With Baofeng being a very popular and economical radio, a lot of Hams have this device and in some cases come across a means to input DMTF tones for either IRLP or Echolink. As you all know I am part of the Wellington Radio Club here in S. Florida and We have been adding new features to both of our repeaters. It came to my attention that one of the features that we are about to put in place uses a DTMF tone of “#” which is being used for our Echolink node and Wires uses this as a default. We have changed this to A and B for our Echolink and IRLP Nodes since we have multiple ones in one repeater. I found that my simple radio did not have this but my friends Yaesu did have these letters (A, B, C&D) printed on the keypad. Well here is the simple solution. See image bellow. The radio will output these but it seems that Baofeng did not quite have room to add the letters to their HT. Seems like a simple thing but when you are out and about trying to access a feature on your favorite repeater and the repeater has prefixes it can be a headache.
Menu = A ▲ = B ▼ = C EXIT = D
hamadmin
How to run HCALC_129 on the Macintosh
hamadmin
QSTCSDR – Creating your own Tranciever with a Raspberry Pi 2 or 3 and a RTL-SDR Dongle
After updating the post were I was using the RPI and a RTL-SDR dongle to create a Server for those that wanted to listen to the WRC Repeater, I stumbled upon the blog of the creator of OPENWEBRX and found a nifty article and library that allows you to use an RTL-SDR and a RPI as a transceiver, here is the github repo.
Lets get started, you will need an RPI 2 or 3 and an RTL-SDR Dongle after imaging your SD card with a copy of Debian Jessie set the RPI to overclock “medium” of course you must have some kind of cooling for the chips, amazon has RPI Heat sinks for sale that you can use. After this go right ahead and from within the home run the following code.
Once it has been updated we can move onto adding the software needed. Run the following commands one by one , adding a “Y” for yes every time the Pi asks for more disk space.
git clone https://github.com/ha7ilm/qtcsdr
cd qtcsdr
./rpi-install.sh
./rpi-test.sh
If you run into trouble and need to do some troubleshooting go ahead and reference the well written Github repo
Credit of course goes to ha7ilm for his contributions towards the SDR community.
………… I almost forgot after installing it and you need to run it once more go ahead and cd into the qtcsdr directory then run the shell script ./rpi-test.sh ENJOY!
Also this is done via SSH, if you are in windows you can use PUTTY and if you are in Mac OSX or Linux simply run the Terminal.
hamadmin
Cheap Signal Link Style Interface!
We all know that Hams often are cheap when purchasing hardware. There are some modes that I personally would like to master and these would be SSTV and MBEMS ( MT632KL) as well as others. But we all are on a budget and today I was part of the Wellington Radio Club Slow Scan Net. I was having some issues while transmitting using acoustical coupling, I also got some RF burn from my Baofeng’s Battery terminals, not good at all. So I decided enough was enough and I wend to my Home lab to gather the items that I needed to create my own “SignalLink”.
Here is what you will need to accomplish this.
HT (Wouxun, Baofeng or Kenwood) Others may work , you will need to ensure the size of the MIC and SPKR output.
1x “EASY DIGI” Digital Sound Card Interface by KF5INZ : found on Ebay (LINK)
Price: US $22.95
2x 3.5mm Audio Cables (AUX Cables) : found on Ebay (LINK)
Price: US $4.95
1x 3.5mm Male to 2.5mm Female Audio Adapter Converter : found on Ebay (LINK)
Price: US $2.59
A total of $34.48 US. The Signal Link is $120.00 US plus shipping. I have successfully tested it on SSTV and MBEMS, both working great!
I have tested it on MAC OSX as well as Windows 7,8,8.1 and W10 as well as VMWare. Hope you guys find this useful for those looking to send and receive data via your HT. 73’s
Instructions on how to connect your HT using this method will be completed this week… Stay Tuned…..
hamadmin
Orlando 2016 – HAM FEST
This was my first time at a Ham Fest, let me tell you it was a great day, although my legs hurt from walking all day it was well worthing it. I will summarize my day enjoying this hobby.
I first started with going into the Commercial area where there was some trinkets here and there , got a SATA HDD Adapter as well as an audio card for spares.
I saw some small Arduino and electronics parts booth but I did not need anything from them.
