Uses in Amateur Radio

[Frank_ZL1FMA]

It appears some members of the amateur radio are already excited. The potential for the Pi could only be limited by ones imagination. There are as many of you are aware many of the amateur radio programs are primarily designed for windows. Echolink, SlowScanTV(MSSTV), DigitalTV(Easypal),PSK31(MMVari). All however need a good soundcard, with mike input, linein, lineout, speakers out. It certainly would be interesting to see what could be developed/built on the scale started by the Raspberry Pi experimentation. Obviously the soundcard and software is the biggest hurdle for their use with the Raspberry Pi. Monitor and keyboard (mouse ?) input and output has been solved though I note VGA output does not feature on any model seen. Challenge as always would be initially the cost but I am sure their will be some experimenting amateurs out there, who have a better brain and steadier hands for construction than I and have more time available. My other use for the Raspberry would be suitable software and an USB plug in mini receiver for the new digital shortwave broadcasting DRM. To date such radios or software seem very expensive which again is one of those major challenges we all face in the development stages of any project. Just a few of my thoughts for the future. Be interested to read the feedback generated. Cheers and thankyou. 73.

[Danbert]

I'm planning to use mine for digital voice using Codec2 on V/UHF - the basic outline of my plan is here.

The soundcard problem is fairly easily solved with a pair of £5 USB soundcards (unless you are planning to do SDR in which case you might need one high quality card.) There's also a lot of software for the modes you mentioned - fldigi is my favourite for digimodes.

Dan (MD1CLV)

[scruss]

I'll have to revisit running fldigi on the Raspberry Pi, because it should work. Early attempts were stymied by firmware problems, now fixed. Considering I run my main radio rig from a $4 USB sound card (into a vastly overpriced RIGblaster Pro), I know that a cheap USB audio interface will be fine.

73 de VA3PID

[Krella Krentoshi]

Has anyone tried taking a cheap ham radio (LIke a Baofeung), taking it apart and somehow directly connecting it to a Raspberry Pi to run digital Amateur Radio communications?

[ame]

Has anyone tried taking a cheap ham radio (LIke a Baofeung), taking it apart and somehow directly connecting it to a Raspberry Pi to run digital Amateur Radio communications?

If you ever wonder "Has anyone tried...?", probably the answer is yes, and probably they blogged about it, so Google will help you find it.

For example:
http://www.crompton.com/hamradio/irlp/a ... P7586.html

You can also buy a DRA818V module, which is essentially the guts of an HT.
http://w0anm.com/blog/?p=541

[jwl]

It shouldn't be necessary to take the radio apart in most cases. Just use the microphone / speaker connector on the side.

Here is some open source software that can be used on the Raspberry Pi for Packet Radio / APRS. You will need to add a cheap USB Audio adapter to get audio in and out of the RPi. A GPIO line can be used to activate the transmitter.

https://github.com/wb2osz/direwolf/blob ... /README.md

[mahjongg]

VGA output is easy and cheaply to add using Gerts VGA666 adapter, which uses only resistors and a VGA connector. viewtopic.php?p=657497#p657497
Or you could use a €10 passive HDMI to VGA adapter.

[jamesmonahan]

Hi,

My Friend Tom, M0LTE recently built some APRS trackers using Pi zero W's and bits of other hardware. They were for a large scout hike where we needed to track support vehicles. They worked very well and I believe Tom is now working on an updated version on an arduino. I thought he had posted a blog about the raspberry pi tracker but maybe not. See his blog here about what he has done. Including an IGate: https://m0lte.uk/

Thanks
James_jimjam
2E0JPM