Hackerbox 0096 - Two Meter - RF Fun!

hey y'all welcome back to the hack Shack today we've got another fresh box from the folks at hacker boxes this is hacker box number 96 and the name is 2 over let's get this on the bench and see what we have inside here this is the esp32 T Display Kit with the 1.14 in color LCD this will be the brains behind the operation with the nice color display this is the telescoping UHF VHF SMA female antenna and I think the brand is Nagoya here we've got a super cool radio hacker holographic sticker here we've got three 12 mm tactile push buttons with blue caps this is the coaxial PCB Mount SMA mail connector that's what our antenna is going to connect to here are some blue insulated header pins here we've got two stereo 3.5 mm TRS Jacks and here we have the sa 818 VHF radio transceiver module this is all the fun RF goodness in one little package there that we'll be sending commands to and stuff and look at this this is a great looking PCB the hacker box is included this month in the kit very cool silk screening on there love it and last but not least our hacker boox 96 collectible reference card with info about our esp32 module and info about our sa 818v module before we move on I'd like to take a moment to thank today's sponsor PCB way did you know you can get custom pcbs made starting at only $5 and in addition to their PCB prototype service they also offer PCB assembly CNC Machining 3D printing sheet metal fabrication and injection molding Services they even have their own Store where all kinds of goodies are available for purchase please give them a look and again we thank PCB way for being today's sponsor as they always do the folks at hacker boxes have included a great set of instructions chalk full of links and example code here on instructables this is just great I'll be following along with this as we build and try out this kit but before we build I wanted to talk real quick about what why the name 2 m this is because 2 m refers to a wavelength now this may be old hat to hams or folks that have a lot of RF experience but just in case you don't this is how this works basically the higher the frequency the shorter the wavelength the lower the frequency the longer the wavelength and let's look at this zoomed in section of the a RL frequency band chart thing here look at this this is the 2 meter band and it goes from 144 MHz to 148 so smack dab in the middle of that would be 146 so let's go back and look at this first image and look at this equation this simplified equation shows us how we ar at the wavelength so basically it's 300 / 146 that gives you right at about 2 m so that's where the 2 m come from now technically you'll see that this module can go a little below and a little above that but that's roughly why this is called 2 m Jamie from the future here this has always been a fun little demonstration or just thing related to wavelength that I always like to tell folks just in case you're not familiar so you know most microwaves operate at like 2.45 GHz right so that wavelength is about 124 mm give or take but now if you ever wondered why you know you can watch your stuff cook without having your face and you know melt off like the guy in Raiders at the Lost Art well check out this mesh and I've gotten the set of calipers here adjusted as to about 124 mm See it'll let visible light through but it will block the microwaves and that's how you're able to look at your stuff while it's in there without getting any of the ill effects now anyone that's worked in Enterprise Wi-Fi can tell you that these things aren't perfectly sealed because of the haboc they used to wreak on the networks luckily we have more options than just 2.4 now some of these old microwaves will tear up some the rfy all right now it's time to get ready to build this thing one thing you want to make sure you have is a USBC cable handy the kit does not come with one but you'll need one to program your esp32 and we're going to put some test code on here and make sure we have the needed libraries and settings right before we get the soldering Aon hot so we're going to follow through these instructions here that are in the documentation and make sure that we have this board set to the esp32 dev module the upload speed set correctly the CPU frequency set correctly The Flash frequency all of these settings we're going to make sure these are right and you'll see in my case here this is on com 16 so that's what I had set my serial port to now here's where I was following the instructions to install the TFT espi module but it was already installed so I went ahead and perform the updated like it had there and let that install then I navigated to to where the user setup select Doh file was and I edit it as indicated to uncomment the line for it to be for this uh 25 TT go display next as I continued following the instructions I loaded up this color Test example module here and compiled that and pushed it to the controller to see if that looked like it worked okay this is how things looked on the bench after I pushed the Cod to it and I believe that's how things are supposed to look so got ready to move on to the next steps the first component I soldered down was the sa 818 module and I just went ahead and put a little bit of flux down before I tried to solder that on there next I got these tactile push buttons put in next I mounted the SMA Mel connector with a little bit of blue tack to hold it in place and here I'm mounting the two 3.5 mm stereo Jacks and here I'm s in in the stereo Jacks and on this connector I add a little flux cuz it's a big chunk of metal there and I tried previously and realized pretty quick that some flux would help and that did make that a lot easier here I am soldering the three switches in place and here I'm putting in the headers for the esp32 module and I think I use a little blue tag here as well to help hold things in place and here I'm s ing all those pins here I'm putting in a couple of the blue header pins holding those in place with some more blue Tack and soldering those in place a little bit of cleaning with some alcohol and Q-Tip or cotton swab if you will next it was time to stick the esp32 module onto those headers and solder those into place and then a bit more clean up then I stuck the caps on these switches and last but not least attach the antenna kind of following along in the order of the indestructible the first bit of sample code I tried out was this 2m demo sketch basically loaded it up gave