Few months ago I have decided to resurrect my 20 year old HyGain DX-88 vertical antenna again. It was a very good idea.
DX-88 resurrection
It has now been eight years since I have retired my Hy-Gain DX-88 antenna declaring it dead for good. I was standing with a broken base element for the second time and I decided not to spend any more time and money on it but try a new antenna, a Butternut HF2V covering 160, 80, 40 and 30 meters.
Is open source digital voice about to explode?
Digital voice is exploding! That’s the title of HamRadioNow episode 193 where Gary KN4AQ interviews David Rowe VK5DGR, creator of Codec2 and co-author of FreeDV.
DIY remote kit for the IC-706 part 8: Improved audio client and server
In my last update I have posted a live demo of the IC-706 remote setup. This setup was using a gstreamer-based audio client and server, taking advantage of state of the art audio codec called Opus. This setup was working fine over reliable network connections; however, as soon as I got on a mobile network the simple gstreamer pipelines were no longer sufficient. So it was time to write a simple audio client and server pair that are better suited to handle network dropouts.
DIY remote kit for the IC-706 part 7: First on-air test
Good news folks: I have had my remote controlled IC-706 on the air and it works! So far I have only tested the receiver and on the LAN, but I still consider it to be a significant milestone because it was the first time I had the controls and the audio work together with a good antenna connected to the radio.
Gstreamer 1.4 on the Beaglebone
Today I found myself in a situation where I needed the latest Gstreamer 1.4.3 on a Beaglebone running a console image by Robert C. Nelson based on Debian Wheezy. Debian Wheezy comes with the old Gstreamer 0.10 and as far as I could tell the new gstreamer isn’t even available through backports. It is however available in Debian Jessie (testing).
DIY remote kit for the IC-706 part 6: A simple audio server and client
It has been a few weeks since my last update about the IC-706 remote rig project so here is a new one.
DIY remote kit for the IC-706 part 5: Power on / off sequences
In my previous post I described how I solved the power connections for the radio and the front panel when they are physically separated from each other. In this post I will explain the software part of the power on / off procedure.
DIY remote kit for the IC-706 part 4: Here come the Beaglebones
Last night I reached a significant milestone in this DIY remoterig project for the IC-706: I had the radio and the front panel talk to each other through a pair of Beaglebones and without any PC in the loop and without any wires between the boards for transferring power and discrete signals.
The Beaglebone White, DVI-D with Audio cape and official Debian images
A lot has happened since the original Beaglebone White and the original DVI-D with Audio cape have been released. The Ångstrom distribution has been ditched and Robert C. Nelson produces Debian-based images and kernel updates at an impressive pace. Clearly, the primary focus is on the Beaglebone Black and while compatibility with Beaglebone White is also maintained, some of the capes are no longer supported, probably because they are not compatible with the Beaglebone Black.