ham radio

232 Articles

Google Assistant, Now Available On Ham Radio

January 5, 2019 by 48 Comments

Depending on who you talk to, Google Assistant is either a tool capable of quickly and clearly answering audio queries in natural langauge, or a noisier and less useful version of Wolfram Alpha. [William Franzin] decided it would be particularly cool to make the service available over ham radio – and that’s exactly what he did.

[William] got the idea for this project after first playing with the Internet Radio Linking Project, a system which uses VoIP technologies to link radio networks over the internet. Already having an IRLP node, it seemed only natural to make it into a gateway to the wider internet through integration with Google Assistant. Early work involved activating the assistant via DTMF tones, but [William] didn’t stop there – through the use of Picovoice, it became possible to use the system with the custom wakeword “Bumblebee”.

[William]’s project could prove particularly useful for when he’s out of cell coverage, but needs a little information like a weather report or a piece of trivia to settle an argument round the campfire. Additionally, it’s even possible to control the IRLP node through voice commands, too.

If you’re just getting started with ham radio, check out this build to get you started for under $100. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Google Assistant, Now Available On Ham Radio” →

FCC Gets Complaint: Proposed Ham Radio Rules Hurt National Security

November 26, 2018 by 141 Comments

On November 10th, [Theodore Rappaport] sent the FCC an ex parte filing regarding a proposed rule change that would remove the limit on baud rate of high frequency (HF) digital transmissions. According to [Rappaport] there are already encoded messages that can’t be read on the ham radio airwaves and this would make the problem worse.

[Rappaport] is a professor at NYU and the founding director of NYU Wireless. His concern seems to relate mostly to SCS who have some proprietary schemes for compressing PACTOR as part of Winlink — used in some cases to send e-mail from onboard ships.

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FT8: Saving Ham Radio Or Killing It?

November 2, 2018 by 177 Comments

It is popular to blame new technology for killing things. The Internet killed newspapers. Video killed the radio star. Is FT8, a new digital technology, poised to kill off ham radio? The community seems evenly divided. In an online poll, 52% of people responding says FT8 is damaging ham radio.  But ham operator [K5SDR] has an excellent blog post about how he thinks FT8 is going to save ham radio instead.

If you already have an opinion, you have probably already raced down to the comments to share your thoughts. I’ll be honest, I think what we are seeing is a transformation of ham radio and like most transformations, it is probably both killing parts of ham radio and saving others. But if you are still here, let’s talk a little bit about what’s going on in ham radio right now and how it relates to the FT8 question. Oddly enough, our story starts with the strange lack of sunspots that we’ve been experiencing lately. Continue reading “FT8: Saving Ham Radio Or Killing It?” →

Hams See Dark Side Of The Moon Without Pink Floyd

October 15, 2018 by 36 Comments

Ham radio operators bouncing signals off the moon have become old hat. But a ham radio transmitter on the Chinese Longjiang-2 satellite is orbiting the moon and has sent back pictures of the Earth and the dark side of the moon. The transceiver’s main purpose is to allow hams to downlink telemetry and relay messages via lunar orbit.

While the photo was received by the Dwingeloo radio telescope, reports are that other hams also picked up the signal. The entire affair has drawn in hams around the world. Some of the communications use a modulation scheme devised by [Joe Taylor, K1JT] who also happens to be a recipient of a Nobel prize for his work with pulsars. The Dwingeloo telescope has several ham radio operators including [PA3FXB] and [PE1CHQ].

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A No-Fuss Rack Of Ham

September 10, 2018 by 9 Comments

With any hobby, it’s easy for things to get out of hand. Equipment can get scattered around the house, chargers lost in the car while cables languish in the shed… but it doesn’t have to be this way. With a go-bag or go-box, everything required is kept together in a ready-to-go condition. Heading out for a day of filming? Grab the go-bag and you’re all set. [oliverkrystal] wanted to apply this to a ham radio setup, and built this ham shack-in-a-box.

Wanting to use proven components and keep things rugged and usable, the build starts with a 6U-sized plastic rack mount case. This saves weight over plywood versions and is nice and tough. A combination of off-the-shelf rack mount parts and 3D printed pieces are brought together to make it all happen. [oliverkrystal]’s printed cable organisers are a particular treat, and something we think could help a lot of builds out there.

It all comes together as an impressive self-contained unit with two radios, an antenna tuner, in-built illumination and other useful features. No longer does one have to scramble around preparing gear for the weekend’s hamventures – grab the box and you’re ready to go!

Perhaps you don’t have a lot of ham gear, though? Try this setup to get going for less than $100.

