PortablePi - A RaspberryPi for Amateur radio Portable Operators

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This project might be of interest to some SOTA operators.

I wanted to see if I could make a field companion Raspberry Pi for Data modes - I would never lug my laptop into the bush.

Hardware:

  • raspberry pi 3 with inbuilt wifi chip
  • USB GPS dongle
  • USB sound card
  • ZLP USB radio interface

Capability:

  • WSJT-X on RC1.9 for FT8 etc
  • Fldigi
  • Winlink using PAT - telnet only at this stage
  • APRS via Xastir and Direwolf
  • Logging using CQRLog - issues with database - working on that
  • GPS updates onboard time - needed for Data modes and logging as well as GPS for APRS

How do you use it?
Well when the Pi is near a wifi network it knows it connects when it is not - say on your favourite summit - it creates a hotspot allowing headless control by any VNC device - tablet, phone etc.

Some pictures:

Set on top of my 817

Set on top of my 817

Connected over VNC

Connected over VNC

Update: June 2018: http://wadeabout.com/blog/update-from-my-initial-testing-of-using-a-raspberry-pi-3-as-a-portable-option-for-amateur-radio-digital-modes

 

Wade
VK1MIC

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