Ultimate Raspberry Pi Build | Ham Radio

hello gasps Oscar Hotel eight Sierra tango November here from survival teknorg today we turn our attention back to the raspberry pie now it's been about a year since I've published anything substantial on the raspberry pie for ham radio communications but a lots been happening in the background now if you've been watching my videos you've heard me talk about the cable mess in regards to data communications you've heard me talking about not wanting to be tethered to the radio with a bunch of cables when I'm operating in the field you've probably heard me mention the need to get Microsoft Windows out of our ham chat and away from our emergency communications equipment but more than anything else you've probably heard me talking about a lightweight portable and energy-efficient platform for ham radio data mode communications well now it's time to tie all of these things together so I'm gonna show you my take on the ultimate Raspberry Pi for ham radio communications and introduce you to some of the Amron resources for the Raspberry Pi so stick with me guys and I'll tell you all about it you are listening to the emergency broadcast systems this station I think the best way to start this video is by showing you the rig I use for qrp data in the field that's the Aizu ft 8 1 7 nd now I'm using this rig now because it's simply my spare rig as I make modifications and those modifications become stable I transfer them over to my a cft89 one my primary break from the perspective of the data mode operator we want to reduce the size we want to reduce the system's complexity we want to reduce the total number of cables needed to make the system work we want to make the system more cost effective we want to provide accurate time we want to provide accurate location but more than anything else we want the Raspberry Pi to act as if it were seamlessly integrated into our radios now to be fair there's a lot of companies offering add-ons and accessories for our radios unfortunately these companies making add-ons and accessories aren't thinking about how the operator actually uses the equipment so it's up to the radio operator to come up with practical solutions to integrate the Raspberry Pi and to our communications strategies so let's go through all the hardware modifications I've made so far and the reasons behind them and one of the early goals was to get rid of the audio interface at that large black box you always see on top of the radio although they housed the audio codec and push-to-talk mechanism these audio interfaces are unnecessarily large in fact the audio interface in most cases is larger than the Raspberry Pi so for portable communications I've decided to get rid of the signaling get rid of the mini Pro SC and replace them with a sovereign to USB audio codec this USB audio interface has a single mic N and a single stereo output which is more than enough for our ham radio data mode communications now there certainly are cheaper USB audio codecs on the market but I chose the sovereign because its drivers are built into every operating system already this makes it plug-and-play and of course it makes the operators life much easier now to get this all to work I needed to either make or buy a cable coming out of the USB audio codec and terminating with a minute in connector for the data port on the yaesu FTA 1 7 ND 8 1 8 2 or my Yaesu ft 8 9 1 when I'm using this with the Aizu ft 8 1 7 or the AC FD a 1 8 I use this audio interface with the cat control for push-to-talk this is because the yaesu ft 8 1 7 and the Aizu ft 8 1 8 don't have fogs on the data mode port of the radio so we either need to you the cat controlled to trigger the push-to-talk on the eighth one seven or eight one eight or wired the Wolfie link interface in series with the audio codec so that we can trigger push-to-talk automatically even if we choose to use the Wolfie link with the USB audio codec it's still much smaller than a signal link or the mini pro as safe from did you master now regarding push-to-talk using the cat control it's extremely important that your cat control interface uses an official FTDI chip set you certainly can get a good deal from China but you'll end up spending hours upon hours trying to find drivers for it do yourself a favor get yourself a USB cat control interface with FTDI chip set it'll save you tons of time so now let's take a look at these cables from the UFT 8 1 7 and yaesu ft 8 1 8 perspective to streamline the audio cable and the cat control cable we've shortened them up the Raspberry Pi which they're mounted to is velcroed to the top of the radio using adhesive velcro tape so the cables are only as long as they need to be to run from the Raspberry Pi to the back of the radio all excess wiring has been removed this creates a much cleaner installation for the EFTA one 7 and the Aizu fta 1/8 I imagine it'll be the same for other radios ultimately this leaves us with two cables coming out of the Raspberry Pi and into the radio now that I've gotten rid of the audio interface from the top of the radio it's made room for a small 10 watt amplifier 10 watts which the yaesu FTA 1 7 and yaesu ft 8 1 8 desperately needs anyway what do you think about the cables there's certainly room for improvement but this is a lot better than it was when I started I especially liked having the Raspberry Pi coupled or mounted to the radio but alright let's move on the next thing I want to do is dump the USB power cable that pops out of the side of the Raspberry Pi then we're going to replace that with 12 volts DC power from the same power source as the radio for portable fuel communications it's extremely important to get all your cables exiting out of the rear of your Raspberry Pi and radio now