Yesterday’s musings about SSTV using the Raspberry Pi has me thinking about creating a little SSTV beacon using the super-inexpensive (less than twenty dollars with charger) BF-888S HT from Baofeng. It’s hard to imagine a cheaper HT than this: it doesn’t even have a display. It has 16 channels, and announces which channel you are on with an (English or Chinese) voice. I used the open-source and free program CHIRP to program this with a set of useful frequencies in the FRS and amateur bands, and it seems to work pretty well.

But could I use it to make an SSTV beacon on UHF?

Seems pretty straightforward. I would just need a little bit of interface between the Pi and the BF-888S. Luckily, the Baofeng does seem to support VOX mode, so in principle just using a little 3.5mm jack should work just fine, but I think I’ll go to the trouble of adding an isolation transformer, a potentiometer to set the levels (probably just a little trim pot) and an AC blocking cap. In theory then I’d just need to play the wav file out, the VOX would pick up the sound and start transmitting. Voila!

One small bummer: the BF-888S does not have an external power jack. If you were going to install this in a permanent location, you’d probably have to rig up a 3.7v power supply to feed in through the battery terminals. Perhaps a good opportunity to 3D print something!

To make a fully functioning beacon, I think you just need to combine the “raspistill” program which can do frame grabs and save them as JPEGS with my “robot36” code which will convert them to wave files, and glue them together with some Python code. A rough prototype could probably be hacked together in an hour. Seems like fun!

Stay tuned.

Addendum: Here’s a link to the BF-888S on Amazon. $17.69! If you add a remote mic and the programming cable, it’ll set you back $31.34. You can find an attempt a the manual here. Many functions are enabled/disabled by holding down the MONI and PTT buttons while turning it on. For instance, tuning to channels 1-5 and doing so sets the VOX on or OFF (and sets the sensitivity, I think, more experimentation to come.)

A while ago, Bill Meara from Soldersmoke brought Ashar Farhan’s new design, the Minima to my attention. The Minima is a general coverage transceiver which has a lot of cool features. It’s a superhet design which is Arduino based (actually, it incorporates a bare bones Arduino, which is little more than an Atmel ATMega328 chip.) Farhan is the designer of the popular BitX design, and this design has a lot of cool features, and yet seems rather straightforward.

Some versions of this are beginning to appear in the wild. Mark, G0MGX seems to have done the best at documenting his build on his blog. Here’s his video demonstrating the receiver:

I haven’t had a lot of time to operate JT65/JT9, my preferred digital mode at the moment, but I often leave my receiver hooked up and monitoring the bands for reception reports. My wet-noodle of an antenna can usually pull in signals from about 40 different counties in the span of a week of monitoring. I usually leave it running on 40m during the night, and 20m during the day. Sometimes I’ll toss in 15m just to see what’s going on. Here’s a screengrab of the last 24 hours, for instance:

If you want, you can go to the PSKReporter website and enter my callsign K6HX (or any other) and get a live report. In this map, the blue dots are signals that I received on 40m, the yellow ones are 20m, and the brownish ones are for 15m. If you look at these regularly, and over time, you can begin to get some idea of how propagation works by frequency and by time of day.

But look at that map closely, in particularly in the area up above Scandanavia, you should see a single yellow mark well above the Artic circle. A little poking indicates that this was for the rather unusual callsign JW4BHO, which comes from Svalbard. I’d never seen a radio spot from there, which is always exciting. I looked up JW4BHO on the callsign database on QRZ.com, and I felt a bit sadder. His callsign wasn’t registered: not a good sign. I also did a db search on PSKReporter to see if anyone else had spotted him. No one else had. Rats.

One thing bothered me though: the callsign and the marked for the reception report matched. JT65/JT9 signals both encode the Maidenhead gridsquare to indicate the position of the transmitter. If this was just random noise, then how did the location and the callsign match? That seemed very unlikely by chance.

Luckily, I still had WSJT-X up, and could scroll back and look at the reception report:

Here you can see that WSJT-X reported a signal from JW4BHO to T07NAA from gridsquare OQ65, at a SNR of just -17. -17 isn’t a particularly weak signal, which surprised me a little, but the reception report is obviously bogus. T07 doesn’t even refer to a valid country. But somewhat oddly, the gridsquare OQ65 isn’t even the gridsquare marked on the map. For some reason, the PSKReporter website has decided to substitute a generic square marking the center of the country instead of using the actual gridsquare marked in the reception report. That seems odd to me.

And this isn’t the first time it happened to me, I’ve seen it a couple of times over the last month, including a fictious spot from Somalia.

Has anyone else had this problem?

I love cheap hacks and cheap gadgets. Don’t get me wrong: I also like the expensive good stuff, but if you don’t have a clear idea of what you want and need, spending a lot of money on gadgets just isn’t in the cards. But if the gadgets are cheap enough, experimentation becomes possible for money that would normally by you pizza.

