Fine Business, Good Buddy: Amateur Radio For Truckers

August 25, 2016 by Dan Maloney 51 Comments

Summer is the season for family road trips here in the US, and my family took to the open road in a big way this year. We pulled off a cross-country relocation, from Connecticut to Idaho. Five days on the road means a lot of pit stops, and we got to see a lot of truck stops and consequently, a lot of long-haul truckers. I got to thinking about their unique lifestyle and tried to imagine myself doing that job. I wondered what I’d do hour after long hour, alone in the cab of my truck. I figured that I’d probably just end up listening to a lot of audio books, but then I realized that there’s a perfect hobby for the road — ham radio. So I decided to see how ham radio is used by truckers, and mull over how a truck driver version of me might practice The World’s Best Hobby.

Continue reading “Fine Business, Good Buddy: Amateur Radio For Truckers” →

Weightless IoT Hardware Virtually Unavailable

December 28, 2015 by Brandon Dunson 36 Comments

It has been over 2 years since we last mentioned the Weightless SIG and their claims of an IoT open standard chip with a 10 year battery life and 10km wireless range, all at a jaw dropping price of $2 per chip. There was a planned production run of the 3rd gen chips which I would suspect went to beta testers or didn’t make it into production since we didn’t hear anything else, for years.

Recently, a company called nwave began producing dev-kits using the Weightless Technology which you can see in the banner image up top. Although the hardware exists it is a very small run and only available to members of the development team. If you happen to have been on the Weightless mailing list when the Weightless-N SDK was announced there was an offer to get a “free” development board to the first 100 development members. I use bunny ears on free because in order to become a member of the developer team you have to pay a yearly fee of £900. Don’t abrasively “pffffft” just yet, if you happened to be one first 100 there was an offer for developers that came up with a product and submitted it back for certification to get their £900 refunded to them. It’s not the best deal going, but the incentive to follow through with a product is an interesting take.

Continue reading “Weightless IoT Hardware Virtually Unavailable” →

Hackaday Prize Finalist: A Portable SDR

November 5, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 74 Comments

No other project to make it to The Hackaday Prize has people throwing money at their computer screen hoping something would happen than [Michael Colton]’s PortableSDR. It’s a software defined radio designed for coverage up to 30MHz. Amateur radio operators across the world are interested in this project, going so far as to call this the first Baofeng UV-5R killer. That’s extremely high praise.

[Michael] was kind enough to sit down and answer a few questions about how his entry to The Hackaday Prize has gone. You can check that out below, along with the final round video of the project. Anyone who wants their own PortableSDR could really help [Michael] out by taking this survey.

Continue reading “Hackaday Prize Finalist: A Portable SDR” →

Tape Measure VHF Yagi Antenna

January 13, 2014 by Todd Harrison 32 Comments

Radio direction finding and fox hunting can be great fun and is a popular activity with amateur radio (ham radio) enthusiasts. These antennas are great and are not only good for finding transmitters but also will greatly increase directional distance performance including communicating with satellites and the international space station (ISS).

[jcoman] had a nephew who was interested in learning about amateur radio so [jcoman] figured building and using a cheap and portable 2 meter band VHF Yagi style beam antenna would be the perfect activity to captivate the young lad’s interest in the hobby.

His design is based on [Joe Leggio’s] (WB2HOL) design with some of his own calculated alterations. We have seen DIY Yagi antenna designs before but what makes this construction so interesting is that the elements come together using bits of cut metal tape measure sections. These tape measure sections allow the Yagi antenna, which is normally a large and cumbersome device, to be easily stowed in a vehicle or backpack. When the antenna is needed, the tape measure sections naturally unfold and function extremely well with a 7 dB directional gain and can be adjusted to get a 1:1 SWR at any desired 2 m frequency.

The other unique feature is that the antenna can be constructed for under $20 if you actually purchase the materials. The cost would be even less if you salvage an old tape measure. You might even have the PVC pipes, hose clamps and wire lying around making the construction nearly free.

We were quite surprised to find that such a popular antenna construction method using tape measure elements had not yet been featured on Hackaday. For completeness this is not the only DIY tape measure Yagi on Instructables so also check out [FN64’s] 2 m band “Radio Direction Finding Antenna for VHF” and [manuka’s] 70 cm band “433 MHz tape measure UHF antenna” postings. The other Yagi antenna designs featured on Hackaday were “Building a Yagi Uda Antenna” and “Turning an Easter Egg Hunt into a Fox Hunt” but these designs were not so simple to construct nor as cleverly portable.

Weightless, The Internet Of Things Chip, Becomes Less Vaporware

October 25, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 40 Comments

weightless

Several months ago, we caught wind of Weightless, a $2 chip that will run for 10 years on a AA battery and communicate to a Weightless base station 10 Km away. Yes, this is the fabled Internet of Things chip that will allow sensors of every type to communicate with servers around the world. It looks like Weightless is becoming less and less vaporware, as evidenced by the Weightless SIG hardware roadmap; Weightless modules might be in the hands of makers and designers in just a few short months.

Weightless is an extremely low-cost wireless module that operates in the radio spectrum previously occupied by analog broadcast television. This is a great place for the Internet of Things, as signals in this spectrum have a lot of range and the ability to go through walls. These signals are sent to a Weightless base station where they are then sent over the Internet to servers around the world.

The Weightless SIG has been hard at work producing new silicon, with the third generation of chips heading for volume production next month. The only thing this chip requires is a battery and an antenna, making Weightless integration for new designs and projects a snap.

There’s one thing Weightless is not, and that’s a free, high-speed connection to the Internet with a $2 adapter. Weightless is designed for sensors that only transmit a kilobyte or so a day – medical sensors, irrigation control, and other relatively boring things. There’s a summary video from the recent 2013 Weightless SIG Summit going over all this information below.

Continue reading “Weightless, The Internet Of Things Chip, Becomes Less Vaporware” →