Its been a busy season around the Squirrel Engineering labs. But silently in the background Flying Squirrel #5 (FS5) has been taking shape. Based on a whole new radio telemetry design, FS5 is using APRS to relay data back to the ground. This has some major advantages over the HF signals sent by prior flying […]
The ESP8266 Inclinometer is deployed. Spookie is a feral cat. “Spooky action at a distance”, is a quote attributed to Albert Einstein Physics puns aside, cats are understandably nervous creatures when it comes to the subject of physics. After all, there is that whole business of Schrodinger’s cats that didn’t fare all that well. (This […]
Whew that’s a mouthful! Let’s just call it a cat sensor instead. However, this board can be used in many scenarios where you need to monitor changes in orientation over long time periods in a remote location. This project will be the battery powered ESP8266 reference design for future Squirrel Engineering projects like weather stations […]
One of my interests in ham radio was to develop the ability to grab my radios and take them outside the shack and be able to operate quickly. Having a mobile station in the car facilitates this need if you are going to a place where there are roads and you are willing to operate […]
Meet the DRA818V A few years back I was building an APRS tracker using an Arduino and a GPS. My goal was to be able to make an APRS tracker, for my desert off-road vehicle travels, so I could be found if troubles occurred. Ultimately, I never finished the project, but along the way I […]
Thinking inside the box Making the enclosure for the portable Allstar node. After finishing with the electronics the node needed a permanent box. The pictures are mostly self explanatory, but I have added a few comments as needed next to the pictures below. The construction of my box was made from thin Baltic birth plywood […]
Now that you have both the Radio and Sound Card FOB wired up and your Raspberry Pi on hand we need to tie everything together. Most of the articles I found put the required Fob to Radio interface electronic components in-line with the wires to the radio or the sound fob. Since my build is going […]
Modifying the sound card fob The Allstar Link software needs to interface to the radio in order to control Push To Talk (PTT), recognize when a signal is present on the radio (COS) and also manage the TX & RX audio streams between the Raspberry Pi and the radio. All of these functions are achieved using […]
Modifying the Baofeng BF-888S radio Start with Programming the Radio Before you modify the radio, it will be easiest to program your BF-888s first As shipped the BF888s is pre-programmed with commercial frequencies. To set up the radio on the ham bands it needs to be programmed. Info on how to program the radio is […]
