I used to ask the same thing back when car stereos were all the rage --- I wondered why I couldn't get shortwave or SSB or Air/VHF reception and the answer lies in use-case. Yeah, you and I might eat up this super niche product, but the market on the whole would not.
Just look at what electric car makers are doing with AM radio. They're saying "screw RFI problems, we'll not filter those and just remove AM reception from the car radio because who needs that?" The answer is a larger slice of the population than would want other radio services.
Even Apple never enabled the FM receiver feature on their chips from Qualcomm. It's all about the time spend designing it, ensuring it doesn't cause issues with must-have features, is intuitive to access/use, _and_ aligns with buyer demands.
With ham radio making up less than 1% of most countries' populations, the need just isn't there. (Most folks you talk to are doing good just to even be aware of ham radio, let alone actually be a ham.)
Yes, but think about having a mobile that has native integration with APRS or can make voice/packet radio or even DMR. It would be perfect for hiking or adventures.
Even better with LORA.
http://www.mobilinkd.com/ is probably the closest pre-existing thing that is similar. I don't think this was lack of imagination, modules like the DRA818V make building a fully integrated unit a lot easier these days
I had so much fun operating APRS through the space station with a car 2 meter radio and a moderate mast antenna in a terribly hilly spot but be able to see stations in the South Atlantic and Midwest states. Also the time I was on a 2 meter HT walking in the woods and heard the astronauts talking to hams. And the time the computer told me it was just about to be visible and went outdoors and the ISS was huge and bright, more an airliner than an asterism.
There are combination PoC (push-to-talk over cellular) + WiFi + VHF/UHF radios.
I think the problem as it relates to HAM radio as a hobby, is that if you have cell signal and cell phone, usually any other radio is less effective.
So while it is nice to use the interface/battery/CPU of a cell phone to drive a radio, it's superfluous if you have a cell signal. If you don't have a cell signal, usually having 5W for analog voice in an HT is much more important than having a special interface or digital modes.
I'd recommend something like a couple $25 Quansheng radios instead. More reliability, more range, less finicky, more durable and about the same size as this add-on.
(For some reason the radios are showing as $30 right now)
Yeah I have 4 that are great 2m/70cm, which is what the included antennas are optimized for. Even better with a cheap Nagoya antenna and non-stock firmware.
Unfortunately people don’t realize that even if you install a firmware that allows down to 11m, even connected to a $1200 base antenna the power output will be in the milliwatt range while throwing off on harmonics.
There’s also the case of hardware inconsistency and fakes. When I hook up 4 of the included antennas to my VNA there’s pretty big variance, and I recently tested a fake Nagoya that was clearly tuned for air band and not 70cm/2m as advertised.
Another issue is people were “testing” them using an RTLSDR which very easily gets overloaded and shows harmonics where there are none. Even my local FM station shows up on my SDR at frequencies I know they’re not actually transmitting on.
Might want to consider the meshtastic, something like a lilygo t-echo. A few advantages over the standard ham radio:
* Nodes automatically forms a mesh
* works with any android/IOS widget, simple text message like interface
* store and forward means all nodes don't have to be online at the same time.
* Cheap, no soldering, and no ham license required.
* Can use phones GPS, makes it easy to track other nodes
* Don't have to program in repeaters, every node can repeat.
Meshtastic(Lora) also doesn't require a license since it's in the ISM bands.
Lora also has really good FEC and other things that make it work incredibly well(at the cost of throughput). Honestly I wish we saw more things like that in the ham bands(other than FT8).
There's a couple Lora radios out there that are USB serial based and can be controlled with AT commands that would let you so something similar if you want to build up from scratch.
This isn't true, it is not exclusive to the ISM bands. You can run it on any band you choose so long as you have a license to do so. Case in point: the ham bands
Sure, that's "technically" correct but most usage of Lora is going to be in ISM since that's where they are traditionally deployed. That doesn't require a license which can be a hurdle if you don't already have one.
I've got a ham license so not a big deal for me but for those wanting to try radios without a huge investment a pair of $20 Lora AT serial radios are a great way to dip into digital radio.
Note that various ham bands have limitations on what types of emissions are allowed. For example some only allow RTTY and data, so no phone or image. And some allow phone or image but no data. Even if the type of information is allowed there might be technical restrictions prohibiting some forms of modulation.
So before using something that was designed depending on some non-ham part of the regulations for its legality, such as part 18 (ISM) in the US, on a ham band I'd want to look into the details and make sure it is not doing something under that part but not allowed under the ham regulations.
