About a week ago, this Tweet flashed across my feed:
Happy 10 million UNOs, @arduino My first UNO was one of the things motivating me to get into electronics as a child. As an older child I’m now happily studying Computer Science in Uni and you are one of the reasons. Very happy to hold this in my hands now!
I retweeted and added the comment, “#hamradio needs something like the Arduino.” The more I think about this, the more I think this is true. An UNO is something that is affordable and simple to set up and something that kids and newcomers can have fun with almost right out of the box.
Someone commented:
Yeah, if only we had a software defined transceiver and does-it-all software. Oh… wait… analog.com/en/design-cent⊠and gnuradio.org. Point being, we have the hardware + software – we just need to popularize it.
This is not a bad idea, but I think that this solution is still too expensive (a PLUTO SDR costs more than $200). And, GNURadio is certainly not for beginners. Â My reply was:
A PLUTO costs $200. An Arduino costs less that $20.
To which, I got this reply:
OK. For a transmitter, how about $35 for a Raspberry Pi + github.com/F5OEO/rpitx? For a receiver, $30 for rtl-sdr.com/buy-rtl-sdr-dvâŠ
I said:
Now, you’re getting closer, but you can’t just dump this on them and expect them to magically create a working set. They’ll need some instructions and/or some coaching.
And my friend’s reply:
We’re in violent agreement. Arduino didn’t succeed because it was good hardware, it succeeded because of the vast ecosystem – books, classes, video tutorials, etc. We need the same thing for Software Defined Radio, especially “training wheels” for GNU Radio.
So, my questionâor challenge, reallyâis how do we come up with something that lets beginners get started in radio for less than $100 and offers a similar experience to the UNO?
Ed says
Ever heard of the saying that if something is free it isn’t any good?
With $60 Beofengs, is Amateur Radio that expensive?
There are a lot of Arduino type projects for Amateur Radio out there.
And as I believe I heard about Beofeng, we don’t need bad transceivers that get banned. Lots of the projects that you mentioned really can’t live up to modern standards
Yohei N8YQX says
I recently completed a Raspberry Pi project. The difference I noticed, in comparison to ham radio communities, is that Pi community is much more helpful.
What I mean is, someone writes a complete walkthrough for a real project, under the assumption that the student knows nothing. They explain in such a way that gets results… connect this to that, type this command here, buy this part from here, etc.
Conversely, look at ham radio “elmers”, especially on the forums (which is where most people turn to for help). Ask an antenna question, and almost always the first few answer is something like “wire is cheap, why don’t you try it out and see if it works”, which isn’t helpful in the least, and it’s condescending to someone asking for help.
Want someone to invest money in ham radio equipment, show them the least path of resistance. Instead of scaring someone with instructions on how to solder a PL-259, tell them to buy a pre-terminated RG-8X from Amazon. Better yet, pick out couple Amazon links for them. Instead of telling someone to make their own j-pole, recommend some middle of the road off the shelf antennas that’ll get them on the air. Heck, even tell them which lag bolt they need to mount the antenna to the side of the house.
My point is, someone’s more likely to invest time and money in ham radio (or any other project) if they think they can get results. A good walkthrough will tell the potential ham that they too can do it. All the other stuff (soldering your own PL-259, making your own antenna, etc) should come after building up some confidence.
Benjamin Steele says
Yes, this exactly. The communities around Arduino and Raspberry Pi are amazing and that’s why they are the standard even when there are nominally better options.
John says
Dan
Youâre right on target with the idea. N8YQX also makes a great point about a helpful community, which is a little challenging among the hams in my area.
As a child, I really enjoyed kits and models. Follow instructions, put pieces together, learn and enjoy. My folks gave me one of those radio shack crystal radio kits and I was over the moon. That led to Heathkit projects. Both companies effectively went out of business in my teens. However, that experience put me on the path to BS EE.
Iâd like to be able to affordably buy radio related kits for my children to play and learn with. My kids are pre-teens and keenly interested in all sciences. RPi is a bit too sophisticated for them yet, but in a couple years they will be on it.
Kids donât enjoy watching others. They want to get hands on with relatively little supervision. Thatâs the key to success. Think LEGO instructions simplicity, with a little of the âwhy it worksâ science added in for education.
