Here’s an interesting project – an Arduino shield that turns an Arduino into a VHF/UHF transceiver. One interesting feature is that unlike many commercial transceivers, the Ham Shield covers the 2 m, 220 MHz, and 440 MHz bands.
According to Casey, KC7IBT,
We have both voice and data working on the shield right now and also have a powerful library to control it.
We also have it talking to the Chrome browser, so any computer that can run a web browser can operate a packet radio station or voice station. We also have another piece of chrome software called “APRS Messenger”, a text messaging app for APRS. One of our prototypes is in a neat little case that clips right to the back of your laptop (shown in the video). I will launch these apps in the Chrome Store once we get closer to completion.
We have 10 working prototypes currently, but need to raise money to fund the production cost and get the unit prices down to acceptable levels. This means buying parts in bulk and reducing production costs.
I think this is a very cool project, and I hope that you’ll consider supporting the HamShield Kickstarter project. I plan to get one of the early supporter packs, or if I can get someone to go in with me, maybe one of the multiple unit packages.
Curtis Pope says
This does look like an interesting project, but why wait for the kickstarter in Oct…Nov… HobbyPCB has the RS-UV3 available today that has the same functions with a simplified API so you don’t need to worry about the nitty gritty of controlling the radio. It also works standalone for applications where you don’t really want an Arduino in the way!
https://www.hobbypcb.com/products/rs-uv3
Neal Probert says
Might be a good educational kit, but needs polish. Googling around, I don’t see a lot of people using this, but plenty of uses for it. Some are going with dual RS-UV3 setups, one for RX and one for TX.
I’ve been toying with this for a bit myself. Not sure how to hook this up to a computer so I can use fldigi. Wish they had included the USB interface in this, but had to buy it separate.
I also wish the control panel and communicator were written in Python as I use Linux. So I’m using Putty or Python scripts to talk to it.
Such low power, but HobbyPCB has a kickstarter for an SDR based unit at 5W. See https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hobbypcb/rs-hfiq-5w-software-defined-radio-sdr-tranceiver which I just sprung for and dump the RS-UV3.