Also, the ham bands as a whole cannot be used for profit-motives or any financial gain. People often forget this rule. Not to mention the (kind of absurd, IMO) rule against any form of encryption.
In the US, there certainly is. The rule doesn't mention encryption specifically, it just prohibits "encoding for the purpose of obscuring meaning". The intent is what matters not the method.
> This would be amazing for backcountry communication
At 1W, you'd be better served with little FRS/GMRS radios. Better still, for less than the cost of building this yourself, you can buy ready-made a Baofeng UV-5R for under $20. The antenna is a little crummy, but you can buy that and _still_ be under the $30 build price. Further, the Baofeng isn't supporting a whole operating system so the battery will last much longer. I wouldn't want my "always-on" phone draining its battery until I need to transmit to someone. 1W is only going to be useful to hit repeaters in an urban environment - but because it's 2m (and not 70cm), it's even less likely to be all that useful beyond a neat/fun build.
Decent walkie-talkies are cheap. Cheap enough that I bought some for my kids to play with instead of a single channel garbage radio like I had as a kid. If you really want a cheap programmable radio Yaesu and BaoFeng are the brands most people go with.
I wonder how good the range would be. I was thinking that even if I didn't have the appropriate license, having something like this in a pocket on my backpack would at least give me one more signaling option in an emergency. I could deal with the fines later.
See https://www.n1fd.org/2019/03/23/tape-measure-yagi/ for a upgrade to a 2 meter HT that will make it into a repeater 100 miles away under ordinary conditions and could go 300 miles under extraordinary conditions.
You need to know the squelch keys for repeaters and get some practice, it never hurts to get to know the people who run the repeaters, check in on the nightly net, know who is listening. So it is worth getting the technician license, there is no Morse code, just a multiple choice test run by friendly hams.
One rainy night I was talking to an amateur storm chaser who was reporting on conditions close to the inlet and asking why the repeater wasn’t so busy during storms like back in the day there were lots of storm chasers and I told him that NOAA advises people not to drive into flooding prone regions so most of us don’t do that because we don’t want to become part of the emergency.
Other times in the rain the air is silent but you know there is at least one ham monitoring who will call 911.
Generally speaking, line of sight. Assuming you're in the US, the FCC wouldn't come after you for using this in an emergency situation unless you were being absolutely egregious about stomping on other emergency comms, even then I seriously doubt you'd see a fine.
Having said that you're basically going to need enough knowledge to pass the test to make use of this anyway. Why not just take the test and be legal?
VHF / 2m is basically line of sight. But it will go for long distances. I've worked the repeater on the ISS with a 5W handheld radio and a 1/4 wave antenna.
As long as the end user assembles 51% of it, you don't need it. You self-attest that the device is in compliance. You also have to perform an "RF study" but there is no requirement for documentation on that.
> The radio simply plugs into the USB C port on your Android smartphone and transforms it into a fully-fledged handheld radio transceiver.
When I saw the headline I was hoping someone had hacked the qualcomm modem and turned it into a software defined radio.
> modern ham radio transceiver
Well, let's just leave it at ham radio transceiver
I always ask myself why no any cellphone producer is making a phone with 2m/70cm capabilities.
I used to ask the same thing back when car stereos were all the rage --- I wondered why I couldn't get shortwave or SSB or Air/VHF reception and the answer lies in use-case. Yeah, you and I might eat up this super niche product, but the market on the whole would not. Just look at what electric car makers are doing with AM radio. They're saying "screw RFI problems, we'll not filter those and just remove AM reception from the car radio because who needs that?" The answer is a larger slice of the population than would want other radio services. Even Apple never enabled the FM receiver feature on their chips from Qualcomm. It's all about the time spend designing it, ensuring it doesn't cause issues with must-have features, is intuitive to access/use, _and_ aligns with buyer demands.
With ham radio making up less than 1% of most countries' populations, the need just isn't there. (Most folks you talk to are doing good just to even be aware of ham radio, let alone actually be a ham.)
Sim card radios exist.
eg https://www.wouxun.com/radios/two_way_radio_kg-v98.aspx
That is kind of cool. I did not know such a thing existed.
Yes, but think about having a mobile that has native integration with APRS or can make voice/packet radio or even DMR. It would be perfect for hiking or adventures. Even better with LORA.
Probably the main issue is RF compatibility.
LTE over satellite is going to be the solution, as all existing 4g phones can do it.
Do they need a simcard with an active plan or aNy simcard just works !!??