So, ARRL, instead of offering me free books that I already own for renewing membership, how about putting some of that marketing effort into creating kits that entertain and educate children in the 8-15 year old age group. Thatâs the future of amateur radio, and the future of engineering for America.
Thanks for bringing up the topic Dan. Itâs a great service youâre doing.
Mark Regan says
Someone suggested this site to me: https://qrp-labs.com/qdx.html
Dave New, N8SBE says
I will say that Hans of QRPLabs writes some of the best building and operating manuals for his kits, which are all very reasonably priced. I’ve put together several of his kits, and they were all a joy to build and I learned something from each of them.
Of course, ham radio is different for every different person out there. Some swear by CW or HF, others are into VHF/UHF weak signal work, others into satellite operation, etc., etc.
That makes it exceedingly difficult to put together lessons and help targeted at a group of (teens? pre=teens? young adults? middle-aged? seniors?) interested in the radio arts.
Sterling, N0SSC says
Some attempts have been made in the past in making open-source radio-based sandboxes like Arduino.
FaradayRF: a small board with an arduino-like microcontroller and a 900MHz digital 500kbps modem designed to have building blocks for developing your own modulations, protocols, etc. This was a pet project of the Salmi twins, who realized the project wasn’t getting much traction with the FOSS community, and the costs exploded beyond their initial hopes (it went from $25 to $150 per board) and had to pull out to focus on work. https://www.rtl-sdr.com/a-brief-look-at-the-faradayrf/
TenTec Patriot: an open-source QRP radio, had some promise but never gained traction. https://radioaficion.com/cms/ten-tec-patriot/
HackRF: on the other hand, this has been highly successful, a 0-6GHz RX/TX SDR controlled by GNURadio. Spawned lots of competition in the space that runs parallel but surprisingly detached from the amateur radio space. I think the success comes in part from marketing towards the hacker community, and not the amateur radio community (who generally might be thinking hackers are out for their bank accounts, lol).
The Xeigu x6100 SDR is now the next big thing, but not as you’d imagine. It has been discovered that it’s an SBC running linux that has already been rooted. Now anyone can do anything on this radio – install your own Wifi/Bluetooth drivers, create your own firmware to do say, FT8 on board, etc…but that’s hard and thankless work, so I’ll bet it fizzles out, plus the vendor will surely do everything it can to can root access and prevent third-party firmware from being installed.
What we need is a dedicated amateur radio foundation with a strong focus in the future of amateur radio to fund the software engineering of a modern architecture for opensource radio experimentation. If only there was a group like that out there! đ
Dan KB6NU says
It’s interesting that you bring these up. It’s too bad about Faraday RF. It did look promising at one time. Perhaps they were a bit too ahead of their time. The problem with the TenTec Patriot, if I recall, is that while it had an Arduino, there really wasn’t all that much you could do with it. The Xiegu is an interesting radio, and something to keep an eye on.
Having said all that, I will note that ARDC is funding the M17 Project, and if someone would approach us with a great open source project along these lines, then it would have a good chance of being funded.
Matt says
There is a huge community behind the uBitx (now at v6) – which is around $130 – and Farhan is shortly to release the sBitx – with Raspberry Pi instead of the arduino. The unit is fully open source – there are a huge range of mods and upgrades and the community is helpful.
I have a 6100, I have a 705, I have had a 7300 and a 9600 – but the uBitx was by far the most fun to play with
https://www.hfsignals.com/index.php/ubitx/
Martin R Rothfield says
At first I thought that < $200 for a kit wasn't feasible, but QRP shows how to do it with a $55 for a QCX-mini and $30 50 W amp. The design could be easily enhanced to do WSJT weak signal modes like FT8. This could also be coded to run in Arduino. The weak signal libraries for Arduino already exist. A nicer display would make cool rig. Bluetooth could be used to allow a phone to be used for display & keyboard.
I've been tinkering with Lime-mini, SDR Angel, USB T/R switch, and ~3 W amps from Aliexpress. So far I've got a wideband, multi function HT breadboard working. I think that 3 W should be enough to drive a QRP labs amp, but a small buffer would be cheap.
Boris says
There is a project that mates the Arduino and radio https://github.com/threeme3/usdx
I believe, if it wil be modified to be more modular (in terms of “building blocks) – it can become a heart of many starter rigs.