The Ultimate Portable Ham Radio Computer

hello guys oscar hotel 8 sierra tango november here from survival tech nord today we're going to be talking about moving away from the raspberry pi for off-grid communications emergency communications and preparedness this is going to be a tough video to make so i'll just go ahead and jump right in if you stick with me i'll tell you all about it you are listening to the emergency broadcast systems this station broadcast emergency news and official information on the air for a sign mary i once heard elon musk say if your rate of innovation is fast enough the copycats will be copying what you did years ago and although it's understandably frustrating we do have a culture of continuing to move forward on this channel that's what this video is all about now to be totally fair we've built some pretty incredible raspberry pies on the channel the goal was always to augment or radios radios like the azu fda one seven and eight one eight or the yeezy ft-891 or zygo x5105 or g90 and actually any radio where audio facilities weren't present for data communications now this worked incredibly well especially because the raspberry pi was so cheap that was its main benefit where it fails especially from an off-grid perspective is its configuration complexity the number of additional peripherals required to get it up and running reliably when off-grid and its poor reliability in comparison to linux windows or mac os boxes now this doesn't mean we haven't had our successes we certainly have however what we don't want to do with emergency communications with preparedness with off-grid communications is start tinkering with a raspberry pi when we're out in the field so rather than focusing on the cost savings of the raspberry pi i've shifted my focus to reliability the general idea here is to remove as many points of failure from our computer systems as possible with the raspberry pi i needed an enclosure i needed a real-time clock i needed an external keyboard and perhaps an android phone or tablet to access the raspberry pi i needed to come up with some way to power the raspberry pi in the field and finally i needed to solve the problem of data or storage reliability since the sd cards were unreliable at best all this without the raspberry pi becoming as expensive as some other pc or tablet so let's go ahead and look at the alternative i've come up with for field communications so what you see at the top left of the screen is the current configuration of my raspberry pi 4. it's got power management and a real-time clock it also syncs the time for the raspberry pi and the real-time clock from a gps now there's absolutely nothing wrong with this raspberry pi if we're not using it with winlink and vada hf and as long as we're using it as a standalone system connected to the internet now when reliability becomes more important than cost we really have to start looking elsewhere for solutions so for field communications i've replaced the raspberry pi with the microsoft surface go 2. now more than likely for about half a year now on the channel you've seen me using it with the icom ic705 we can use it with other radios but it's going to be a wired connection between the surface goes usbc connection and the radio and audio interface so let's go ahead and take a look at some of the benefits we gain by using a microsoft surface or some other windows based laptop or tablet we can imagine the most notable difference between a raspberry pi configuration and operating with a microsoft surface is reduction in station complexity and components for this configuration i'm using the icom ic705 when pairing the 705 with the microsoft surface we have the radio we have the microsoft surface itself and either a wired or wireless connection between them that's it that's the entire station when combining the microsoft surface with other radios for example the lab 599 tx 500 or with other radios like the zaiku x5105 in these cases we use a digirig mobile for connectivity between cad controlling the audio ports on the radio and a single wire usb interface to the surface go to that's just a single usb cable between the radio and the tablet but we're not only talking about hardware benefits we also have software benefits with the surface over the raspberry pi now the most serious deal breakers are pat winlink and our reliance on rdop for hf communications now it's actually quite unfortunate but ardup actually suffers during poor band conditions or weak signal work moreover pat winlink although it's a huge step forward for the raspberry pi and linux operating systems it still lacks many of the basic features we expect from when link express on windows so if you're running a low power station with winlink for emergency communications you definitely want to be using vada hf with winlink express unfortunately there is no simple and reliable way to run vada hf and winlink express on a raspberry pi [Music] now even in the best case scenario the raspberry pi creates almost as many problems as it solves here we have a raspberry pi 4 with an android smartphone we have the icom ic 705 and of course a power supply to power it all now by all measures this is an incredibly clean installation it's also one which i'm happy to utilize at home or on the grid when we take the raspberry pi off-grid or in the field naturally we have our radio we have an audio interface if required and we also have cat control and all the cables now the raspberry pi still needs a real-time clock or a gps to match the time it needs a 5 volt power supply heat sinks if we're using the raspberry pi 4 and doing a lot of data decoding and still we'll need a screen mouse and keyboard or an android tablet or smartphone to interact with the raspberry pi now again i'm not saying this doesn't work we've used it successfully for a few years already but look at the complexity look at how difficult it is to configure at some point we have to ask ourselves if fiddling with the raspberry pi is our goal or focusing on communications should be our singular objective now it's definitely fun building and configuring the raspberry pi for field communications but i don't want to bet my life on the reliability of that raspberry pi now we don't want to just crap all over the raspberry pi because there certainly are circumstances where the raspberry pi is a magnificent solution for me that's on the desktop at home when i'm using big antennas with lots of gain the raspberry pi is connected to the internet so it doesn't require a gps or real-time clock or any of those components and finally rdop can make the best use of the more efficient home antennas giving rdop a helping hand to reach out to those rms gateways in the region now when the raspberry pi is