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Turn your Android phone into a modern ham radio transceiver

kv4p.com

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

#141

Post by ifyoubuildit »

caseyy wrote: post #139
0xEF wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> soldering skills It's...not that hard. Unless we're dealing with SMDs, soldering takes about a weekend to learn correctly. Most DIY kits involve through-hole components that you can master after you take a cheap iron to a couple dozen header pins or something equally banal. SMDs, on the other hand, take a bit more finesse, but can be achieved with a wee bit of time and patience. I work in industrial controls and it…

It’s not necessarily about how hard it is, but what’s the ROI on learning a skill. If soldering was something I did at work or if I often repaired my own electronics, then it could even be worth learning it if it took a month of evenings. But as I’d not have many of the tools and schematics to do component level repair on today’s electronics and I almost never need to solder anything at my software engineering job, s…

Respectfully, you're over thinking it. In the time you took to write this post (what was the ROI on that?), you could have soldered your first thing. Unless you're really not interested, you should just do it.

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

#142

Post by esrauch »

0xEF wrote: post #120
caseyy wrote: post #117

I wish this was for sale assembled. I know probably about 50% about printing PCBs compared to what I’d need to know, don’t have a 3D printer, and I expect that the firmware and apps probably have at least one or two quirks to take into account. All together, this makes it a big difference in accessibility between being able to buy an assembled item and tinkering oneself. I know tinkering is fun for many people, but h…

> soldering skills It's...not that hard. Unless we're dealing with SMDs, soldering takes about a weekend to learn correctly. Most DIY kits involve through-hole components that you can master after you take a cheap iron to a couple dozen header pins or something equally banal. SMDs, on the other hand, take a bit more finesse, but can be achieved with a wee bit of time and patience. I work in industrial controls and it…

I think a relevant gap you may be underestimating is "if you finish your solder job and it just doesn't work, what now"?

Just getting some melted metal onto a thing is really ~none of the skill cap that makes it "scary", when it inevitably doesn't work, the skill involved in debugging it, fixing the issue (desoldering), identifying if you fried other small cheap components that may need to be replaced, that's really the part that makes soldering a scary skill.

FWIW I think this is an example of a broader class of "being a beginner is much harder than knowledgeable people think"; if you're skilled then you also actually don't make nearly as many basic mistakes to begin including the connection being bad, accidentally shorting, wrong polarity, wrong sized component, and you'll recognize something might be problematic right when it happens. That means you don't even need to do noideadog debugging when a beginner must.

You can probably imagine doing "carefully solder and just fail the project if it still doesn't work at the end" being a strategy that would have a pretty good success rate, when it would actually have a dismal project success rate for an actual beginner.

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

#143

Post by compiler-devel »

caseyy wrote: post #117

I wish this was for sale assembled. I know probably about 50% about printing PCBs compared to what I’d need to know, don’t have a 3D printer, and I expect that the firmware and apps probably have at least one or two quirks to take into account. All together, this makes it a big difference in accessibility between being able to buy an assembled item and tinkering oneself. I know tinkering is fun for many people, but h…

Don’t get discouraged. This is a good opportunity to dabble in each of these areas and this is a project that the author shows will work, so you can follow the recipe. There’s some up-front investment for tools, but you may find it fun and challenging.

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

#144

Post by numpad0 »

teeray wrote: post #81
drmpeg wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You also need a 5G core to make that work. Also probably an IMS to actually provide some services on top of that. You also need to rip out all the encryption for the ham bands.

The real core is giant mess of servers but it's all software, no ternary vacuum tube device is involved. There are few OSS implementations and some even commercial ones that runs on single PC.

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

#145

Post by wkjagt »

Lots of dismissive comments in here, which I don't understand. KV4P did an awesome project that he spent a lot of time and effort on, and then shares it with the community. I think he did a great job, and I am very tempted to build one myself. I've been doing HF only, but this makes me want to start exploring VHF.

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

#146

Post by numpad0 »

wkat4242 wrote: post #114
drmpeg wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But why swap it out then? Just install the new hardware alongside.

just guessing but maybe to handle TDMA + QAM that ham gears don't support?

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

#147

Post by numpad0 »

caseyy wrote: post #117

I wish this was for sale assembled. I know probably about 50% about printing PCBs compared to what I’d need to know, don’t have a 3D printer, and I expect that the firmware and apps probably have at least one or two quirks to take into account. All together, this makes it a big difference in accessibility between being able to buy an assembled item and tinkering oneself. I know tinkering is fun for many people, but h…

You have to get a ham radio license and a callsign to lawfully make bodily contact with a ham radio device. Reading through textbooks and taking tests on a sunday and shaking hands with cellular clones of Gabe Newell and all that.

Allegedly that's easier for some or unbearably gross for some in comparison with soldering.

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

#148

Post by wkat4242 »

numpad0 wrote: post #146
wkat4242 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why swap it out then? Just install the new hardware alongside.

just guessing but maybe to handle TDMA + QAM that ham gears don't support?

I think you misunderstand my point. My point was: If you have to replace everything why not leave the existing repeater up and add all the new hardware as well :) There is no need to take down the 2m unless the location is severely power or space constrained, which is not really the case for most of the high sites I've seen.

Replacing it only makes sense if you could reuse some hardware so you have to choose one or the other (or to invest in buying new). But in this case it will be 100% new so that discussion doesn't come up.

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

#150

Post by olyjohn »

a5c11 wrote: post #126
yownie wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

forgive my ignorance here please, but I've read about APRS on and off for a few years and always wondered what I'd need to just transmit some data that would eventually make it's way to the internet. I recently suggested it to a Ornithologist friend doing back country research in South Afrika too. But why are there no regularly recommended cheap hardware solutions that can do this (and or just hobbyist builds using a…

APRS is actually pretty simple protocol. Data is encoded by modulating tones in a human's hearing spectrum, so if you tuned into the APRS frequency with any-purpose scanner (like most Baofengs), you would hear your childhood if you are old enough to remember 52k modems. The sound wave is easy to decode and encode with software. There are plenty of programs (Linux even has dedicated kernel modules) which turn your sou…

It's even simpler if you have an HT with a Bluetooth KISS TNC. You just pair the radio to an Android device, and run APRSDroid and off you go. No cables or configuration of a PC needed.

The B-tech UV-PRO and VGC VR-N76 just got firmware updates that allow that. So now you can do it with a $180 radio instead of needing to buy a $900 Kenwood.

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