it a quick look and sent it to the board once the code pushed successfully I disconnected and reconnected the USB just to make sure it powered up as expected and as you can see here it boots up just fine if you look at the code and also as you can read in the the instructible you'll see that this particular code out of the box will load in several Noah weather frequencies and one amateur radio frequency and the programming as it is stock from this example button a if you press that you can cycle through the different frequencies now here in my basement I was unable to pick up anything and that's no surprise I can't even do that on a you know any kind of radio or or amateur radio with the built-in antenna so I took this up and stuck it on the hood of my pickup truck out side in the driveway and check out the results I was able to get there 012 the 8 to 14 outl for Friday November 3rd through Thursday November 9th next I edited the 2 M demo sketch file and added one frequency and modified an existing frequency I changed that existing one to 146 dot 52 instead of25 so it would be the Simplex calling frequency and I added in a 14645 that I would use to do some testing between the unit down here in the basement and an HT that I was going to put outside a little bit away now when I booted the unit up you can see the uh edits I've made this 52 instead of 25 and then this Simplex 14645 was in there and this is the microphone I tried first but it did not work then I found this old wired lava ler microphone and it did work you can check it out right there and when I used that it sounded like this on the receiving radio this is Ku doing an audio test from the hacker Box 2 M kit to the oang that's a distance away outside testing 1 two 3 this is clear that audio didn't seem too bad perfectly passable for communications as far as I'm concerned uh the one thing about that that frequency that I was using is part of the amateur radio range in 2 m and you do have to be licensed to you make use of those frequencies something that's interesting is this Ms or multi-use Radio Service it has frequencies that this radio can do but you probably definitely really shouldn't use this radio for those frequencies even if you did have them in there perfectly and paid special attention to the maximum allow bandwidth to be n narrow or wide and uh you know surely that's totally not impossible to notice or enforce or anything like that but I just thought I'd mention it I'm definitely not condoning breaking any rules just to be clear next I want to check out some of this fox hunting mode or fox hunting code that was available in the instructible just make sure that you do the part where you take the melody file and put it inside the folder that gets generated when at least for my case when I opened it up it wanted to make a folder for the main Fox Hunt code so then I just dragged the melody into there and when I got into there of course I had to change a few things I put my call sign in there and my phone number in a certain place and I'm not going to show those uh right here at this moment but I pop those in and then gave it a test to see if it sounded like it was working and it actually seemed like it was working on the first guy and this melody that hacker boxes has this playing as a hoot after seeing this test out okay I grabbed the transmitter and a little USB battery and brought it with me to pick up my kid after an activity they had to do I went ahead and hid this transmitter and gave them the general idea of what we were trying to do and let them have a go at it and as we got closer I had them basically just take the antenna off of my handheld and you'll see how they did here you can still hear the Mor's code right which way is it strongest you want to wait again got it pretty cool so this hacker box was another great example of one that has something that I thought about playing with before but never got around to it but here they go they put it in my mailbox and there it is right there ready to go with some good instructions and some code to play with where someone can hit the ground running and start tinkering right away and as of the time of recording this video this box is still available feel free to head over there and order one from them and I'm sure they would love to help you out with that and if this Kit's not particularly something that uh you're into check out some of their other kits they've got some great other boxes there so as I'm wrapping this up here I just wanted to mention Josh's channel here and his Discord and everything he is from Ham Radio crash course and this is a guy who who is positive and everyone kind of in his sphere there are good folks I found for the most part so if you have thought about getting your license before and you've been turned off by the way certain folks act or or what they do don't give up on us yet there are tons of us that would love to have you on the airwaves and I also you know if you have zero interest in that I personally think there's plenty of RF type experimentation that you can do without a license but so many more things open up to you if you do get a license but I'm not trying to say you have to have one we'd love to have you on board not all of us are negative there's plenty of things to do there's like so many different niches and things to get into so I just invite you to to give it another shot and give it another look Josh has some great resources another Jamie from the future spot here if you are interested in RF technology and radio even if you're not wanting to get your hand license if you're into the electronic side of things I think that you would love the this book The a RL brings these out every year and it's not cheap but a lot of this information doesn't change every year you know as you imagine especially Theory and things like that that stuff doesn't change you can pick these up that are from a few years back or several years back and they're still a great resource of all kinds of fun stuff and you can get them very cheap if you're not getting the current year version just something to consider hey if you made it this far thanks for watching hope to see you again next time take care bye-bye

Channel: Jamie's Hack Shack

Views: 40,138

Keywords: hack, hackerbox, hackerboxes, rf, radio, ham radio, amateur radio, 2m, 2 meters, vhf, fox hunt, foxhunt, solder, soldering, kit, electronics

Id: IAtHnQ7R6Z4

Length: 15min 44sec (944 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 01 2023