I know initially it may seem like I'm nitpicking but this USB cable coming out of the side of the radio can be pulled out at the most inopportune time so what I've done is I've gotten rid of the USB cable off the side of the radio I've replaced that USB power cable with a buck converter a couple of wires and in Anderson powerful the power cable for the Raspberry Pi now exits the Raspberry Pi from the rear this makes using the Raspberry Pi a lot more ergonomic regardless of where you're operating and you can do so without fear of pulling out that USB cable from the side of the Raspberry Pi so the DC output of our buck converter will connect directly to the 5 volts and ground pins of the header on the Raspberry Pi you might even choose to solder those wires directly to the header pins on the Raspberry Pi in this case I chose modularity over ruggedness now although it wasn't ready for this video's publication one of the future modifications we'll make is adding a power button for the Raspberry Pi along with the software to control its behavior ultimately our goal is to turn this Raspberry Pi from a bucket of spur part and to a seamlessly integrated system with our radios anyway let's move forward for those of us operating portable and/or operating off the grid it isn't always possible to have a stable internet connection with which to sync our computers clock to so one of the first add-ons I've given the Raspberry Pi was a GPS module it's a pretty standard and low-cost USB GPS from you blocks now the configuration for this GPS is a little bit of a pain in the butt thankfully we've already done a video tutorial on configuring this GPS I'll leave you a link in the description so you won't be daunted by that task so the GPS provides us two different services first of all it provides us with an accurate time secondly it provides us with an accurate location naturally we'll use the time from the GPS to keep the raspberry PI's clock up to date but we can push the location or grab the location from the GPS and use that in the various apps that we have for our off-grid communications some applications where you'll need the locator may be radio email with PS KML or when link or for example operating ft8 off-grid during an expedition where you need both your locator and accurate timing or as we're doing in this example using js8 call to send our APRs position report out over HF radio here we're using the GPS for our grid locator but we're also using it for accurate start and stop times in js8 call now the GPS isn't the only way we ensure accurate time on the Raspberry Pi by now many of you have figured out I'm somewhat of a fanatic so I've also included a real-time clock on the Raspberry Pi as a backup mechanism for ensuring accurate time on the device with the GPS configured as an NTP source the Raspberry Pi takes its time from there as if it were a network server if for some reason the Raspberry Pi loses access to the GP satellites the real-time clock having been updated by the GPS initially will maintain an accurate time now once the raspberry pi is connected to the Internet or the GPS satellites are accessible again the real-time clock will be updated with accurate time once again I know this is insanely redundant but it is the way I do things now just like the GPS have already done a video on the installation and configuration of the real-time clock I'll leave a link to that one in the description now one of the things I always talk about is integrating the Raspberry Pi into our rigs having a tight integration between the Raspberry Pi and our amateur radios actually brings us some pretty cool benefits now although there are lots of benefits the realization of the wireless keyboard and display to access the features functionality and apps running on the Raspberry Pi and radial is probably my favorite now I've probably mentioned this before on the blog but look being tethered to the radio in the year 2019 is simply ridiculous so what I'm saying is there's actually no reason why we have a cable tethering us between our keyboard and display and the radio integrated with the Raspberry Pi with that said just because amateur radio manufacturers are lagging behind doesn't mean that we as individual operators need to be left behind my point is we should be able to connect to our radios with any device from one to a mobile phone a tablet laptop a desktop whatever now I've actually been able to achieve this functionality by looking at the radio and the Raspberry Pi as one complete system now running on that system and allowing me to connect to the Raspberry Pi in radio is a VNC server I then use a VNC client running on an iPhone on a Linux box on a Windows box on it on a Mac on an Android phone or tablet to connect to that Raspberry Pi and radio now this means no matter how I'm engaging with my radio whether I'm sitting in the ham Shack using it as a desktop whether I'm in the field using it as a portable station or whether I'm connecting to my radio located at home from my work PC located dozens of miles or kilometers away I'm always going to get the same user experience and I'm doing all this by integrating my radio with the $35 raspberry pie at $10 gps and an $8 real time clock to be fair though man to be a little critical of ham radio manufacturers all of this would be a heck of lot simpler if all ham radio manufacturers implemented an audio codec inside their radios but also help if there was a one wire solution from their radios to our computers this is one of the reasons why I'm desperately waiting for the Icom 705 I come certainly has recognized what we're doing with single board computers in the field giving both one wire and wireless connectivity to their radios now the Raspberry Pi has two enables running on