Long time ham. Never been that interested in 2 meters but I am ready to buy it! Such a clever idea, wonder why no one has ever thought of it before.
http://www.mobilinkd.com/ is probably the closest pre-existing thing that is similar. I don't think this was lack of imagination, modules like the DRA818V make building a fully integrated unit a lot easier these days
I had so much fun operating APRS through the space station with a car 2 meter radio and a moderate mast antenna in a terribly hilly spot but be able to see stations in the South Atlantic and Midwest states. Also the time I was on a 2 meter HT walking in the woods and heard the astronauts talking to hams. And the time the computer told me it was just about to be visible and went outdoors and the ISS was huge and bright, more an airliner than an asterism.
https://www.hytera.com/en/product-new/lte-broadband/lte-radi...
https://www.wouxun.com/radios/two_way_radio_kg-v98.aspx
There are combination PoC (push-to-talk over cellular) + WiFi + VHF/UHF radios.
I think the problem as it relates to HAM radio as a hobby, is that if you have cell signal and cell phone, usually any other radio is less effective.
So while it is nice to use the interface/battery/CPU of a cell phone to drive a radio, it's superfluous if you have a cell signal. If you don't have a cell signal, usually having 5W for analog voice in an HT is much more important than having a special interface or digital modes.
Nice idea. It would be good to find an AliExpress supplier to ship the whole kit.
This would be amazing for backcountry communication - e.g when backpacking with a large group.
Is there any way to enable this for iOS?
I'd recommend something like a couple $25 Quansheng radios instead. More reliability, more range, less finicky, more durable and about the same size as this add-on.
(For some reason the radios are showing as $30 right now)
https://www.amazon.com/QUANSHENG-200Three-Frequency-Receivin...
I own one of these, easily the worst radio I have. Fine for receive but please don't hit that transmit button.
Only N=2 but mine have worked great for the 2 meter and FRS/GMRS bands, which is what one is probably going to use while in the back country.
Definitely don't try 27 MHZ, or perhaps outside of the above bands at all.
Are these Yaesu, Motorola, or Icom quality? No, but they're $25.
Yeah I have 4 that are great 2m/70cm, which is what the included antennas are optimized for. Even better with a cheap Nagoya antenna and non-stock firmware.
Unfortunately people don’t realize that even if you install a firmware that allows down to 11m, even connected to a $1200 base antenna the power output will be in the milliwatt range while throwing off on harmonics.
There’s also the case of hardware inconsistency and fakes. When I hook up 4 of the included antennas to my VNA there’s pretty big variance, and I recently tested a fake Nagoya that was clearly tuned for air band and not 70cm/2m as advertised.
Why? What happens?
I have one too, and it gives off tons of spurious emissions (RF interference).
I pretty much only use it for experimentation and receive.
Did you actually see the spurious emissions on a spectrum analyser?
The old Baofengs had that problem, not Quansheng which are actually clean and the harmonics are within FCC specs.
Another issue is people were “testing” them using an RTLSDR which very easily gets overloaded and shows harmonics where there are none. Even my local FM station shows up on my SDR at frequencies I know they’re not actually transmitting on.
I admit that I have not. But I have used it near other equipment and it causes interference. My Kenwood HT does not.
Ah, ouch. I have two Baofengs as well, I think they're a bit better, but probably not too much better.
Might want to consider the meshtastic, something like a lilygo t-echo. A few advantages over the standard ham radio:
Meshtastic(Lora) also doesn't require a license since it's in the ISM bands.
Lora also has really good FEC and other things that make it work incredibly well(at the cost of throughput). Honestly I wish we saw more things like that in the ham bands(other than FT8).
There's a couple Lora radios out there that are USB serial based and can be controlled with AT commands that would let you so something similar if you want to build up from scratch.
This isn't true, it is not exclusive to the ISM bands. You can run it on any band you choose so long as you have a license to do so. Case in point: the ham bands
Sure, that's "technically" correct but most usage of Lora is going to be in ISM since that's where they are traditionally deployed. That doesn't require a license which can be a hurdle if you don't already have one.
I've got a ham license so not a big deal for me but for those wanting to try radios without a huge investment a pair of $20 Lora AT serial radios are a great way to dip into digital radio.
Note that various ham bands have limitations on what types of emissions are allowed. For example some only allow RTTY and data, so no phone or image. And some allow phone or image but no data. Even if the type of information is allowed there might be technical restrictions prohibiting some forms of modulation.
So before using something that was designed depending on some non-ham part of the regulations for its legality, such as part 18 (ISM) in the US, on a ham band I'd want to look into the details and make sure it is not doing something under that part but not allowed under the ham regulations.
