Hamvention 2013

Had some fun at the Hamvention today. Saw a lot of APRS equipment. This was also apparently the year of solar panels.. noticed a fair few of those in the flea market. Got a terrible sunburn on the back of my neck. Also had to cut my visit a little short because of a bad migraine, guess I was overdue for one.

Noteable mentions:

• Codec2 booth right next to a D-Star booth, nice place! Wish I had asked about the prototype HT of the future but other people were in conversations and I didn't wait around very long.
• Was talking to someone in the flea market about an Icom 2200H and asking about D-Star (which the radio didn't have that card in it) and had someone stop by to comment on the proprietary nature of D-Star driving the extreme cost. Which I agree with and it's good to see that Codec2 is having a positive impact here by providing a more Ham friendly alternative to the closed, proprietary nature of the AMBE codec that D-Star uses. (And the weird, open/closed protocol too)
• Yaesu FT-1DR at the Yaesu booth. I see now it has a price on Universal-Radio, $540. It's approved by the FCC with an expected release date of June 15th.
• GPS is built in.
• Has a Group Short Message function that I expect should be like cellphone texting
• Neat sounding Group Monitor function - ARTs on steroids?
• TinyTrak
• 2 or 3 portable terminal boxes for backpacking digital modes. Can't remember the names of them now and didn't grab any papers while I was there (sorry!). One could do CW, PSK and RTTY. The ones I saw had the old usual 4 line by 20 character displays
• Elecraft had some neat things like the K3/0 Mini.. Remote control for a K3 in what looks like the style of a KX3. (So much so that the card next to it said "Yes, this IS the new K3/0 Mini")
• Neat demonstration at a ATV booth of the differences between analog ATV and Digital ATV (DTV). Output of a DVD player (or Bluray?) run through both types of transmitters at once into a (slightly damaged) Digital TV. Guy giving the demonstration showed both signals with attenuation to show different reception signal strengths. Digital signal stayed perfectly clear down to 80db down, but disappeared at 82 or 83db. Analog was very fuzzy when you could still receive Digital but could be received even when Digital cut out completely. Effective demonstration.
• Uhm, there was a digital DMR booth somewhere that someone had a digital radio the size and shape of a cellphone, even looked like one a bit. Very cool! Didn't stick around to ask questions because right then there was a group picture. Meant to go back later though.
• AMSAT and QSO radio show were both showing and talking about nano-satellites. QSO radio show was talking about a dual-band FM cube satellite that had 400mw transmit power which is enough from space, and each side will have a 1w solar panel. It had 10 pcbs stacked on the inside. Kinda neat. AMSAT had one with bits and pieces and one complete (model?). There was a board transmitting a saved voice ID on a timer.
• Not really related to the show but I want to throw out there: The Internation Space Station recently switched to Linux from Windows.
• Import Communications had some neat things. Wouxun radios, Baofeng radios (I bought one of those with all the goodies), and the X1M QRP SSB/CW transceiver which I was sorely tempted to buy. (But held off, I have a perfectly fine HF radio.. my problem is I need an antenna for it)
• SDR goodies here and there.

Didn't really run into anyone I knew. Half the time I was looking at the various wares people were offering (and I'm pretty sure there was some warez too, at least two booths selling DVDs of electronic manuals that had scans of old QST magazines or Elector Electronics magazines that I'm not sure were officially licensed) and half the time I was looking at faces for some that I recognized. Allwell, this year was fun. If I can go next year, things that I want to do different are:

• Try and get off Friday.. I've never been on a Friday
• Hope it doesn't rain on the day I go like this year
• Wear sunscreen, good grief.
• Go to a forum or two?

Some things that I was looking for but didn't find:

• Raspberry Pi - Did I miss it?
• Arduino - should be a slam dunk, I did see someone selling a custom PIC (I think) platform for ham applications and I did see someone selling things that were compatible with the Raspberry Pi or were an Arduino shield.
• Boatanchors - Just Kidding. It'll probably be Hamvention 2113, most hams on Earth will be using subspace or quantum tunneling or 100 Ghz nanotechnology wifi mesh, and someone will still be selling old Drake and Halicrafters radios.

I could've done without the cloud of poisonous cancer causing chemicals that I got the pleasure of breathing every time I went in or out of a door.

Freescale MC13260 SoC Two-Way Radio IC

Found this in a mailing-list post the other day. Very neat, it's a System-on-Chip that is almost everything you need to make a radio from 60MHZ-960MHZ.