coupled with an icom ic705 we really get a clean installation on the desktop this is a critically important point if we're going to be using our raspberry pi at home versus in the field now to be fair perhaps we can even delegate the raspberry pi to backup field computer status while utilizing more traditional computers like the microsoft surface go to as our primary field computers in any event we don't need to say goodbye to the raspberry pi we just need to utilize it where it's best suited now don't be too worried about specifically using the microsoft surface go to laptops and tablets from other manufacturers can work just as well the only reason you see so much emphasis placed on the microsoft surface go 2 in this video is because it's the one i chose to replace my raspberry pi in the field so what you're seeing now in the upper left hand corner of your screen is my android tablet the icom ic705 and of course the raspberry pi what we see in the lower left lower right and upper right sides of the screen are the icom ic705 with the surface the tx 500 with the surface and the x5105 with the surface with the icom ic705 in the surface there are simply one usb cable between the radio and the tablet that can also be set up wirelessly if you desire doing so for the tx 500 yazoo ft-818 and the zygo x5105 we have the digi-rig mobile creating the audio and cad control facilities with a one-wire interface back to the surface so we've removed the intermediate computer the raspberry pi from the equation they're simply our computer our radio and the digi rig for audio and cad control now one other thing i can do with the surface which i haven't been able to achieve on a raspberry pi with any great success is running multiple radios with multiple pieces of software simultaneously at least not without some lag or losing frames in one application or the other unfortunately the raspberry pi lacks sufficient cpu power to carry out this task still with my experience the raspberry pi 4 which is my preferred model is very good at doing one thing at a time and doing that extremely well now let's talk about choosing a machine to replace our raspberry pi first and foremost we want to find a machine which has usb-c power delivery or 12-volt charging it's an extremely big no-no to use an inverter to convert something from dc to ac then back to dc again it's inefficient so let's simply not do it no proprietary voltage requirements for our laptops or tablets we can work very well with usbc power delivery or 12 volts next we'd like to focus on finding machine which gets at least five hours run time on its internal battery the reason for this is rapid deployments low power communications we want to be able to deploy our tablet or laptop and radio without having to deploy an external power supply next let's ensure we get a 400 nit or better daylight readable display we want to ensure we can read the laptop or tablet during daylight when we're out in the field next let's avoid any spinning hard drives from back in the day make sure that your laptop or tablet utilizes solid-state disks simply because they're more robust and more energy efficient next if at all possible find a machine with a built-in gps for wind link we can utilize the inbuilt gps to send out position reports to the network for modes like js8 call and ft8 we can utilize an inbuilt gps to synchronize the sequence start and stop times next let's talk about the display i should have mentioned this earlier but it's important to get yourself a 1920x1080 display at the minimum low resolution displays often contribute to operator fatigue the better screen you have the easier it is for your eyes to stare at it for long periods of time we can skimp on other aspects of our machines but definitely not on the display finally don't be afraid to look for a used machine during your search lots of operators are asking about the surface go too because it's not at all a very good gaming tablet or laptop so as a gaming machine its reviews are pretty poor as a machine used for amateur radio data modes like winlink jsa call jt dx ft8 whatever it's actually extremely well suited now the point here isn't to make you go out and buy a microsoft surface go to the point is to show you a machine with relatively low specs which is more than adequate for amateur radio applications so you can compare the specs of the microsoft surface go 2 or the microsoft surface go 3 to other machines that you're considering buying if nothing else we can use the specs of my machine as a baseline all right guys it's time to start closing down this video but i don't want you to click away just yet for those of you interested in how i set up my microsoft surface go to for field communications i'll leave a link to a blog post i recently published on oh8stn.org [Music] i'm pretty sure i covered every aspect of setting up the microsoft surface go to including how to set it up for off-grid work and the applications i've installed on the machine so please check out the link in the description for that blog post for the rest of you who may be interested in how i finally arrived at my raspberry pi setup there's a video i published some time ago called the ultimate raspberry pi build i'll leave a link to that also in the description and finally and this is sort of a rant but here you go the reason we're stuck with windows machines or the reason we're stuck where we have been for quite some time is because the amateur radio community doesn't levy mobile operating systems like android even if that means we have to start paying developers to come up with these clients for mobile operating systems there's no reason we don't have a jt dx for android or js8 call for android or even a basic winlink client for android all capable of hf communications for simply no reason until those applications exist i suppose this is the next best thing alright guys if you like what i'm doing if you like the content i'm creating please leave me a comment or even a thumbs up to let me know and if it's not too much to ask please share this video with someone or some place where other operators might enjoy it rock and roll guys thanks for watching ciao

Channel: OH8STN Ham Radio

Views: 15,263

Keywords: amateur radio, field computer, ham, ham radio, ham radio & microsoft surface, ham radio basics, ham radio computer, ham radio data modes, ham radio field computer, ham radio laptop, ham radio license, ham radio tablet, ham radio winlink, icom ic-705, microsoft surface, off grid computer, oh8stn ham radio, oh8stn winlink, portable ft8, portable ham radio, radio, raspberry pi field computer, ultimate raspberry pi build, wspr ham radio, x5105 digital modes

Id: xIrd2l8t4l8

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 03 2021