hyperactive radios

what do nerds do when they party!?

…well, if you're my sort of nerd, you build some shit together and then play with it. i figured this project should have a page, but i'll be intentionally terse. these were built for a recurring party/event/jam/creative meeting-of-the-minds, so there will be more updates as the years progress.

2026 (year 1)

we, for the first time, ran a small radio station (1 W envelope power, 902–928 MHz ism band, 915 MHz center frequency) — fully custom programming, fully almost fully. fully as in "we didn't build the most basic blocks ourselves, but kiran fabbed a board, i built custom enclosures, and we wrote bespoke firmware for the whole thing." custom hardware, a bunch of weirdos on the mic. transmission through walls wasn't great, so we'll probably drop the frequency next year (or, at the very least, change chips).

'twas a grand success. mochee and mike's programming (and everyone else's who came on during the event) was spectacular; wouldn't have been the same without it. ;)

a brown radio with two speakers and a sculpted handle
the standard parametric radio design, resizeable for whatever speakers are on hand.
a conch shell connected by twisted wires to a radio PCB
one of the one-off radios: a 3d-printed conch shell with a custom compression driver. model for the shell is here.