[ham] Android, APRS and the Baofeng-UV-B5

[J.M.]

I saw this on the baofeng and thought it might interest some of you

Bacon

The message:

 

Hi folks,

I've uploaded some pictures of a home-made, self-contained KISS TNC attached to the UV-B5 that has been working pretty well for send and receive of APRS messages.  I've posted some of the preliminary work on the UV-5R list, but the B5 does much better on VHF in the noisy city environment here.

The thing that took longest to figure out once I had the TNC working is that the volume level works best between about 25-33%.  The PTT locks up on rare occasions with a fresh battery in the radio, probably due to stray RF in the circuit.  The metal case helps that.  The metal case, however, severely limits the range of the Bluetooth connection. I get a range of about 2m with the case closed compared about a 7m range with it open.

I have uploaded a short video of the radio, TNC and APRSdroid in action here: http://youtu.be/QH504wxRzaM

The TNC hardware is based on the APRS schematics available from the BeRTOS project (http://www.bertos.org/use/examples-projects/arduino-aprs/).  The TNC software is from KI4MCW (https://sites.google.com/site/ki4mcw/Home/arduino-tnc).  The Bluetooth connection is through an HC-05 Bluetooth transceiver (http://www.instructables.com/id/Cheap-2-Way-Bluetooth-Connection-Between-Arduino-a/).  APRSdroid is available from Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.aprsdroid.app&hl=en).

I'd love to hear from others that are interested in using the B5 for APRS.

Rob
wx9o

[Matt Huber]

This is uncanny timing... I'm just starting to look into APRS, and I was thinking of using the RasPi for it. I'm definitely going to look through all this and see what can be done.

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[W. Scott Richardson]

Ditto. I'm excited to dig into this and see where we can go with it! thanks!

[Chris Meyer]

I just bought one of these for APRS balloon tracking with Sector67, thanks for the link :-)

Chris

[J.M.]

chris, did you get the UV-5R or the UV-B5. I am planning on getting a B5 so I am interested.

[Thad Lucken]

http://www.etsy.com/listing/96827992/nintendo-controller-coffee-table

ha

 

On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 12:46 AM, J.M. <chev...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Nathan Warnick]

Neat, but NOT relevant at all to this thread!!  

[Chris Meyer]

It's a Baofeng UV-5RA, it's the "new" version of the UV-5R.  The reviews online are surprisingly mixed without a lot of technical justification, the radio itself is very functional, I would argue that it's a lot easier to use than the Yaesu VX-6 that I bought a while ago.  Testing it with an APRS decoder (see below) doesn't seem to have nearly the same reception but the device we were transmitting with just had some bugs fixed (also further below) so I really need to retest.

I have an Argent Data OTUSB (Open Tracker - USB), I can't say I highly recommend the OTUSB at this point, but I haven't used anything else.  It has tech support that's responsive and an active forum.  Has tons of features, but it's not truly a USB device, you better have a serial port available to test anything on it and especially to reflash it when it stops working (configuration changes via USB often hang the device, so you can murder it's USB connection by changing things, requiring a serial reflash to get it back).  I was expecting to have a serial-native device that was fully shifted to USB, it's not at all, buy a null serial modem cable and expect to have it handy - this it's what I wanted for when I'm in the middle of a field hunting a lost balloon.

We're tracking high altitude balloons with this system, we rolled our own version of a Trackduino, using the Radiometrix 144.390 transmitter, and the Venus GPS chip from Sparkfun.  The Venus GPS was previously used in the PPPRS vehicle, and was on an Arduino that got murdered with 36+ volts from the series batteries that power the car, Arduino died but GPS still worked.  It was lately found to be really buggy/unresponsive, and required frequent reflashes for consistent behavior, so we just replaced it and it's now working much much better including the uC it was plugged into, so I need to retest and see if the APRS beacons are cleaner to decode now.

This has more info about our balloons, we're not good enough yet to launch one and have it land by you guys but might be a fun challenge, we landed one in the middle of Lake Michigan last year and got it back :-) http://apollo67.com/

Chris

[Mark Lenigan]

Everything I've ever heard about all of the Chinese HTs (Baofeng,
Wouxun, Puxing, TYT, etc.) from my wide network of ham radio friends
indicates that they suffer from wildly variable quality control. I
suspect this is the reason that the reports are so mixed on them.
Considering that Yaesu recently dropped the price on their FT-60r
dual-band HT to $150, you can now get a high quality, reliable
Japanese HT with performance and features that leave Wouxun, Puxing,
and TYT in the dust for just $20 more than what those three Chinese
companies offer. Baofeng is a bit different, since their radios are
so very much cheaper than the FT-60r, at approximately a third the
price of the FT-60r. However, in many ways I see them as the worst
offender of the bunch. I've heard too many reports of radios being
DOA, random QA problems, transmitters dying after a battery recharge,
failure to transmit at full power on one of the bands (usually UHF,
etc. It also sounds like it's very difficult to return radios for
replacement or refund, when dealing with the Chinese online retailers
(heck, I've had difficulty getting price quotes from them!) All of
this is not to say that I hate the Baofeng radios--I'll probably be
buying at least one for some of the projects that I have--but I know
what they are and what I'm getting for my money. I also know why I'll
be keeping my trusty, battered, and utterly reliable FT-60r.

As for the VX-6, I'm sure you realize that the VX series are Yaesu's
high end line of HTs, ruggedized radios with pretty much all the
features the engineers at Yaesu could cram inside the magnesium case.
Comparing any of the VX series to a UV-5R is something akin to
comparing a Jeep Grand Cherokee, or possibly a military-issue Humvee,
to a Kia Rio; they're built for entirely different purposes, and
really entirely different market segments.

With APRS, there's basically two ways to go. It's everyone--and I'm
including myself here, since one of my current projects is to hack my
Notacon 9 badge into an APRS tracker--starts of trying to roll their
own homebrew setup using a cheap GPS, some kind of inexpensive
microcontroller and an old surplus or cheap HT. From observation of
other hams, eventually, the homebrew rig becomes too much of a
money/time sink, and those who are still interested in APRS at that
point decide to invest the money required for an out-of-the-box
solution like a Kantronics TNC, Yaesu VX-8, Kenwood TH-72A, or Kenwood
D700 or D710a. Most of the hams I've talked to who've switched from
the former to the latter agree that they really ought to have just
gone to the latter solution first.

Granted, high altitude ballooning is a special case, since weight and
cost are such important factors.

As for the Raspberry Pi and APRS, I can't seem to find how it deals
with sound, and whether or not there's an easy way to hack a 3.5mm Mic
jack on to the thing. If that is possible, then everything needed to
make the R.pi do anything related to APRS is available as a software
package in Debian or Ubuntu. Look in the Amateur Radio universe for
aprsd, aprsdigi and xastir.

regards,

Mark