Today’s musings came about by thinking about:
1. The Raspberry Pi ($35, and I have some already)
2. The Baofeng BF-888S, a single band HT that costs less than twenty bucks on Amazon

The question I had was: could I setup some kind of inexpensive simplex VOIP node (in ham radio we use Echolink and/or IRLP most commonl) that could use these two items? I live in the bottom of a small valley, and my coverage to nearby repeaters isn’t great. It would be kind of cool to make a little mini-node to allow radios in the
valley, and hop via the internet out to the broader world. And of course, when you look, you find:

KP4TR’s great site which seems like what I want.

I’ve bookmarked this hear for future exploration.

It’s cool. It’s cheap. You might want to get one.

Okay, for those of you who haven’t heard of them, the Google Chromecast is a little $35 gadget that plugs into the HDMI port on your TV and allows you to watch stream Netflix/YouTube/Google Play videos from your iPad/iPhone/Android/laptop device on your big screen. with more media apps to come. The neat thing is that the Chromecast doesn’t stream the video from your device: it connects directly to the source, and your device merely controls it. That means that you can turn off your device or go do something else, and the video will keep playing. There are also extensions to Google’s Chrome browswer that allows you to echo your browser tab onto the big screen as well. I tested it with Hulu and Retrovision, and full screening the video worked reasonably well, but not as good as the built in Apps. I also brought up a couple of WebGL demos, and the mirroring worked quite well, but with a bit of lag. Google says support for more services is coming. I’d like to see an extension that allowed you to send any HTML5 video to the screen, but even as it is, it’s quite serviceable. It doesn’t do as much as the Apple TV, but works with more devices, and is much cheaper.

I’d write more about it, but I thought this review did a pretty good job of going over the details. Thumbs up from me!

This is probably boring to a great number of you, but a recent FCC proposed notice of rule making has been getting a lot of play lately. RM-11699 is a proposal to allow encryption of traffic in amateur radio so that we can handle information of a sensitive nature in times of emergency, especially information that is covered in the U.S. under HIPAA. The vast majority of the comments on this proposal have been against it, as are my own. If you’d like to read what I have to say, you can read my own comments, complete with an embarrassing number of typos (I drew them up somewhat hastily) at this link at the FCC website. If you’d like to read some more well thought out (if more formal and legalistic) you can check out these comments by Bruce Perens.

I didn’t get a whole lot more amateur radio done.   I spent some time running JT65, mostly on 20m, but sometimes skipping up higher to 17m and 15m.  I’m still eight states short of my WAS, and was teased by stations in NV, WY and ND, which I managed to start QSOs with, but didn’t actually complete.   Grrr!   I did leave my radio running in monitor mode, and continued to rack up spots from another fifteen countries:  Bolivia, Chile, Columbia, Croatia, Denmark, Guatamala, Hungary, Mariana Islands, Norway, Paraguay, Singapore, Surinam,  Switzerland, Tanzania, and Thailand.

I spent some time looking at FreeDV: the digital voice program for HF that uses David Rowe’s  Codec2; low bitrate voice codec.  I didn’t have a lot of luck: I did get it all configured and ready to go, but off and on monitoring of the published calling frequency (14.236) didn’t result in more than a momentary glimpse of a few tentative bleeps.   I tried using K7VE’s QSO finder, and found that indeed, there probably were QSOs going on during the weekend net (1100 Pacific time) that I simply couldn’t hear.  Not too surprising: despite my apparent success running JT65, I suspect my antenna system is actually not that good, and lots is going on below my detection threshold.   I thought that it would be possible to configure up some software to simply wait for audio signals and record them using Audacity, but my IC-735 isn’t especially well calibrated for frequency, and I think I’m probably tuning about 130Hz high, which would prevent a synch lock if I just blindly set the frequency.  I still might try to set that up, and see if I can capture some of this digital audio.   But I think I need to get lucky, and/or make some improvements to my receive antenna before I’ll make any headway.  If anyone else is interested in FreeDV, drop me a note: I’d love to give it a try…

Addendum: I thought maybe a video showing FreeDV might further tempt readers. Here’s one showing it in use. It isn’t especially interesting in terms of weak-signal performance (the SSB audio is clean, with very near full quieting) but it should be noted that the FreeDV signal takes up only about 1100Hz of bandwidth, while the SSB signal is 2.5Khz or so. I don’t think it will replace SSB anytime soon, but in theory doubling the number of QSOs that can take place in a given chunk of spectrum is pretty neat…

I’ve been leaving my radio monitoring JT65 frequencies for the last week, largely on 20m, with occasional diversions to 40m, 30m, and 17m. JT65HF can upload all your spots to pskreporter and from them, you can download an ADIF log file. I thought I’d see what stations I heard over the last week, and the results were surprising enough that I thought I’d share them.

