Getting There

I've had a bit of a dream for a while.
I've always wanted to build a hardware random number generator.

It's easy to create random numbers on my computer but they are pseudo random and that's never quite been good enough. A while ago I saw a Raspberry Pi project that had a thermal printer as one of its components. I thought it was a good idea to get a print out of the numbers without having to waste a whole sheet of A4. I've been testing a thermal printer tonight and as you can see it performs well.
In a few weeks when my hardware TRNG USB key arrives I'll build a desktop Raspberry Pi to attach the USB key and thermal printer to.
I'll then have my own hardware TRNG to mess about with.
Exciting times ahead.

Adventures In Digital

This is the Radioddity / Baofeng RD-5R.
I've been after one for a while. Not that I don't have enough radios but this one is digital. Up until now everything has been analogue with the exception of an old SDR running on SDR# years ago and that was receive only.
Things have come full circle. It was trying to update SDR# that virused my Windows PC and that's what got me into Linux. This radio, at the moment, has to be programmed on Windows so I've bought a laptop to do just that.
I've learned a lot about digital radio (DMR) over the last week. One thing I didn't know is that I need a digital ID. I've already sent an email to get hold of that. I think I can just about program the radio. The digital set up it a little more complicated than analogue. I have to get contacts, talkgroups and colour codes into the right places so that my codeplug will work. New words for a new adventure.
To be honest I just want a DMR to listen to the digital simplex channels that bounce around town. I imagine that by the time I've got all the right frequencies dialed in I'll find that they're all encrypted.
Such is life.