it allowing us to connect to it and our radio from any device diversed is a wireless Wi-Fi access point running on the Raspberry Pi this allows the Raspberry Pi to create its own Wi-Fi network which we can connect to using any device to interact with the Raspberry Pi and applications running on it as if we were using it as a local device my Raspberry Pi creates a wireless network called qrp ops for use when I'm out portable now once I'm connected to that qrp ops network I can use the VNC client running on my Android device to connect to my radio and Raspberry Pi as if I were physically connected to it with a wire now I know a few companies like MFJ who have taken the whole remote control radio with raspberry pi idea and turned it in to way plus $300 solution I've invested some time to learn how to configure all of these things plus spent about 60 bucks for the components to get it working so now I have God js8 call running on my Raspberry Pi I have WSJ tx4 whisper and ft8 I've got FL digi I've got Pat Wynn link all for just basically a matter of my time now everything I can do with the Raspberry Pi when I'm connected with the keyboard mouse and a screen I can do with the remote control connection over V and C operating this way is incredibly intuitive I mean being Wireless untethered from your radio and your Raspberry Pi gives you a lot of options we haven't had previously any way when I'm done working with my radio or the apps or whatever I'm doing on the Raspberry Pi I simply close the connection and I go back to the Android OS it's all very easy now for some time I've been frustrated with ham radio manufacturers who think embedding PS k31 already is something special and it just goes to show while they don't understand how we are working while we're thinking but as you see with a little ingenuity and a little bit of your time we can modernize our stations ourselves all we need from AM radio manufacturers is a one wire interface and an embedded audio codec still at the end of the day it's up to us to demand from companies like Ella craft in the Aizu the one wire interface and integrated audio codec in their portable ham radio rigs now something else I want to touch on quickly it's one of the most asked questions about the Raspberry Pi that I receive that's the discussion of the enclosure and the question really is about condensation and protecting the Raspberry Pi from the weather as you see I've decided on a traditional raspberry pi type enclosure this Raspberry Pi case is called the PI Bo ninja it's designed to be a hackable modifiable case where other standard cases won't fit your application I'm using this enclosure on all three of my raspberry PI's but specifically for the AFT eight one seven in D and the Aizu ft eight nine one now this enclosure is made up of acrylic layers use stack cut and modify those layer to meet your own raspberry pi's requirements with a little bit of patience you can create an enclosure that suits almost any project I chose this enclosure because at the end of the day my Raspberry Pi doesn't have to really be in horrific weather generally ham-radio gear isn't waterproof so my Raspberry Pi doesn't need to be either the thing we really need to take care about when operating outdoors is condensation and that's one of the reasons I'm using an enclosure which is actually open to the air it's also one of the really big reasons I use a shelter when I'm out in the field if you're really serious about communications in the field ultimately you're going to arrive at the need for a shelter and some sort of heat source even if that's just a campfire this is because the only way we're going to be able to protect our gear is if we manage the temperature around us there are some applications where I would consider using a rugged enclosure for the Raspberry Pi for example with a weather station I've decided for normal field communications I would manage the environment around me with the shelter now up and to this point we've talked about hardware for the Raspberry Pi integration with our radios and strategy now Imran is an organization in the United States which is completely focused on amateur radio emergency communications for preparedness now the an Ron team has been absolutely magnificent and actually they've made my job a lot easier they've set up repositories and installation scripts to help us install the communications tools we need on the Raspberry Pi now I know most people new to the Raspberry Pi are terrified of the command line but these tools for the most part are graphically driven so I know this is a long video but sit back and watch a bit of this installation so you can see what a great job they've done now all I've done is open a terminal window and copy and pasted the commands as they have written them here on their web page let's do some super time travel movie editing and take you through the process so once you've answered the few questions and done the pre-qual for setup you'll be presented with a graphical user interface to help you install the rest of the scripts my goal is to use the Ameren scripts to install FLD g FL rig and pat when linked now it's important to remember this isn't a Windows installation that is to say we should actually read what the prompts are asking us and click the correct response and this prompt is ensuring I have the correct repositories enabled for the installation to succeed after that it's going to tell me that some users have had bad experiences with a small swab size on the raspberry pi so it suggests enabling a larger swap size I click yes and it does that then I'll need a reboot after reboot I restart the installation script and start again you see I failed here I forgot to change the directory where the installation scripts