In a recent column on EETimes, an old colleague of mine, Martin Rowe, says, “Knobs and buttons are slowly on their way out. Get used to it.” He’s referring to the controls on oscilloscopes, but if he were a ham, he might just as well be talking about amateur radio transceivers, too.
We already see this happening in amateur radio. FlexRadio, and a couple of other companies, already make transceivers with no front panel controls. You must use them in conjunction with a computer to use them.
Might we even start to see this with handheld and portable equipment? For example, how much cheaper could they make a Baofeng if to use it, you had to also have an Android or iPhone app to act as the human interface?
To be honest, I haven’t really thought about this much myself. I’m enough of a dinosaur to still prefer buttons and knobs, I guess. Rowe claims, however, that “as the old-timers retire (or in our case as older operators become SKs), younger engineers (or hams) will expect every user interface to function like a phone or tablet. Don’t believe me? Just wait.”
What do you think?
Bill Cahill says
Hey Dan!
I often wondered when we were going to see an Android based HT. Imagine the fun you could have with built-in APRS apps or even Echolink.
What would be even more fun would be if someone came up with an open-source mobile radio. I picture an RF deck with a Raspberry Pi and touch screen for control, the Pi would simply tell the RF deck where to tune and handle the interface and scanning functions, it would ship with a stock app but you could make your own. Built in support for SDR stuff, packet, APRS, remote operation….
Thought-provoking post. I’ll put a link to this post at my blog at ad8bc.com
73!
Ron Harding says
I have been designing tools that provide remote control of various devices which includes smart terminal emulator applications, programmer reference guide parsing utilities in order to make intuitive user GUIs for OEM test equipment first, scanner radios and now ham radio gear. I have been providing smart terminal emulator applications to interface, program, and control various devices, modules, prototypes and products for years. i am currently working with androids, beaglebone black, arduino, seeeduino, raspberry pi, sensors and transducers to build PID control system implementations and soon other types of control i/o interface such as Internet of Things. So, yes, I believe i can do what you ask Bill. I use my HP Pavillion 21 multi-touch, Android phone, FPGA touch screen dev kit and now arduino touch screen interface as development platforms for i/o interaction with the outside world.
73
N7HBR
Boise Idaho
KJ6ZZD says
I’m a younger ham, perfectly comfortable with my iPhone and iPad. Right now, it’s still cheaper to use a keypad like we see on most of our HTs than a touchscreen. I don’t expect we’ll see a transceiver that will require a separate device to operate, but we will see touchscreen transceivers once the price of the screens comes down far enough.
However, I don’t see a killer app for touchscreen radios. You can’t do much more through a touchscreen than you can do with the existing knobs and buttons. If you think about an iPhone, it’s not really a phone anymore, it’s a pocket internet device that happens to make phone calls. I don’t see a similar change taking place in the HT market*.
At the same time, knobs perform some tasks better than a screen can. Knobs provide some tactile feedback that a screen just can’t. This is a big reason why you’ll still see volume and tune knobs in cars that have a touchscreen infotainment center (even the iPhone has real buttons for volume control). I expect that base station and mobile radios will continue to have tuning and volume knobs even after they’ve incorporated touchscreens for most other functions.
* There might be an awesome product idea here for a handheld radio that basically lets you do packet radio from your pocket. Add in GPS for APRS and wifi for Broadband-Hamnet, and it’s be a pretty awesome device.
Andy, K1JOT says
How about visual aids like callsign signatures embedded at different amplitudes within a freq band scape?
terry mills says
I sadly agree. But I don’t know if this will be a bad thing when it happens. I cling to my trusted and true pots. I can physically see the results when I ohm it out.
Guess I need more confidence?
DH7LM says
Hi,
I’m a newly licenced ham and I like both – experimenting with advanced computer stuff like SDRs and the great feeling a real radio provides!
Since I’ve done some Pro-audio work in the past, I know that there has been a development towards emulating hardware for a long time now. One interesting development was that soon enough, people realized that moving sliders and knobs with a mouse just doesn’t cut it, so there is a big market now for all kinds of controlers. Maybe there will be a similar development in ham radio? So you could have a programmable, “classic radio” style frontend for your SDR, for example.
