Turn your Android phone into a modern ham radio transceiver • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by radicality » Wed, Oct 16, 2024, 5:35 AM UTC

pbmonster wrote: post #111

radicality wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> And that Nano was tiny, would be cool to have this feature back in current iPhones / Apple Watches. That iPod used its headphone cables as the radio antenna. There's no easy way around that for a SmartWatch, and most people wouldn't be happy to carry a USB-C antenna dongle around with them for their iPhone. You can of course start doing black RF magic with more compact antenna designs, but that's much more complex…

Ohh right yeah, I remember once reading about the headphone-cable-is-antenna, clever! I guess that’s why we don’t see it anymore in devices, as everyone is using more wireless headphones.

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

#192

Post by radicality » Wed, Oct 16, 2024, 5:39 AM UTC

imp0cat wrote: post #100

radicality wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How's the battery life after so many years? I recently found my old e-reader (Kindle Keyboard) from 2011 and the first thing I had to do was swap a new battery in, the old one would not hold a charge for too long.

I haven’t played with it long enough, need to check again.

I’m also happy and surprised that all my music files are there and that everything works. I haven’t touched it in probably 4+ years, and was under the impression that flash memory, especially older generation like 2010, can degrade / bitrot if it’s not powered every so often.

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

#193

Post by ablation » Wed, Oct 16, 2024, 5:52 PM UTC

6c696e7578 wrote: post #188

dekhn wrote: post #63

how the turntables. Back in the 80s my grandfather (N4MDB RIP) had a ham radio in his car and used something called an "autopatch" which could dial phone numbers. He'd call my grandma and say we were going shopping or whatever. Everybody from the shack could listen in with their radios. He tried to get me interested in ham radio but at the time I was exploring the internet and ham seemed... boring? Overly fussy with…

It makes me wonder if anyone has archived the number stations broadcasts

Yes: https://irdial.com/conet.htm

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

#194

Post by sidewndr46 » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 7:38 PM UTC

agiacalone wrote: post #56

sidewndr46 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Encryption is permitted for remote control of space borne systems. Repeaters may use any method to limit access and control to authorized users.

I forgot about that one use case. But it's not allowed for most practical purposes in the U.S. at least.

almost every single repeater I know of uses this method for remote control. I even remember listening to someone sending long strings of high speed DTMF, presumably to try and brute force control of the repeater. One of the managers said they weren't successful

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

#195

Post by Saris » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 9:31 PM UTC

jpm_sd wrote: post #5

Very neat project. How are you dealing with FCC certification?

The nice part of DIY ham stuff is that you don't, you can sell a kit without any issue.

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

#196

Post by esrauch » Sun, Oct 20, 2024, 1:47 AM UTC

0xEF wrote: post #162

esrauch wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am not sure what gap you mean, since troubleshooting is part of the learning process. If someone expects to always get it right the first time, they are a bad student. Problem solving is relevant to all learning.

What I meant is that the comment said that you can learn soldering in a weekend and described only the physical aspect of getting solder onto some components.

I spent a number of weekends trying to get any intuition over basic circuitry components and how you might debug things and got basically nowhere. I can put some hot metal on stuff but it's not useful if you can't debug and the knowledge needed to debug isn't remotely obtainable in a weekend.