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Goodwatch – A Ham Radio Wristwatch (2020)

kk4vcz.com

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Re: Goodwatch – A Ham Radio Wristwatch (2020)

#11

Post by wkat4242 »

the_plus_one wrote: post #4

I bumped into kk4vcz at Defcon in 2021. I was standing around, looking clueless, and playing with my Baofeng near the ham radio village. He approached me and asked if I could transmit on a particular frequency to help test his watch. I said something along the lines of "oh that's really cool, I've read that guy's blog and follow him on Twitter." He said something along the lines of "yeah, that's me." He even gave me…

He's also a hero of the MD380/390 mods and I believe also DMR access point boards and software. Great guy

Re: Goodwatch – A Ham Radio Wristwatch (2020)

#13

Post by fsagx »

ianburrell wrote: post #7
api wrote: post #3

What's Ham radio like these days? My grandfather was a ham and I have fond memories of him teaching me about radio waves (and early computer programming!) as a kid in his den. I still remember that he was W4LMU, and searching on it finds this: https://www.qsl.net/kq4pl/skeys.htm His gear was huge, still used vacuum tubes (already retro in the 1980s but he was a Ham), and consumed enough power to run a small neighborh…

One big thing recently is POTA and SOTA where people go to parks and mountain summits to make contacts. The latter requires small radio, putting up your own antennas, and using Morse code. People talking on the radio is sort of dead. HF is still popular. There is FT8 digital mode that let's make contact with low signal. I've reached Australia, Chile, and Russia from west coast. There is a lot of hacking, but it doesn…

> People talking on the radio is sort of dead

In my area, we used to have quite a bit of traffic on one 2m repeater, mostly around morning and afternoon commute times. We had a retired police officer who seemed to spend most of the day chatting. He went away, and most of the chatter went away with him. I would guess all the guys who used to talk while in their cars are still out there, but no one is getting the conversation ball rolling like he used to.

Re: Goodwatch – A Ham Radio Wristwatch (2020)

#14

Post by DakotaR »

ianburrell wrote: post #7
api wrote: post #3

What's Ham radio like these days? My grandfather was a ham and I have fond memories of him teaching me about radio waves (and early computer programming!) as a kid in his den. I still remember that he was W4LMU, and searching on it finds this: https://www.qsl.net/kq4pl/skeys.htm His gear was huge, still used vacuum tubes (already retro in the 1980s but he was a Ham), and consumed enough power to run a small neighborh…

One big thing recently is POTA and SOTA where people go to parks and mountain summits to make contacts. The latter requires small radio, putting up your own antennas, and using Morse code. People talking on the radio is sort of dead. HF is still popular. There is FT8 digital mode that let's make contact with low signal. I've reached Australia, Chile, and Russia from west coast. There is a lot of hacking, but it doesn…

Somewhat disagree, it depends on the club. For example, I've experienced a lot more conversation on the W3OK repeater vs the W4MLB repeaters

Re: Goodwatch – A Ham Radio Wristwatch (2020)

#15

Post by yock »

api wrote: post #3

What's Ham radio like these days? My grandfather was a ham and I have fond memories of him teaching me about radio waves (and early computer programming!) as a kid in his den. I still remember that he was W4LMU, and searching on it finds this: https://www.qsl.net/kq4pl/skeys.htm His gear was huge, still used vacuum tubes (already retro in the 1980s but he was a Ham), and consumed enough power to run a small neighborh…

It's good to go into radio with an idea of what you want to do with it, then find a community of hams who enjoy doing that. People chase distant contacts, they practice emergency communications, they run low-power stations from remote locations, and many more kinds of activities.

Mike - KE8ATC

Re: Goodwatch – A Ham Radio Wristwatch (2020)

#18

Post by robxorb »

Are there limits on what can be done in a wristwatch? I mean in terms of RF reception? Like, is it possible in such small sizes to receive any frequency, or is there certain limits, say based on heat, or necessary component footprint or other constraints?

Re: Goodwatch – A Ham Radio Wristwatch (2020)

#19

Post by _Microft »

supportengineer wrote: post #12

How does one create a circuit board tiny enough to fit inside an existing wristwatch? I didn't see any photos of the circuit board.

This seems to be the replacement board shown here: https://github.com/travisgoodspeed/goodwatch/wiki/GoodWatch3...

Re: Goodwatch – A Ham Radio Wristwatch (2020)

#20

Post by itomato »

api wrote: post #3

What's Ham radio like these days? My grandfather was a ham and I have fond memories of him teaching me about radio waves (and early computer programming!) as a kid in his den. I still remember that he was W4LMU, and searching on it finds this: https://www.qsl.net/kq4pl/skeys.htm His gear was huge, still used vacuum tubes (already retro in the 1980s but he was a Ham), and consumed enough power to run a small neighborh…

You don't need a license to explore and have fun.

Cheap, firmware hackable HTs are hawt, in particular the Quansheng UV-K5,K6.

Tons of SDR receivers out there to explore, and many extremely exiting transceiver projects out there also. Just so much:

https://github.com/jopohl/urh

http://websdr.org/

http://kiwisdr.com/public/

https://meshtastic.org/docs/hardware/devices/

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