A few years ago I built js8-cli, a small Node.js command line wrapper for JS8Call – the amateur radio digital mode software that lets you send free-form text messages over HF radio using a variant of the FT8 protocol. It sits on top of another project of mine, lib-js8call, and the whole point was simple: pipe text into JS8Call from the command line, so you can script it, automate it, and bolt it onto whatever else you’re building. Weather stations, telemetry, “on air” lights – that sort of thing.
It’s the kind of project that gets a handful of downloads a year, quietly does its job, and doesn’t expect much attention. So it was a genuinely nice surprise to find it cited in a peer-reviewed academic paper.
Continue reading “When a Side Project Ends Up in a Scientific Paper”