I was going from booth to booth until I found myself in front of a Telegraph booth.
The telegraph machine caught my eye although I have seen these before online, the guys at the booth where very knowledgeable, spoke with them for about 20 minutes. The Morse Code is not necessary nowadays to become a Ham, I would love to learn it.
At the Ham Fest they had many people with new items to used items as well as educational booths. SDR was the Popular Booth with Demos.
There was also the Satellite from HAMSAT doing a Demo with both an Arrow Antenna and a n SDR and its SAT Antennae.
Here you can see them setting up the Software as well as using a simple 20$ Nooelec SDR Dongle to pick up the incoming signals from the Satellites Orbiting the Earth.
Simple test before the real Demo.
The Demo 😉
After this I went to other booths but not before getting information that a 9 Year old Gild would be doing a Demo and working the satellites herself.
Random interesting items:
Tower Light
Only a Geek would be fascinated by this old Texas Instruments Calculator. It had the Library on a chip, it was that old.
Interesting Vehicle/Rigs.
And of course the highlight of the day the 9 Year old which I believe her name is Hope, working the satellites with what I believe to be her father.
Items I picked up there where a few small electronics a Baofeng Radio and a used Base with an SEC 1212.
After all day Geeking out it was time to go. I would like to thank everyone, Specially Chris and Larry for giving me the opportunity to enjoy this.
PS. Next year I will bring a dedicated camera to take more pictures and Interview people.
73’s ;P
hamadmin
Creating a Custom Windshield mount for the IC-706MKIIG Ham Radio with GoPro Parts.
I have recently purchased this all band radio with all the accessories unfortunately it did not come with a windshield mount. So I ended up using a cellphone mount ,here in Florida there is a lot of moisture and sun, the darn thing kept on falling.
Here is an image of the mount:
After a few weeks I got tired of this and decided to take action. I first asked myself what device that is already manufactured can withstand the moisture and sun that we get here in Florida?…. I ended up choosing a windshield mount for a rugged camera , A GoPro Mount here is an image of the mount
Note: The factory mount designed for these is the (MB-120) which is discontinued and has the flimsy suction cup.
I purchased it on a local Best Buy since I was not about to wait for one to come from china or California. It was about 50$. I took the Suction Cup Mount and started to look at the IC-706 Mounting bracket (MB-63)
I went and removed the front slide bars on the mount with a small saw and then used a grind disk I have for metal work to make it flush.
I then grinned the back of the part since it had two splines, so that the screw head would not interfere with the articulation of the GoPro Mount.
I also made a 1/4″ hole for the screw to go through. I had to take my caliper and thread identifier to get the proper screws.
Here is an image of the mount with the screw and toothed washer for grip.
I added a nut that came in this package as a spacer and connected it to the Mounting Bracket (MB-63).
The image illustrates how small the suction cup I was using was as well as how the sun turned the cheap rubber yellow and cracked it.
Here is the final product. Sorry for the low light image. It was dark when I finished this, all in all, it took me 30 minutes to finish it… including the trips to Best Buy and Home Depot.
I will never build something that is half done at the end of the day it will become something great 😉
Creating a Web SDR with OpenWebRX and a 7-20$ SDR Dongle.
For this you must have a Linux box or simply have a raspberry pi 2 running debian or other linux distros of choice. In this example we are going to focus on getting the device on your home network later we can talk how you will share this or post it onto your domain.
Requesting the build rtl-sdr from github
git clone git://git.osmocom.org/rtl-sdr.git
cd rtl-sdr/
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../ -DINSTALL_UDEV_RULES=ON
make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig
cd ../..
We need to disable the DVB-T driver, which will prevent the rtl_sdr software from accessing the stick
Note that if you want to use it for DVB-T reception later, you should undo this.
sudo bash -c 'echo -e "\n# for RTL-SDR:\nblacklist dvb_usb_rtl28xxu\n" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf'
sudo rmmod dvb_usb_rtl28xxu # disable that kernel module for the current session
Lets download OpenWebRX and libcsdr (subdirectories will be created under the current directory).
git clone https://github.com/simonyiszk/openwebrx.git
git clone https://github.com/simonyiszk/csdr.git
Then compile libcsdr ,this is a dependency of OpenWebRX
cd csdr
make
sudo make install
Then we edit OpenWebRX config or leave defaults (This file is well commented out so you can see what you need to add and remove)
sudo nano ../openwebrx/config_webrx.py
Running OpenWebRX software from the terminal.
cd ../openwebrx
./openwebrx.py
One you have done these steps and modified your config file we have a working server and can hear and manipulate your SDR from your favorite browser.
