As Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver) has been released two days ago, Osmocom has enabled Binary_Packages builds for this new distribution in both nightly and latest. As a result, you can now use our binary package feeds on this most recent incarnation of Ubuntu just like on the other supported distributions.
This was relatively easy due to the openSUSE Build Service (OBS) immediately adding support for Ubuntu 18.04. so all we had to o is enable it, and fix up some minor failures. Thanks to OBS for making supporting new distributions very easy!
On April 22nd, Osmocom developer Steve Markgraf has released a new Osmocom project called osmo-fl2k during OsmoDevCon2018.
osmo-fl2k allows you to use the DAC contained in Fresco Logic FL2000 USB 3.0 VGA adapters as a SDR transmitter. Rather than rendering video signals to a screen attached to the VGA output, the DAC is used to generate RF signals in base band, possibly relying on the harmonics to achieve signals at much higher frequencies than possible at 165 MS/s in base-band.
The project thus follows the spirit of the earlier rtl-sdr project, which re-uses USB DVB receiver dongles with the RTL2832U chip as SDR receivers. Like-wise, osmo-fl2k creatively re-uses USB 3.0 VGA adaptors as SDR transmitters. The two projects are thus complementary.
Today, OsmoDevCon2018, the annual Osmocom developer meeting concluded. It featured four days of exciting talks and discussions about open source mobile communications, by developers for developers.
The final schedule containing all 41 individual presentations/discussions/workshops of the four days can be found at https://pretalx.sysmocom.de/osmodevcon2018/schedule/
Thanks to c3voc (the CCC Video team), we have audio+video recordings. Almost all presentations (up to speaker discretion) will be released soon. We will publish another news item once the videos are released.
We'd like to extend our thanks to
- the 20 speakers (at 25 attendees, that's 80%!)
- the sponsor sysmocom for organization, covering all lunch + dinner catering as well as some travel funding
- Lime Microsystems for donating 15 LimeSDR-mini to OsmoDevCon 2018 attendees
- c3voc for their video recording
- IN-Berlin for venue hosting (Sat-Mon)
- CCC Berlin for venue hosting (Fri)
Video recordings of the talks will become available step by step at https://media.ccc.de/b/conferences/osmocon/osmodevcon18
OsmoCon (Osmocom Conference) 2018 is the technical conference for Osmocom users, operators and developers!
We are happy to announce the date of OsmoCon 2018. It has been scheduled on October 18 + 19, 2018 and will happen in Berlin, Germany.
For the second time, the Osmocom Conference brings together users, operators and developers of the Osmocom Open Source cellular infrastructure projects, such as OsmoBTS, OsmoBSC, OsmoSGSN, OpenGGSN and others.
Join us for two days of presentations and discussions with the main developers behind Open Source Mobile Communications, as well as commercial and non-profit users of the Osmocom cellular infrastructure software.
You can find some initial information in our wiki at OsmoCon 2018, which will be updated as more information becomes available.
Call for Participation¶
We're also at the same time announcing the Call for Participation and call on everyone with experiences to share around the Osmocom member projects to submit talks, workshops, discussions or other proposals.
We are particularly looking for contributions about:
- updates on features/functionality/status of individual Osmocom projects
- success stories on how Osmocom projects are deployed in practice
- migration from OsmoNITB to the post-NITB architecture
- tutorials / workshops on how to setup / analyze Osmocom projects
- statistics, reporting, operations aspects of Osmocom projects
- third-party open source utilities to be used with Osmocom projects
OsmoDevCon has successfully introduced the (obviously free/open source software) pretalx conference planning system for the schedule planning of the upcoming OsmoDevCon2018 conference.
All participants of OsmoDevCon submitting a talk have been receiving e-mails asking to confirm their respective talks/workshops using a confirmation link to the pretalx website.
We are planning to use pretalx for other upcoming events and would like to extend our thanks to the pretalx developers!
A team of Osmocom volunteers has continued the tradition of operating an experimental test network at the annual Chaos Communication Congress 34C3 held in Leipzig (Germany) from December 27 through December 30, 2017.
You can find some more information about this network at the GSM page in the 34C3 wiki and the report by tsaitgaist as part of the 34C3 infrastructure review (from minute 35 onwards of http://live.dus.c3voc.de/relive//34c3/8911/muxed.mp4)
Osmocom thanks
- Deutsche Telekom for providing us with 3 ARFCN in the 1800 MHz band
- Bundesnetzagentur for providing the experimental license for UMTS in the 850 MHz band
- The team of volunteers working on the setup and operation of the network
The 2018 incarnation of OsmoDevCon, the annual meeting for Osmocom developers has been scheduled for April 20-23, 2018 and will be held at the usual venue at IN-Berlin in Berlin, Germany.
For more information and Registration as well as submitting your talk proposals, see OsmoDevCon2018 and this mailing list thread
Contrary to OsmoDevCon, the date and venue for the user-oriented OsmoCon is still to be determined. It will be expanded from one to two days. Stay tuned for more news soon.
The Outreachy project has selected work on Debian packaging for Osmocom for the Dec 2017 to Mar 2018 Outreachy Interns
You can read the related announcement at the outreachy announce mailing list
Kira "kobr" Obrezkova will be working on this, with Debian developer Thorsten Alteholz as mentor.
Congratulations, Kira! Thanks to Thorsten Alteholz for mentoring as well as to Outreachy and its sponsors!
In Osmocom, we have made tremendous progress during 2016 and 2017 in re-structuring our code base, with a proper 3GPP AoIP interface between BSC and MSC, the split-up of OsmoNITB, the externalization of the HLR and full 3G integration. This has had lots of fall-out in terms of packaging, and it's important to have the new post-NITB architecture packaged properly in upstream Debian.
Outreachy provides three-month internships for people from groups traditionally underrepresented in tech. Interns are paid a stipend of $5,500 and have a $500 travel stipend available to them. Interns work remotely with mentors from Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) communities on projects ranging from programming, user experience, documentation, illustration and graphical design, to data science.