First of all, I heard stations in 48 DXCC entities, which include:

Alaska, Argentina, Asiatic Russia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, Curacao, Czech Republic, Egypt, England, European Russia, Fed. Rep. of Germany, France, French Polynesia, Gabon, Greece, Grenada, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Latvia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Poland, Puerto Rico, Republic of Korea, Romania, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Ukraine, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, Wales, West Malaysia

This broke down to hearing signals from 520 unique calls:

2E0ZRQ, 4A1TD, 6B3YOE, 6Y5IC, 7L2MDI, 7N4HQN, 8J9VLP, 9M2TPT, AA0DW, AA7OK, AB1NJ, AB1PF, AB6OR, AB7JK, AC0MW, AC7SG, AC8XI, AD0AR, AE3T, AE5OL, AE5ZD, AE7CD, AE7U, AF5AT, AF5FH, AF5KY, AF6JO, AG0A, AG8M, AH6OY, AH6RR, AI6RE, AK4AT, AK4BB, AL7ID, BD2CO, BD2MC, BD3RQ, BD7BW, BI7MCK, BU2CB, BX2ADE, BX2ADJ, CO2BG, CO8RS, CX4NF, DD3KF, DF9JL, DG0RG, DG1LHM, DG3OAF, DJ1FQ, DK3EG, DL3NOC, DL4FBW, DL8ZBA, EA1BYC, EA1JM, EA3HJ, EA4DKJ, EA7CHS, EA7GDC, EA7IU, EB3FDI, EI1DG, F1ABL, F1FZH, F4BAL, F4BKT, F4CLN, F4EEX, F4GOH, F5JMH, F5RHE, F6HHO, FK8HG, FO5QJ, G1OXB, G3KLV, G3VIR, G4HXC, G7JWR, GW0TKX, HL2KV, HL3IB, HL5QO, IK2TDM, IK4UOA, IK5FKF, IN3NHZ, IZ0IWD, IZ0MIO, IZ3XEF, J35X, JA0EKI, JA0FOX, JA0HNN, JA1AZR, JA1BZJ, JA1DEQ, JA1FIK, JA1FMN, JA1FVS, JA1GFB, JA1NUX, JA1VDJ, JA1WDZ, JA1WGR, JA1XBX, JA2JNT, JA2VZ, JA2ZS, JA3BQB, JA3CG, JA3EGE, JA3FQO, JA3SJG, JA4CXX, JA5AZO, JA5DVK, JA5TX, JA6ATL, JA6CRP, JA6EIM, JA7FYU, JA7IGN, JA7MJ, JA8CQM, JA8FTB, JA8IZP, JA8NIS, JE1HRC, JE1TRF, JE2PMC, JE6JFL, JF1CSE, JF1JTQ, JF1KUR, JF1PTX, JF2IWL, JG1GFU, JG1ITH, JG1USO, JG1XUZ, JH1ICJ, JH1KYA, JH1MKT, JH1QKG, JH1WCL, JH3GCN, JH3IEG, JH3IMR, JH3OWW, JH3XYP, JH7GNC, JJ5IZX, JJ7RMS, JK1XUI, JL1DLQ, JL1OVC, JM1ESG, JO1PYV, JO3IEE, JO3TAP, JP1GVC, JQ2HVN, JR1AUK, JR1BVP, JR3UIC, JS2KHM, K0GDI, K0KC, K0PT, K0RAR, K0TAZ, K0TPP, K0WIU, K1BJF, K1JT, K2AFY, K2B, K2CDP, K2KYH, K2NCC, K3GEV, K3HR, K3NAW, K3YP, K4AFR, K4BOI, K4ED, K4MJ, K4OP, K4QJC, K4RVJ, K5DE, K5WPN, K5WW, K6EU, K6HOM, K6LE, K6RWM, K6SID, K7HRT, K7JBQ, K7KKY, K7ZL, K8FER, K8JMB, K8WHA, K9AAN, K9GVM, K9IBM, K9OHI, KA1GMN, KA1WPM, KA3LOC, KA9CCH, KA9SWE, KB0MDQ, KB1RVT, KB1TJC, KB2BAF, KB3IYQ, KB5EZ, KB6DAY, KB7JWD, KB7N, KB7RUQ, KB8DID, KB9GSY, KB9PRF, KC0VPL, KC0ZDV, KC2FZN, KC2RDC, KC2SJ, KC2WTG, KC8GCR, KC9ON, KC9REX, KC9UNL, KC9WNZ, KD0AGX, KD0PMW, KD0QYN, KD2CFH, KD2JC, KD4K, KD4NUL, KD5R, KD5ZAT, KD6HQ, KD6PJE, KD7H, KD7PCE, KD8HSV, KD8OVN, KD8RDH, KE4TG, KE9JF, KF2H, KF2T, KF4RWA, KF5GST, KF5REP, KF5SLN