Cheap USB interface to connect Ham radios and other devices to the PC October 14, 2011
Posted by GuySoft in Crictor, diy, Electronics, Hamakor, ITU, linux, open source, wireless.Tags: diy, Electronics, hacking, ham radio, open electroncs, open source
10 comments
Ham radio PC interface
Hi all,
As promised in my last post, I have finally finished designing and building a cheap interface to connect ham radios or any other audio device that does not share audio common ground to a PC, including a PTT interface. Price should be around $17 or 60 NIS. The control is done using a USB interface, so unlike most ham radio hardware that uses serial connections, this one is plug and play in modern PCs. The neat thing is that it uses them same commands as a RigBlaster. So this interface works out of the box with common ham radio programs like Echolink and Svxlink. The interface should also work with soundmodem which can be used for X.25 packet digital communications, without any extra hardware (I am still trying to get this to work). This interface could also be used to connect to other devices that don’t share a common ground. For example like phone lines.
Parts you will need
- TTL USB Serial interface – The main part is a simple CP2102 $4 controller that can be percussed from ebay. It simulates a serial device, meaning you can still work with older pieces of software with it. Note though you need to solder a cable from the RTS pin on the board, because normally they don’t come with a pre-made pin.
- Audio line isolation transformer – This can be easily salvaged from any old dial-up modem. That’s how I get mine, it seems to be much easier to get them off old modems than finding them in electronics shops, plus they are so easily identifiable (just make sure not to break the contacts when you take them out, happened to me twice). If you can’t find any old dial-up modems you can get it from ebay. (more…)
Echolink Node Native on Linux with Svxlink, and a Cheap PTT Hardware Interface August 8, 2011
Posted by GuySoft in Crictor, diy, Electronics, Hamakor, ITU, linux, open source, programming, wireless.Tags: bumbleb, debian, diy, hacking, ham radio, howto, open source, radio, svxlink, ubuntu
8 comments
The Jerusalem Echolink Node (4Z7GAI-R)
I recently got my amateur HAM Radio license from the Israel ministry of communication. My call sign is 4Z7GAI.
I have been working on getting an Echolink node running on the Jerusalem repeater using Linux. Echolink is a closed proprietary software that lets you connect ham radios to one another and key them across the Internet. Luckily someone wrote a FOSS program called Svxlink, which lets you connect to the Echolink network on Linux., A remote radio control with an echolink server, svxlink-server and an Echolink graphical client, Qtel. I am going to explain in this post how to get svxlink compiled and working (compiling is the hard part). I will also giving out here an Ubuntu package for the lazy ones among you.
I will also add a small section on the physical connection to the radio, an old Icom IC-02AT from the 80s (around my age). (more…)
TEDding from the car – gPodder video Plugin for Rockbox April 7, 2011
Posted by GuySoft in Crictor, diy, Electronics, ipod, ITU, linux, open source, podcast, programming, python.Tags: car, diy, ffmpeg, gpodder, mp4, mpeg, open source, python, rockbox, TED, video
7 comments
TEDing from the car
Hey all,
After a few weeks of bouncing emails with Thomas Perl I am happy to announce that we have a working plugin for his wonderful podcast application called gPodder. With this plugin installed, any mp4 video podcast that is downloaded with gPodder is automatically converted to a format playable by rockbox MPEG player plugin. Effectively meaning seamless sync of video podcasts to any rockbox enabled device. I am specifically using the Sansa fuze player, but just changing the screen resolution at the top of the plugin should make it work with any other rockbox device, and with the right screen size. The final product for me of all this technical stuff is that I can listen to TED lectures in the car. Or using the verb was coined by my friend Uzair “TEDding” from my car.
How to Install
- First you should have gPodder installed (available also as “apt-get install gpodder” or any other distribution install equivalent).
- Second you will need these packages installed too:
apt-get install python-kaa-metadata ffmpeg python-dbus
- Now all that is left is to copy this script to
mkdir -p ~/.config/gpodder/hooks/ cp rockbox_mp4_convert.py ~/.config/gpodder/hooks/
- If your are using a different player from the Sansa Fuse, modify the first lines to your screen resolution:
DEFAULT_DEVICE_WIDTH = 224.0 DEFAULT_DEVICE_HEIGHT = 176.0
make sure to include the .0 at the end.