1950’s AM Transmitter Is Fun But Dangerous

July 29, 2018 by 39 Comments

[Mr. Carlson] bought a Globe Scout Model 40A ham radio transmitter at a hamfest. The 40A was a grand old transmitter full of tubes, high voltage, and a giant transformer. It is really interesting to see how much things have changed over the years. The transmitter is huge but has comparatively few parts. You needed a crystal for the frequency you wanted to talk. There were two little modules that were precursors to hybrid circuits (which were precursors to ICs) that were often called PECs or couplates (not couplets) but other than those, it is all tubes and discrete components beautifully wired point-to-point.

The really surprising part, though, is the back panel. There’s a screw terminal to drive the coil of an external coaxial relay that has line voltage on it. There’s also a plug on the back with exposed terminals that has plate voltage on it which is considerable. In the 1950s, you assumed people operating equipment like this would be careful not to touch exposed high voltage.

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The Return Of RadioShack?

July 23, 2018 by 119 Comments

We’ve been following the ups and downs of Radio Shack for a while now, and it looks like another chapter is about to be penned in the storied retailer’s biography – and not Chapter 11 bankruptcy this time.

According to the ARRL website and major media reports, up to 50 of the 147 US locations of HobbyTown, the brick-and-mortar retailer of RC and other hobby supplies, will soon host a “RadioShack Express” outlet. Each outlet will be up to 500 square feet of retail space devoted to electronic components that would be of use to HobbyTown’s core customer base, as well as other merchandise and services.

HobbyTown locations in Mooresville, North Carolina, and Ontario, Ohio, will be among the first stores to get the RadioShack Express treatment. Current employees of the franchisees will staff the store-within-a-store, which will be stocked with RadioShack merchandise purchased by the store. Stores with Express outlets will have special RadioShack branding inside and out to attract customers. There’s talk of the deal being extended chain-wide if the pilot program goes well.

Back from the Ashes?

This is obviously great news for the beleaguered electronics retailer that was once a neighborhood fixture. True, its parts selection was often less than complete, more so in recent years than in the chain’s heyday in the mid-1970s and early 1980s. And it’s true that prices were often astronomical compared to buying online. But on a Sunday afternoon, The Shack was a lifesaver for that last minute part needed to finish a project, and the premium was well worth the convenience. Watching the decline of the chain and seeing stores disappear one by one was a slow, sad process, so that makes this seems like an unqualified positive development.

But is it? On the face of it, there’s a lot of synergy between the HobbyTown offerings and what could be stocked in a RadioShack Express. I’ve never actually visited a HobbyTown myself — I plan to fix that now that I know I’ve got an outlet nearby, even if it doesn’t appear to be on the list of 50 early Express locations — so I can only go by what I see listed online for merchandise. But a store that sells every conceivable part for RC cars and planes, drones, model rockets, and STEM-related toys and kits seems a likely place to find customers for RadioShack’s offerings.

It won’t be clear until someone sees one of these Express kiosks first hand and reports back, but it seems like we might see something like the old “cabinet o’ components” that was found in the back of the most recent incarnation of RadioShack retail stores, along with a few shelves full of things like solder, wire, and tools. There may also be some items in the Arduino-Pi space, which would be really exciting, although that might run afoul of existing HobbyTown offerings. Still, one-stop shopping of everything from servos to MOSFETs would be a huge win for electronics hobbyists.

Not the Cell Phones Again!

But there may be cause for concern. Reports are that RadioShack Express locations will also offer services such as cell phone repairs. Dipping a toe into the cell phone market seemed to be the beginning of the end for RadioShack the first time through, and by the time it was clear to everyone that the chain was on death’s door, it was hard to go into a RadioShack store without being bombarded by cell phone sales pitches. To be brutally frank, I don’t take the early inclusion of cell phone repairs as an encouraging sign of the long-term viability of the RadioShack Express concept. Do we really need another place that fixes cell phones? The areas that HobbyTown stores tend to locate are rife with places that fix phones already, so I just don’t see the point. And it just smacks of the bad old days of RadioShack.

Still, I’m cautiously optimistic that this is a positive development for RadioShack, and I think it’s a win for electronics hobbyists overall. I’ll be keeping my eye on my local HobbyTown for the return of that iconic RadioShack logo, and looking forward to the day that I can pay a buck for a resistor again. Until then, if any readers happen to be near one of the combined locations when they open next week, we’d love a boots-on-the-ground report. Post your observations in the comments below, and pix or it didn’t happen.

[via r/amateurradio]