were installed I move over to that directory and start the script again as we did when we first started we read and understand what's being asked and choose the correct selection I chose not to do the update because I had already done this before I started the installation script so no worries now I can choose the categories of software I'd like to install then we're going to be asked about where we'd like to install the software I just used the default location finally it's going to ask us about the individual software packages we'd like to install I already have js8 Cole and WS jtx installed but I wanted to install with these Ameren scripts anything that would enable more efficient off-grid or grid down communications over ham radio I decided to skip anything I've already had configured and running on my system and just install the things which didn't exist on my system yet now when we get to the raspberry pie for Bravo video I think we're going to do a complete emraan setup script installation for the Raspberry Pi for from start to finish so during the download and installation these scripts did ask me for information a couple of times one or two times I believe if I was installing on a clean system this wouldn't happen anyway it's not a big deal you just have to understand what it's asking you and give it the right answer beyond the occasional question it also stops and gives you additional information what you might need later on even so I was pleasantly surprised to see how simple it was to install with these scripts it was all pretty straightforward and I'm absolutely stoked about the results the Amron team has done an incredible job setting up these scripts to help you get started with linux and the Raspberry Pi my only regret is not having introduced Tamara on sooner so let's go ahead and take a look at the results by looking at the radio and the Raspberry Pi as a complete system I've been able to minimize its footprint this has given me a smaller more efficient easier to use digital portable system than I had previously by getting rid of all of the unnecessarily large accessories replacing them with off-the-shelf components we've created a system which simply needs to be powered up an antenna cable plugged in and it's ready to go I'll certainly do a better job of cleaning up these wires in the near future but for now this is a lot better than it was before we started the project if we take a moment to think about how this was achieved it was done so by thinking about the Raspberry Pi and the radio as one complete system this means there's no more fumbling around playing with cables trying to wonder why something doesn't work when we're actually two playing in the field now it's important to understand that it doesn't actually matter what tablet or laptop I'm using to access my ft 8 1 7 since all the software is running on the Raspberry Pi connected to the 8 1 7 now just as it is home 8 1 7 I can connect tap a twin link with my Raspberry Pi enabled yaesu ft 8 9 1 with any device I can also access all of the applications running on my Raspberry Pi enabled radio from any location and if I want to use my rig as a desktop I simply plug in the HDMI cable to the Riggs Raspberry Pi one of the other features we've been able to achieve is sharing the screen over multiple devices with multiple operators now this functionality might be useful from an emergency communications perspective for example having a radio which is dedicated to incoming and outgoing email with Pat Wynne link one example would be having a multi operator Rapid Deployment station deployed in the field the station has a single dedicated radio and email address for incoming and outgoing Wendling email improving the information sharing for that emergency deployed station if you have two radios connected up to your Raspberry Pi for example with dual audio interfaces sticking with the multi operator multi rig example for a moment one operator could be using a PRS or packet on VHF and uhf while the second operator is using an HF digital mode or email at this point we start looking at the Raspberry Pi as a radio server rather than a standalone computer is it starting to make sense yet now the only limiting factor to this functionalities usefulness is our imaginations still it isn't black magic it's just basic linux functionality now the other day as I shared a teaser on Instagram for this video someone asked me what's the point of all of this honestly the point is making my radio smarter making our radios more modular and making my radios more portable if you're one of the increasing number of operators using digital modes while off-grid whether that's an F t8 expedition or js8 call for emergency communications or wind link email with Pat Wynne link there simply is no lightweight portable and energy efficient solution on the market despite the marketing claims of some of these companies putting out accessories so for now we need to build these solutions ourselves but it's okay if we do that because it shows the manufacturers it tells the market what it is we actually want so for now I'm extremely happy with my yaesu ft 8 1 7 nd and there's no reason for me to upgrade to an 8 1 8 because it doesn't offer me any additional value but adding a Raspberry Pi to my use UFT a17 indy certainly increases its functionality and its practicality in the field it's exactly the same situation with my yaesu ft 8 9 1 i have a love-hate relationship with this radio since it doesn't have a built in the audio interface but adding that raspberry pi to the cft89 one the radio reaches a whole other level i know a lot of you aren't going to get it you won't understand what I'm trying to achieve here but that's okay for those of you who understand why we're building