- Thats it! Now each time video is download, for example from the TEDTalks Video Podcast it would be converted on arrival, and relinked as the file to be synced.
As usual, I would love to hear feedback from users and suggestions.
Build your own Free SMS to Twitter gateway with open source tools and cheap hardware March 27, 2011
Posted by GuySoft in Crictor, diy, Electronics, Hamakor, IGF, ITU, linux, open source, programming, python.Tags: cellphones, gammu, internet, linux, open source, python, release, sms, twitter
17 comments
SMS Twitter Gateway logo
Hey all,
I am releasing here set of instructions and source that will enable anyone to set up a phone number, that if you SMS it, will post your massage on to your own twitter account. This service is called “Twiter SMS Gate”. The service handles multiple users, and should be easily modified to support other services like statusnet (and with a bit more code maybe even other social networks). The SMS hardware required is any cheap cellphone that can work with gammu-smsd (mine is a fake Nokia from India). Twiter SMS Gate also lets users easily register to it with their own cellphone.
I hope that people that like this idea would start hosting more SMS gates, as we create a wide network of those around the world. SMS Twitter Gate-IL , The Israeli Gate, has been running for a few weeks now and even got covered in the local media here.
The source is written in Python, which includes the phone hardware hooks, webserver, twitter client and database access.
Here is the cellphone used to run my server, just to show you how simple it is to do this, no super-expensive hardware required! (server is also my personal Linux-running PC:
Fake Nokia Cellphone acting as a dedicated SMS server
- Source is available here on GitHub, along with basic instructions on how to set it up.
- Working example of an SMS Twitter Gate in Israel
- List of working gates (one at the time of writing this)
If you have any kind of difficulty setting this up, please give me feedback, so we can make it as easy as possible.
Bumble-B and an ADC with OpenGL make an oscilloscope February 22, 2010
Posted by GuySoft in Crictor, diy, Electronics, Hamakor, ITU, linux, open source, programming, python.Tags: bumbleb, diy, Electronics, linux, open source, OpenGL, programming, python
2 comments
Hi all,
During my small semester break I managed to connect my Bumble-b chip to an analog-digital converter (ADC).
With this I can read voltage changes and send the information to the computer to plot live.
Here is a demonstration video:
How its all connected
Introducing the Bumble-b and using it to control a LED matrix October 8, 2009
Posted by GuySoft in Crictor, diy, Electronics, Hamakor, ITU, open source, programming.Tags: bumble-b, diy, Electronics, howto, leds, linux, open source, programming, usb
4 comments
The Bumble-b
Hi all,
The past week I have been playing around with my new Bumble-b, as I mentioned in my last post. Basically what I did with it is control an LED matrix. After doing that I made it in to a USB Device! Thanks to the simple library LUFA. Now I can use a simple echo > /dev/ttyACM0 command to send a text message to the display. Meaning that I have now /dev/matrix!
In this post I hope to explain how to use the Bumble-b, a programmable USB chip, including its own built in programmer, for just $20. I would also like to encourage people here in Israel to start playing with this, since its cheap and easy to order way to get started with amateur electronics.
Here is a quick introduction video (followed by a detail post):
What is the Bumble-b?
The bumble-b is a USB programmable AVR chip with a programmer built in to it (called a breakout board). It is an AVR chip, meaning that its based on something that is widely used (the model is at90usb162). Moreover, since it has a USB connector right on it , this makes the creation of USB devices really simple. But not only USB devices alone.
(more…)
Connecting a programmable chip to a remote Controlled Car September 11, 2009
Posted by GuySoft in Crictor, Electronics, Hamakor, ITU, linux, open source, programming, Uncategorized, wireless.Tags: C, Electronics, hacking, howto, linux, open source, programming
35 comments
Car and the breadboard
Hey all,
I have been playing with electronics the last few days, and I thought I might show you the outcome.
I basically took a remote controlled car, and connected it to a 16F84 programmable chip, and now I can control the car using C code.
Although I am using a car in this guide, you should be able to close and open any kind of switch. Anything under 15 volts.
For people who have don’t feel like reading all this (and also for those who do), here is an action-packed video of the outcome:
After you saw that, here is how I did this.
(more…)
