Hi all,
I’ve been away from the hobby for a bit as Julie and I recently purchased a new home! Yay! We are mostly done all of the running around, inspections, negotiations, etc. so I should have some more free time for the time being.
We will have to start packing and planning soon as our closing date is April 11th so any projects I take on / finish will be limited by the need to pack everything up (and more or less keep it that way).
I hope to have yet another look at the Raspberry Pi APRS all-in-one solution, and part of the problem I may have been having was the use of class-4 SD cards – I’ll pick up a couple of class-10 cards to experiment with. I think that the Pi could be a fantastic solution as a TNC for APRS operation, all depending on the software decoding of course.
Another project which came up in conversation with a few people online is the use of an Arduino (or simply ATMega micro) as a go-between CAT interface for controlling DDS based homebrew radios. I’ve already developed the library for the Wires (Arduino) platform, so writing a pass-thru style interface should be rather trivial (yes I am inviting ridicule when this statement comes back to haunt me).
Once we move in to the new house, I’ve got quite a few non-radio tasks to be tended to so I will very likely go radio-quiet again for a short time. With any luck, I can start the planning and consultation phase of my antenna tower project. With a little over 2.5 acres to play with, I am actually considering the use of the full 80′ however, this is still subject to the site-plan.
In any event, I am still alive – just a bit more busy than I was previously. I’ll try to make some time to put something of merit up here – so check back some time soon!