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Ask HN: BOM for a remote operated HAM UHF/VHF shack

1 points by jvanderbot ↗ HN
If you were to build a remote operated ham shack for UHF/VHF, what would you choose?

Ideally I could use a cheap base station or mobile station, hook up a pi, add tail scale, and run some software on my laptop to control the radio.

Even in 2024 this seems surprisingly difficult for under $1500, even though decent SDR UHF/VHF HT are $50 and raspberry pis are $100.

3 comments

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eternityforest
I think I'd go with Meshtastic, the whole thing could be $100.

For real HAM, what's the expensive part? I'm seeing lots of $250 and under transceivers with a PC interface. $18 link cable, $40 Pi clone, free software, your choice of antenna.

jvanderbot
Meshtastic is a data link but isnt a general purpose radio/transceiver. The problem is there isn't as far as I can tell a general purpose VHF+UHF radio that can be connected to typical antenna rigs that can also be operated over LAN. At least not for less than $1500
eternityforest
Lots of cheaper HF stuff like the G106 can be controlled, and there seems to be one or two CAT VHF/UHF radios you can find used for less.

Any Baofeng can be connected to a raspberry Pi with a soundcard and a few passives, it can't be tuned but it can send and receive audio on a manually configured channel, and you can use multiple at once if there's only a few channels of interest in your area.

A HackRF and some filtering and an amplifier will work, it might not be the best quality audio, but we've got AI enhancement now so that's not the worst thing.

Might be able to get this thing: https://www.lilygo.cc/products/t-twr-plus to do what you want without too much trouble.

And of course, for RX only there's RTLSDR.