, KF6LYF, KF7EMI, KF7JGF, KF7LF, KF7PG, KF7PKL, KF7QPK, KF7RTU, KF7ZZ, KG2MD, KG5RJ, KG6EYC, KG7HQ, KH6FT, KI0J, KI4MI, KI5PM, KI6CJE, KI6DY, KI6VJY, KI7PY, KI7RM, KJ2U, KJ6CC, KJ6PCC, KJ6RKZ, KJ6WIA, KK4DSD, KK4DTT, KK8G, KL7GRF, KL7QW, KN8J, KR4RO, KS4S, KY7S, KZ8K, LU2DO, LU6PCK, LU8DIO, LU8EX, MM0LGS, N0XZ, N1CPU, N1GJ, N1MGO, N2ADV, N2LQ, N2MGT, N3BNA, N3KV, N3MVX, N3XX, N4ABN, N4CE, N4CWS, N4LXB, N4ST, N4TQ, N4UHZ, N4ZQ, N4ZSA, N5IC, N5PT, N5RGV, N5YHM, N6BX, N6GFK, N6NG, N6OL, N7NSO, N8HS, N8KSG, N9DUG, N9GUE, N9OJC, ND4Q, NI0B, NJ1H, NN1B, NN6XX, NO2T, NQ3TDV, NS2B, NS6E, NS7RS, NT4F, NU6O, NW5P, NZ8V, OE1DXA, OE3DXA, OK1FIM, OK1UFC, OK2BGB, ON3LA, ON4QX, ON8BZ, PA1BR, PC5E, PD1JH, PE1AUV, PJ2MI, PP5ZAP, PY2RN, PY2VM, RA0JBL, RA0UF, RD3DM, RK6A, RN0CF, SM0MEM, SP7IIT, SQ3LLJ, SV0LR, TI3VLM, TR8CA, UA0CKP, UA0LOQ, UA3DTK, UA6ARR, US5CCO, US5UFF, UU9JQ, VA3DYD, VA3ECJ, VA3LLZ, VA3MJR, VA6JB, VA7AQD, VE3RYI, VE4KZ, VE4TV, VE4XC, VE6BY, VE6VS, VE7HBS, VE7NH, VE9JMG, VK2ELF, VK2MUS, VK2ND, VK2QQ, VK3DHI, VK3FM, VK3MQ, VK3TCT, VK4AFU, VK4BDJ, VK4CMV, VK4KEE, VK4NGW, VK4SSB/2, VK4WDM, VK4WTN, VK5DG, VK5EI, VK5KGP, VK5NG, VK6DU, VK7SM, VK7TR, VK7XX, VK8NSB, W0GTS, W0TUP, W1CAM, W1HFB, W1YIF, W2PFA, W3ACO, W3BI, W3SFG, W4ED, W4EG, W4JSI, W4PGK, W4UAT, W4WWJ, W4XK, W5ISP, W5JLF, W5KY, W5OXM, W5TTE, W5VU, W6EAW, W6IR, W6KY, W6OA, W6TZI, W7CRK, W7DGZ, W7LYS, W7PI, W7VP, W8FDV, W8XLR, W9MJ, W9MO, WA0AM, WA0JCE, WA0RKQ, WA2JSG, WA2LTH, WA4CQG, WA4DMV, WA4MIT, WA5TVO, WA7AG, WA7JS, WA7SCH, WA8EFK, WB0BLV, WB2GJD, WB3LHD, WB4CIW, WB4OSS, WB6OWZ, WB6URD, WB9DAN, WB9OWN, WC0D, WC7V, WD4OIN, WE1RDO, WF1G, WH6EBS, WN0Y, WN6K, WO4R, WP4JCF, WR1Z, WS0L, WU7B, WX7MB, XE1H, YB0LWA, YB8EXL, YB8VM, YC8DFR, YL2NX, YO9APK, YV5FJ, YV6BFE, YY5LAY, ZL1COP, ZL2CVW, ZL3ACU, ZL3TRR, ZL4AD, ZL4SA, ZS6WN

The most distant call I’ve heard was ZS6WN, which is a distance of very nearly 17000 kilometers. The best DX QSO I’ve had in that time was VK7TR in Tasmania, which was a distance of about 12680 kilometers.

In ham radio, we have used the term “alligator” to refer to anyone who has a large signal, but is deaf to people who respond (the idea being that alligators have small ears, but big mouths). I seem to have the opposite problem: I can hear many signals that I cannot work regularly. Most US stations seem to be reachable by me with around 10 watts of power (modulo the vagaries of conditions) but I can’t seem to hit many of the DX stations I can hear with 25 watts. It would appear that I have the opposite problem: the size of my ears are outpacing my voice. What does that make me, a floppy eared bunny?