Also, the ham bands as a whole cannot be used for profit-motives or any financial gain. People often forget this rule. Not to mention the (kind of absurd, IMO) rule against any form of encryption.
Encryption is permitted for remote control of space borne systems.
Repeaters may use any method to limit access and control to authorized users.
I forgot about that one use case. But it's not allowed for most practical purposes in the U.S. at least.
However, I don't believe there's a rule against steganography.
In the US, there certainly is. The rule doesn't mention encryption specifically, it just prohibits "encoding for the purpose of obscuring meaning". The intent is what matters not the method.
would oblivious transfer qualify as OK? if the sender provably doesn't know what's transmitted, will the law rule it a form of obscuring meaning?
You're thinking criminal court standards, like beyond a reasonable doubt for a conviction.
It's a procedural thing. The FCC will tell you did it & tell you the penalties. Your options are zero.
Yes, the FCC would (theoretically) just revoke your license to prevent you from doing it again if they so wanted.
Do they also prohibit sarcasm?
JS8call is pretty similar to FT8, but can do keyboard to keyboard chat. Not quite auto-mesh, but can store/forward through multiple other nodes.
> This would be amazing for backcountry communication
At 1W, you'd be better served with little FRS/GMRS radios. Better still, for less than the cost of building this yourself, you can buy ready-made a Baofeng UV-5R for under $20. The antenna is a little crummy, but you can buy that and _still_ be under the $30 build price. Further, the Baofeng isn't supporting a whole operating system so the battery will last much longer. I wouldn't want my "always-on" phone draining its battery until I need to transmit to someone. 1W is only going to be useful to hit repeaters in an urban environment - but because it's 2m (and not 70cm), it's even less likely to be all that useful beyond a neat/fun build.
Decent walkie-talkies are cheap. Cheap enough that I bought some for my kids to play with instead of a single channel garbage radio like I had as a kid. If you really want a cheap programmable radio Yaesu and BaoFeng are the brands most people go with.
I wonder how good the range would be. I was thinking that even if I didn't have the appropriate license, having something like this in a pocket on my backpack would at least give me one more signaling option in an emergency. I could deal with the fines later.
See https://www.n1fd.org/2019/03/23/tape-measure-yagi/ for a upgrade to a 2 meter HT that will make it into a repeater 100 miles away under ordinary conditions and could go 300 miles under extraordinary conditions.
You need to know the squelch keys for repeaters and get some practice, it never hurts to get to know the people who run the repeaters, check in on the nightly net, know who is listening. So it is worth getting the technician license, there is no Morse code, just a multiple choice test run by friendly hams.
One rainy night I was talking to an amateur storm chaser who was reporting on conditions close to the inlet and asking why the repeater wasn’t so busy during storms like back in the day there were lots of storm chasers and I told him that NOAA advises people not to drive into flooding prone regions so most of us don’t do that because we don’t want to become part of the emergency.
Other times in the rain the air is silent but you know there is at least one ham monitoring who will call 911.
Generally speaking, line of sight. Assuming you're in the US, the FCC wouldn't come after you for using this in an emergency situation unless you were being absolutely egregious about stomping on other emergency comms, even then I seriously doubt you'd see a fine.
Having said that you're basically going to need enough knowledge to pass the test to make use of this anyway. Why not just take the test and be legal?
Don't you have to register with your personal address in a public database?
That range depends on the height of the antennaes(sender and receiver). I have been able to hear repeaters 150km away because it is on a hill.
VHF / 2m is basically line of sight. But it will go for long distances. I've worked the repeater on the ISS with a 5W handheld radio and a 1/4 wave antenna.
just get something that transmit on one of the emergency frequencies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_emergency_frequency
so long as you use it for an actual emergency, there are no issues
Very neat project. How are you dealing with FCC certification?
As long as the end user assembles 51% of it, you don't need it. You self-attest that the device is in compliance. You also have to perform an "RF study" but there is no requirement for documentation on that.
Even in Germany, hams are allowed to build their own transceivers. I can't imagine the FCC being more strict than that.
Yes, the whole point of having a ham license is the permission to build and use your own equipment.
The compromise vs "buy some spectrum for 8 trillion dollars" is that you can't use ham radio for commercial (or musical) purposes.
Heh, ask 10 hams what the whole point of a ham license is and you'll get 10 different answers. I've heard "permission to build" before, but rarely.
I'm an aspiring ham myself :D For me, I'm interested in emergency communications, others in the club are DXers... truly fascinating.
I like speech recognition as a feature. Do any other handheld transceivers have this yet?
Coolest thing I've seen for a smartphone in a while, and definitely the coolest for Android