From the Freescale website:

Target Applications:
Comprehensive analog FM radio
Comprehensive digital radio (DMR, P25, TETRA, dPMR)
Dual-mode analog FM and digital voice/data
"Talk around the network" feature for cellular applications

Features

ARM926EJ-S™ MCU operating at clock speeds up to 150 MHz
Modem processor (software-defined radio) operating at clock speeds up to 100 MHz
640 KB of integrated RAM
MCU peripherals to support control and monitoring functions
High-performance integrated RF transceiver supporting RF frequencies of 60 MHz–960 MHz
Fully integrated, high-performance RF fractional-N synthesizer
Integrated 13-bit audio CODEC with analog input/output
Three 12-bit DACs for support functions
10-bit general purpose ADC with four multiplexed inputs
Receiver supports linear modulation
Linear transmit support using integrated I and Q DACs and an external modulator
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) module for secure communication
Full-speed USB device with integrated PHY

Pretty feature rich! I assume the RF components you need amount to bandpass filtering, preamp, transmit/receive switch, and filtering, power amp for transmit side. This chip implements the SDR conversion, AD/DA conversion, etc. It has an ARM9 CPU and a separate "modem" DSP. I'm unclear if the DSP handles the FM mod/demod and any modem processes such as encoding or decoding PSK, FSK, GMSK, QAM, etc.

This chip is pre-release, according the press release the chip will be available in Q1 2012.

Press Release: http://media.freescale.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=196520&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1537559
Product Details: http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=MC13260&tid=vanSoCRadio
Fact Sheet: http://cache.freescale.com/files/rf_if/doc/fact_sheet/MC13260FS.pdf?fr=g
Support Info: http://cache.freescale.com/files/rf_if/doc/support_info/MC13260_TRN_SI.pdf?fr=g
Product Brief: http://cache.freescale.com/files/rf_if/doc/prod_brief/MC13260PB.pdf?fpsp=1

Other chips I've covered include:
CMX7163 QAM Modem

The CMX7163 QAM Modem is a low power half-duplex device supporting multiple channel spacings under host microcontroller (µC) control. Its Function Image™ (FI) is loaded to initialise the device and determine modulation types.
The 7163FI-4.x supports 4-, 16- and 64-QAM modulations up to 96kbps in a 25kHz channel, with channel estimation and equalization to provide robust performance under realistic channel conditions.
Flexible bit rates support a wide range of applications requiring a selectable bit rate and robustness.

An integrated analogue interface supports 'direct connection' to zero IF I/Q radio transceivers with few external components; no external codecs are required.TI CCxxxx series
From my blog post on the Ubertooth One:

A CC2591 2.4ghz PA/LNA,CC2400 2.4ghz RF transceiver and a LPC175x series ARM chip.
What inspired him to use a chip like the CC2400? He previously played around with a kids toy called an IM-ME. It's a pink pager-like device meant for girls to send instant messages over the Internet (via a usb dongle plugged into a computer)... He was able to turn it into aninexpensive spectrum analyzer type device. How? It has a CC1110 chip. This is an RF transceiver chip with an integrated 8051 cpu. According to the linked site:


Frequency range: 300 – 348 MHz, 391 – 464 MHz and 782 – 928 MHz
Pretty neat, it's capable of operation in the 70cm and 33cm bands at up to 500kBaud. This was in a toy that was less than $20 on ebay.

Raspberry Pi ARM Single-Board Computer

This is the Alpha prototype board according the the wiki.

This is a very low cost ARM SBC that is being developed right now. It is unreleased but once it comes out, there could be a multitude of applications in Ham Radio for it. They are talking about making two versions, Version A for $25 and Version B for $35.
Here are the "Provisional Specifications" from the community written wiki

• 700MHz Broadcom media processor featuring an ARM11 (ARM1176JZF-S) core, Broadcom GPU core, DSP core and support for Package-on-Package (PoP) RAM
• 128MiB (Model A) or 256MiB of SDRAM (Model B), stacked on top of the CPU as a PoP device
• OpenGL ES 2.0
• 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode
• Composite and HDMI video output
• One USB 2.0 port provided by the BCM2835
• SD/MMC/SDIO memory card slot
• General-purpose I/O (About 16 3v3) and various other interfaces, brought out to 1.27mm pin-strip
• Optional integrated 2-port USB hub and 10/100 Ethernet controller (Model B)
• Open software (Ubuntu, Iceweasel, KOffice, Python)
• Capability to support various expansion boards

Anyone's guess if it will come out at the price point they are hyping up. In my experience stuff like this tends to slip into higher price ranges when people get excited about it. Kinda like electrons jumping into higher orbits.