this functionality into our radios let's keep moving forward and let's push the manufacturers in the right direction the direction we want to go now I know that there's a couple of different devices many of you were hoping to see in this video one of them is the drawers hat from Northwest digital radio I'm going to do a standalone video on the drawers hat but for now I'm gonna let you know why I've put it on the shelf for a while the simple truth is the drawers hat is simply too complicated so first of all the drawers hat does everything we have attempted to do in this video it's got the real time clock it's got the GPS it's got dual audio interfaces but it's also ridiculously complicated to set up to be fair I did get it working with the ACO ft 8 1 7 in D and the yaesu ft 8 9 1 but my results were never as good as they were when I've used my signalling QSB or my zlp mini Pro SC even the sovereignty USB audio interface you see in this video has given better ease the good news is I believe this is just the typical Linux product failure but that magnificent hardware is lacking good tutorials and installation scripts to get it working for the novice user I believe this is going to change with time it's just a matter of time at least I hope so but just to be fair there were two deal-breakers for the drawers hat with me the first is the horrifically complicated configuration but that's definitely something that can be improved the other thing is having all of the cables exiting out of the side of the Raspberry Pi I constantly talk about the cable mess on this channel in regards to digital mode communications and I have to ask myself why on earth when anyone designed a piece of hardware which makes the cable mess worse now in my opinion the drawers had however awesome it is was designed by someone who doesn't work regularly portable ops in the field that's because from a usability perspective it's been very well designed for the desktop now if I were going to solve this problem I would simply use a real wooden cable coming from the Raspberry Pi to mount the drawers hat side-by-side with the raspberry if we did that then we could exit all of the cables from the drawers hat out of a 3d printed enclosure so I don't want anyone to think that I'm totally turned off with the drawers hat I was just frustrated and needed to put it down for a while we will come back to it and make a dedicated video provided setup and configuration has been improved now the other piece of hardware people are asking me about mad dog is the PI juice hat like the draws hat the PI juice hat was incredibly difficult to set up initially the documentation simply wasn't there and support was lacking but the makers of the PI juice hat have just recently updated the documentation and tutorials to get it working that just leaves the one thing on my list which made it a deal breaker let me explain the PI juice hat does lots of cool things it has a real-time clock it's got battery backup and it has buttons to start it up and to shut it down it's actually a cool piece of kit but it has one stupid feature which well I don't know why anyone would have designed it that way it's DC regulator for external power maxes out at 10 volts now as you all know and you've seen on this channel we use anything between 9 and 16 volts in the amateur radio community which means if we power the PI juice hat externally with any of our ham radio power supplies we're gonna fry it the only way around that is to use an external buck converter like we did for this Raspberry Pi in the video to bring down the power from whatever we wanted 12 volts or whatever down to 10 volts for the PI juice hat go figure this is actually the thing I've been talking about I mean manufacturers and component makers not understanding how we use their gear at some point I'll share a blog post or a short video tutorial showing you how to wire up the buck converter for the pie choose head alright thus let's close down this video now many of you already know that I took this Raspberry Pi in my whole comms kit make your becomes get to Lapland after I've is done configuring the Raspberry Pi that video is going to post after this one it may take a week or so but it'll definitely be the next video after this Raspberry Pi video now it was supposed to be a Raspberry Pi field test video but I can tell you it became more of a field station field test if you know what I mean for those of you interested in the practical deployment of a Raspberry Pi field station you're gonna love that video so there we have it a Raspberry Pi powered portable ham radio field station for data coms let me know what you think in the comments even if you don't agree just be polite if you're supporting this channel through patreon PayPal or simply sharing my content you're absolutely magnificent and I couldn't do it without you for the rest of you if you like what I'm doing if you like the content I'm creating leave me a comment and a thumbs up to let me know and if it's not too much to ask please share this video with someone or someplace where other operators might enjoy rock and roll guys thanks for watching ciao

Channel: OH8STN Ham Radio

Views: 84,203

Keywords: ham radio, ultimate raspberry pi build, ultimate raspberry pi, raspberry pi, raspberry pi fldigi, raspberry pi ham radio, raspberry pi ham radio digital modes, raspberry pi ham radio projects, raspberry pi ham radio remote, raspberry pi power supply, raspberry pi project, raspberry pi wsjt-x, draws hat for raspberry pi, gps time raspberry pi, ham radio and raspberry pi, ham radio raspberry pi, off grid raspberry pi, pat winlink raspberry pi, rtc module raspberry pi

Id: bD7McGV21jQ

Length: 32min 54sec (1974 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 26 2019