If you do not know your browsers IP addy run this command on a new terminal window
sudo /sbin/ifconfig | grep 'inet addr:
After you have your local IP address navigate to your browser and input https://192.168.1.xxx:8073 the XXX should be change to your IP address or if you have a class A then use that instead of the Class C which is what normal routers come from their factories. The : Symbol tells the browser to go to a specific port in this case the default is 8073 unless you have specified a different port on OpenWebRX config file.
The Author of the software is HA7ILM. Please send him any bug reports and suggestions.
You can also share your SDR feeds on https://sdr.hu if you have a good working box, I would not suggest in on a raspberry pi. I have a limit set to 10 users. He will also be adding a Squelch feature and has added support for the Hackrf One there will be more support in the future as this project is currently on beta.
I have used this successfully to listen to the Wellington Radio Club Repeater and receive MBEMS MK632KL transmissions with no issues at all. This is great to get you hands dirty without having to spend any money then create this server and learn some code while also creating another Web Based SDR applet.
If you have any questions feel free to get in touch with me and I will assist.
I will post more information when I have more time to spare.
KM4OOD 73’s
UPDATE!
Youtube Video
**** Update 9/27/2016 ****
Its been a while that I have tocuhed this project once again. But I have a shell script that will get you operational in a matter of minutes… so grab a cup of joe and lets get started.
Copy Pasta this code into a nano file of your choice, i did openwebrx.sh then after do a chmod +x openwebrx.sh to make the file executable from within your linux box or pi and
voila it will start working for you. just add the ./openwebrx.sh to start the script. Script credit to ha7ilm
#Install dependencies
sudo apt-get install build-essential git libfftw3-dev cmake libusb-1.0-0-dev nmap
#nmap itself is not used by OpenWebRX at all, but we need to install it because the ncat tool is packaged with it.
#ncat is a netcat alternative which is used by OpenWebRX for internally distributing I/Q data,
# and also solves the incompatibility problems among netcat versions.
#Fetch and build rtl-sdr, skip if already done (subdirectories will be created under the current directory).
git clone git://git.osmocom.org/rtl-sdr.git
cd rtl-sdr/
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../ -DINSTALL_UDEV_RULES=ON
make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig
cd ../..
#Disable the DVB-T driver, which would prevent the rtl_sdr tool from accessing the stick
#(if you want to use it for DVB-T reception later, you should undo this change):
sudo bash -c 'echo -e "\n# for RTL-SDR:\nblacklist dvb_usb_rtl28xxu\n" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf'
sudo rmmod dvb_usb_rtl28xxu # disable that kernel module for the current session
#Download OpenWebRX and libcsdr (subdirectories will be created under the current directory).
git clone https://github.com/simonyiszk/openwebrx.git
git clone https://github.com/simonyiszk/csdr.git
#Compile libcsdr (which is a dependency of OpenWebRX)
cd csdr
make
sudo make install
#Edit OpenWebRX config or leave defaults
nano ../openwebrx/config_webrx.py
#Run OpenWebRX
cd ../openwebrx
./openwebrx.py
hamadmin
Echolink Node with Raspberry Pi
As many of you know I have recently gotten my Technicians Lic to operate my Ham Radios, after 1 year of going back and forth on what I wanted to accomplish I will start with the digital and more hands on approach to this new hobby. This is a project that did not take me much to start as I know about the Debian and RaspBerry Pi platforms.
Lets get started with what we need to get the basics working.
What you need:
Raspberry Pi 2 ( More processing power)
USB Sound Card
1x 2.5mm to 3.5 mm audio Cables
1x 3.5 to 3.5 mm audio cables
A handheld Radio with the 2M band or 70cm bands. ( Ensure to run this in Simplex mode unless you have full permission from the Repeaters Owner to run this on their repeater)