Besides including 256MB RAM, the B version is also suppose to have a chip on board that is a 2-port USB hub and ethernet controller. I'm assuming the ethernet will also use your USB bandwidth.

It is interesting to me that they are stacking the RAM chips right on the processor. That should save some space at least! The Broadcom SoC seems to be pretty neato too. It has the ARM11 CPU, a GPU that does Open GL and 1080p30 H.264 decode, and a DSP but there's currently not enough information known to access that yet.

16 GPIO at 3v3, I2C and SPI interfaces will come in handy, it also has stereo audio out. I wonder if it would also have stereo audio in? That could make a very small interface to something like a SoftRock. They also talk about being able to interface to a cheap LCD module for portable operation. Otherwise, it looks like HDMI output.

v---Click on the sbc label to see my other single-board computer posts.

Another ARM single board computer (SBC)

This is the i.MX53 Quick Start Board:

Full specifications

This should be a pretty neat SBC. It costs $149 and includes a Freescale 1ghz Cortex-A8 ARM processor, 1GB ram, 4GB microsd card with Linux, 5v power supply with worldwide adapters. Expansion boards include a $49 HDMI output and a $199 4.3 800x600 LCD screen. (Which seems a mite overpriced to me given the glut of under-$50 7" photo frames.)

I've also covered the Chumby Hacker Board here. It's $89, and also includes a Freescale ARM processor but only at 454MHZ, 64MB ram and a 512MB microsd card with Linux. On the other hand, while a lot of the processing specs are lower, the Cumby Hacker Board includes several GPIO connections and is even compatible with Ardunio shields. Could be handy for more low level interfacing than this board.

I have yet to find anyone using these boards in a Ham Radio capacity yet. Rig control, Digital modes, Micro Repeater controller, SDR, D-Star adapter (with dongle), Codec2.. There are a lot of possibilities.

Link to the full information on the i.MX53 Quick Start Board on the Freescale website.
Here's the blog post on the Freescale website that I learned about this board.

got a Blogger app for my Droid phone.

Just testing it. I started a build of a softrock rxtx ensemble. I'm excited to get it built. Hopefully I will be able to get it done.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Chumby Hacker Board

This is pretty neat. It's a Single Board Computer that is basically the guts of a small device called a Chumby. The hardware is all Open and it runs a custom distro of Linux. Specifications below.

• Freescale iMX.233 processor running at 454 MHZ
• 64 MB onboard RAM
• Comes with 512MB uSD card with 100 MB Linux installation all ready to go
• Dimensions are 3.9" (100mm) x 2.4" (60mm) x 0.75" (20mm)
• 3.3V I/O pins can talk to most sensors, motor drivers, etc. No struggling with 1.8V levels.
• Low power, fanless CPU draws only 200 mA at 5V
• Built-in Lithium Ion/Polymer battery charger and 5V boost converter for portable projects
• Three USB ports!
• 1.9W mono speaker amplifier into 4ohm (0.1" JST onboard connector)
• Microphone input (0.05" JST onboard connector)
• LCD controller with 2mm output port
• 3.5mm A/V output jack with stereo audio and NTSC/PAL composite video
• Back of board has GPIO outputs on 0.1" header spacing, plug in an Arduino proto shield! Serial ports, ADC's, PWM, GPIO all running at 3.3v logic
• Quadrature encoder connections onboard
• 5-way joystick on-board
• MMA7455 3-axis +-2G to +-8G accelerometer on-board
• 3.3V TTL serial port for easy shell access
• Full GCC toolchain is ready for you to download and get crackin'!
• Schematics, Gerbers and original layout files are at the Wiki

All for only $89 at adafruit.

This could have quite a few uses for ham radio operators. Linux has integrated support for AX.25 Packet in the kernel. I've heard it's possible to set that up with a sound card interface. If someone made the software available this could end up being a very small Echolink or IRLP node. I wonder if the processor is fast enough to do simple software defined radio tasks? This could make for a tiny, full SDR with one of the softrocks or some other SDR kit. The CPU uses very little power.

My only disappointment is no onboard wifi. It's a small loss though. Not everyone would use it and it's easy enough to add a dongle on one of the usb ports.

Supposedly the board is only in beta right now so it's subject to revisions and has a limited production for now. I see a bright future for this thing.