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Turn your Android phone into a modern ham radio transceiver

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Re: Turn your Android phone into a modern ham radio transceiver

#71

Post by quesera »

capitainenemo wrote: post #67
b112 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like virtually everyone did, with phone books?

Well, for white pages, it used to be name to phone number lookup, not, you know, physical address, in almost all cases. Yellow pages were different ofc. And the tide against that turned 20 years ago, which congress banned that for cellphones. In any case, sounds like "yes". Not a deal breaker, but concerning. I know folks in my home would be opposed to my doing it.

> not, you know, physical address

White pages had physical address too.

In practice, even today without published phone directories, lookup from name to address is readily accomplished from public records.

If you have put in the effort to avoid all of those vectors, then it's equally possible to use a safe address for your FCC registration.

Re: Turn your Android phone into a modern ham radio transceiver

#72

Post by radicality »

lormayna wrote: post #4

I always ask myself why no any cellphone producer is making a phone with 2m/70cm capabilities.

I recently dug up my old iPod Nano 5th gen (small square one) from 2010 and charged it up, and still works fine.

What I forgot, and it totally surprised me, is that it has FM radio! I selected some stations and it worked great. And that Nano was tiny, would be cool to have this feature back in current iPhones / Apple Watches. I know it’s not the same as having full tx/rx on the 2m/70cm bands, but still, even just just listening to normal radio on iPhone would be cool.

Re: Turn your Android phone into a modern ham radio transceiver

#73

Post by drmpeg »

This is a wacky idea, but the "modern" thing to do would be to repurpose seldom used 2-meter repeaters and make them 5G gNBs in the 3300 to 3450 MHz ham band (which overlaps NR band 78). Then you could directly use your cell phone (with a different SIM card) as your ham radio.

Network gaming servers to the gNBs and every kid in the US will want a ham license.

https://github.com/srsran/srsran_project

Re: Turn your Android phone into a modern ham radio transceiver

#74

Post by anyfoo »

drmpeg wrote: post #73

This is a wacky idea, but the "modern" thing to do would be to repurpose seldom used 2-meter repeaters and make them 5G gNBs in the 3300 to 3450 MHz ham band (which overlaps NR band 78). Then you could directly use your cell phone (with a different SIM card) as your ham radio. Network gaming servers to the gNBs and every kid in the US will want a ham license. https://github.com/srsran/srsran_project

How do you "repurpose" a 2m repeater for that?

Re: Turn your Android phone into a modern ham radio transceiver

#75

Post by anyfoo »

radicality wrote: post #72
lormayna wrote: post #4

I always ask myself why no any cellphone producer is making a phone with 2m/70cm capabilities.

I recently dug up my old iPod Nano 5th gen (small square one) from 2010 and charged it up, and still works fine. What I forgot, and it totally surprised me, is that it has FM radio! I selected some stations and it worked great. And that Nano was tiny, would be cool to have this feature back in current iPhones / Apple Watches. I know it’s not the same as having full tx/rx on the 2m/70cm bands, but still, even just jus…

I remember that my HTC Desire Z Android phone, and possible also the iteration of a Nexus Android phone that I later owned, had FM Radio. It was relatively common back then, and I made use of it almost every day on my bike commute and such.

They used the (wired) earphones plugged into them as an FM antenna, worked well enough.

Re: Turn your Android phone into a modern ham radio transceiver

#76

Post by drmpeg »

anyfoo wrote: post #74
drmpeg wrote: post #73

This is a wacky idea, but the "modern" thing to do would be to repurpose seldom used 2-meter repeaters and make them 5G gNBs in the 3300 to 3450 MHz ham band (which overlaps NR band 78). Then you could directly use your cell phone (with a different SIM card) as your ham radio. Network gaming servers to the gNBs and every kid in the US will want a ham license. https://github.com/srsran/srsran_project

How do you "repurpose" a 2m repeater for that?

Swap out all the RF hardware. It's the high level site that matters.

Re: Turn your Android phone into a modern ham radio transceiver

#77

Post by anyfoo »

ianburrell wrote: post #65
lormayna wrote: post #4

I always ask myself why no any cellphone producer is making a phone with 2m/70cm capabilities.

They exist but they are no-name brands. The phone is crappy, the radio is crappy, and the combo is a big brick. It would be awkward phone with antenna sticking out. The question is why don't handheld radios have Bluetooth and USB-C data (some have USB-C power).

The common workaround for FM radio was to use the wired earphones plugged into the phone as an antenna. But FM radio is usually extremely, unbelievably strong (a lot of hams know that), so YMMV for other bands with much lower power signals.

Re: Turn your Android phone into a modern ham radio transceiver

#78

Post by luqtas »

londons_explore wrote: post #45

> The radio simply plugs into the USB C port on your Android smartphone and transforms it into a fully-fledged handheld radio transceiver. When I saw the headline I was hoping someone had hacked the qualcomm modem and turned it into a software defined radio.

but then it's not a click bait

Re: Turn your Android phone into a modern ham radio transceiver

#79

Post by anyfoo »

lormayna wrote: post #4

I always ask myself why no any cellphone producer is making a phone with 2m/70cm capabilities.

I know very little about antenna technology, but physics might play a role. 2m/70cm is pretty far away from the few-cm-wavelengths of somewhat modern cellphones (70cm a bit less so). For FM radio, the common workaround was to use the cable of plugged in wired earphones as antenna, but I don't know how well that would work for bands where the transmitters aren't as unbelievably strong as they are for FM radio.

And then there's of course the fact that almost nobody is asking for that, so the engineering and maintenance effort behind it would be insane in comparison.

Re: Turn your Android phone into a modern ham radio transceiver

#80

Post by anyfoo »

sliken wrote: post #13
jrockway wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the whole point of having a ham license is the permission to build and use your own equipment. The compromise vs "buy some spectrum for 8 trillion dollars" is that you can't use ham radio for commercial (or musical) purposes.

Heh, ask 10 hams what the whole point of a ham license is and you'll get 10 different answers. I've heard "permission to build" before, but rarely.

Don't have my license yet, but for me it's definitely building homebrew (i.e. designed by me) transceivers. Not actually that interested in talking to other hams except for then testing my gear.
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