wouldn't be able to find his stuff whenever
he needed it because it would be off in the corner
where I was building something. I ended up going
to school for and studying sculpture. And then
from there, what do you do with a BFA when you
get out of college? You either go back and get
a master's in fine arts or you end up doing something
else. Well, I ended up going back and getting
a master's in public administration and then
ended up working for the city of Seattle in arts
administration for about 14 years, doing a lot
of office logistics and stuff like that related
to grants that the office gave out and whatnot.
So I had a very long period of time where I was
doing that kind of office administration and
I still was building stuff on the side and Ended
up meeting the team Jerry's first company that
she started after she left valve ended up meeting
that team and falling in love with what they
were working on and ended up following them down
to the Bay Area and eventually ended up working
with them and being I think the 11th employee
that they brought on board and Everything changed
at that point because I was brought on board
to do stuff that was not office administration
type work I was actually brought on to do calibration
of their early glasses and and from there like
being the maker that I am I started seeing that
there was a need to get my hands and Into things
and start helping the engineers with things I
needed to build fairly rapidly and I have that
background So I just started doing that and eventually
that ended up leading to a full -time job with
the company And so for me, you know I would love
to spend most of my days like building stuff.
That's what I'm truly passionate about. And then
since we're such a small team right now, you
kind of have to wear multiple hats. So I've been
picking up a lot of office work as well, doing
a lot of the logistical coordination for things,
for dealing with manufacturers, for taking care
of Jerry's schedule. And then I'll get a request,
we need to build something really fast, and then
I'll quickly go build something really fast,
and then I'll come right back to doing the other
stuff. So I'm just kind of all over the place.
I'm pretty good at that. And I think it was either
Jerry or one of the other folks in the office
that gave me the name Swiss Army Knife, and it
just sort of stuck. She's being very modest.
Very, very modest. Amy's extremely intelligent.
and tenacious. She's like the hunting badger
around the office. Like you could give her the
task of like these Chinese manufacturers having
problem with this kind of lamination of the game
board. You need to solve it and she'll go find
out like the science behind the adhesives and
like guide them through it and figure out how
to communicate with the factory. Truly, a Swiss
Army knife is a great I actually thrive on this
type of stuff. I'm I'm very much one of these
types of people I think a lot like Jerry as well.
My mind is constantly spinning with ideas and
if I if I have too much downtime I start to get
incredibly bored So having a lot to do kind of
all at once is sort of how I I work the best
Which is like the perfect DNA for a startup,
because startups are not for everyone. It's not
your nine to five job. It's sometimes 20 hours
a day. Our team is extremely small. We have like
five people working on the project. It's incredible
what we've been able to do, but you've got to
constantly hustle because you have to keep the
lights on, you've got to keep everyone fed, you've
got to like... You got to do the promotion, you
got to work with the factory, you got to get
the logistics in place, you got to write all
the software, you got to inspire people. But
on the flip side, it's quite a thrill being on
the cutting edge of new technology and like blazing
a new trail into this way that people are going
to compute in the future. Well, you all have
spent an hour with us and we're very grateful
that you've done that and already getting some
some comments of great show and great information
and so we're really looking forward to seeing
this grow and develop and these new things and
new ideas and how this is all going to play in
and help learning of all kinds. we're especially
looking for the the ham radio options here on
this show, but Before we go remind us again about
the Kickstarter Because yeah, you you got to
keep the lights on and and and the the team feds
here so remind people how they can get involved
with the Kickstarter and How much longer you
have on that campaign So I think we have about
11 days left on the campaign. It's either 10
or 11 days. And people can find us if they go
to Kickstarter and they type in Tilt 5, both
words spelled out, and then look for holographic
tabletop. Gaming they'll be able to find us We're
lucky enough to be one of the the projects that
the Kickstarter stuff loves so that kind of pulls
us to the top Amongst all the mix of everything
that's in there. So we should be pretty easy
to find in there We're also on on Twitter and
we we tweet a lot about the the stuff that we're
doing with the Kickstarter campaign And we've
been announcing a lot of our new partners on
there as well. So people can find us either way
Yeah, and I think if you're if you're if you
just want to see this technology, you know exist,
you know, we're doing something really special
and It's a worthwhile thing to back All right,
well that's how you can help out go to Kickstarter
and look up tilt 5 and and Check all that out.
Okay, any final comments before we go? It's been
an honor. It's been a pleasure Well, it's really
been a pleasure to talk to you and Jerry I I
must have passed you like five times at Dayton
and and I was so busy and you were so busy that
I Never did have a chance to to stop and say
hi. So so I am now but Hopefully we can catch
up in the future Yeah, there's always a date.
So yeah, if you're gonna be a date in this next
year I think we're both gonna try to make it
out there again, and then we're at Pacific on
this weekend So if anyone listening has questions
just look for the redhead and black haired There's
not a lot of women wandering around as much as
men so we should be easy to spot Yeah, feel free
to come up and chat with us. We love chatting
with people All right. Well, there you go. Well,
thank you so much for being on the show and we
look forward to hearing from you again as this
progresses. Thank you so much for having us on.
Thank you. All right. Well, that is a wrap for
this week's edition of HamTalk Live. Thanks to
my guests, Jerry Ellsworth, AI6TK, and Amy Herndon,
AI6ZU, and everybody out there in cyberspace
for listening and typing in tonight. and invite
you back next Thursday night at 9 p .m. Eastern
Time. And for a list of all of our upcoming guests,
just go over to HamTalkLive .com. And if you
like HamTalk Live, please leave us a review.
That helps others find us a little bit faster.
So for now, this is Neil Rapp, WB9VPG, saying
seven three, seven five, and may the good DX
be yours. Thanks for watching!