I second what KJ6ZZD said: I would love to see a comeback of Packet radio and more experiments with integrating APRS and other digital stuff in some kind of “open source ht’s”. It would be a wonderful playground for hams to experiment.
Andy, K1JOT says
Toast, definitely. Did you mean like vacuum tubes back in the sixties, or CRTs, or IBM selectric typewriters? I can appreciate the feelings of reticence. I’ll bet there are many who quietly miss analog television. I know I do. I used to have a twelve foot dish out in the garden that could track twenty one television satellites in the Clarke Belt and captured hundreds of network feeds. Susan used to call it my flower. Absolutely amazing. I saw Alberto Tomba win the giant slalom on a Canadian satellite wild feed two hours before my fellow Americans saw it “live” on network television here in the USA. Unbelievable the amount of latency one can encounter crossing the A line. Now we’re stuck with these puny little fixed position dishes and their digital signal downlinks. Myself, being new to Ham radio love the whole SDR gig. Give me a screenshot and waterfall of a frequency band any day over spinning a dial hunting for contacts which may never come. Ah, modernity. It keeps us young.
k8gu says
DH7LM is right on with the pro-audio analogy: An inherently analog activity demands analog controls. Non-channelized CW and SSB operating, especially under fire in a contest or DX situation are very serious analog activities. For digital modes and most types of casual operating, as well as anything channelized, knobs are probably unnecessary.
Personally, I think the four multifunction knobs to the left of the VFO A knob on Elecraft’s K3 are ergonomic genius. Although, I’m also one of the very few people in the world who seem to be satisfied (if not delighted) with the ergonomics of this radio. They put things that I might care about adjusting with my hands into knobs that could take on several functions depending what I care about at the time.
The touch screen idea is a good one and certainly where things are going…something like the Nest thermostat would be interesting to try.
The big ergonomic test for me is always how easy a piece of equipment is to use when operating it one-handed with either hand. This is why it took me a long time to adopt window-based (lowercase intentional) logging software, and even so, I still use variants of the DOS TRLog. If the mouse is on the right side of the keyboard, it always ties up my right hand, which is needed to tune the right radio and it unnecessarily draws my hand off the keyboard.
Tom WB8COX says
Go look at TenTec’s Rebel (506) and their about to be released Patriot (507) transceivers. Not quite in the open source SDR class but definitely in the open source category.
I got to talk to the Engineer on those projects at Huntsville when I got invited to the QRP ARCI event there. Very interesting group and assuming TenTec flourishes in its new environment, there could be some interesting products from them.
I did spend several years running a Flex 1500 as the IF for my VHF Transverters. Tuning around the band using a mouse wheel works quite well, but it can be argued that there is still a knob involved. I really enjoyed the ability to watch what was going on near where I was listening. I decided that the need for more screen real estate was a problem when operating portable and I was getting frustrated with the need to have a windows computer just to run the radio.
I did try running the Flex from a Surface … It worked but it wasn’t optimal. I posted the video on YouTube if you want to see it. The price of a Surface that would comfortably run the Flex was a show stopper though, and only the 1500 has a USB interface.
Dan KB6NU says
I don’t know, Tom. As you probably know, I’m not a big TenTec fan. I was at QRP-ARCI’s FDIM at Dayton when TenTec gave their Rebel dog-and-pony show. To be honest, I was underwhelmed. I think that calling it “open source” is really a misnomer.
The 507 might be more open, but I just Googled around, and the information on it is pretty sketchy. Heck, there’s not even any information on the TenTec site about it. We’ll just have to wait and see what capabilities it has, and with this merger and all, I think there’s a very real chance that they’re not going to even bring it to market.
Lenny W2BVH says
Dan, this just reminded me of an obscure Q signal, “QNB.”
Examples:
QNB?: How many knobs and buttons on your rig?
QNB 58/19: My rig has 58 knobs and buttons, but I only know what 19 of them do.