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Baby Steps in the Second Century of Radio
25 July 2014 | by Everyone is talking about where the hobby is going in this “Second Century” of amateur radio and big ideas are falling like rain. Here’s something fairly simple that I’d like to see come to fruition. It should go without saying that these are fictional press releases…
#PRESS RELEASE
January 3, 2015
Chinese electronics manufacturer WunDuko announed today the immediate availability of a new VHF/UHF handheld transceiver for the amateur radio market. The device supports a thousand memory channels with alphanumeric display. The advanced communications device includes low-power Bluetooth communication permitting it to be programmed and upgraded via Bluetooth from a smartphone or personal computer. The handheld is expected to retail for $159 US.
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#PRESS RELEASE
January 4, 2015
Internet Labs today announced the availability of a suite of Android applications intended to work with the new dual-band amateur handheld from WunDuko. The software enables Bluetooth communications between a smartphone and the transceiver. One of the apps included provides easy access to the full menu of options in the handheld, including the ability to program the memory channels, via the phone interface.
One of the other apps provided in the suite enables GPS data from a capable smartphone to be transmitted periodically via the handeld transceiver while position data from the radio appears on the phone via Google Maps. A company spokeman said, “it’s the perfect mobile APRS solution. There’s no klutzy hardware interface required between the devices and no reason at all to carry multiple GPS receivers.”
He also noted that the GPS in the smartphone works regardless of having a cellular connection. “Pairing the smartphone that you carry everywhere you go with the new handheld transceiver is the kind of sensible innovation we’ve been waiting on from the Japanese manufacturers for years”.
The Android app suite is available now in the Google Play Store for $9.99 US. Look for it to also be available on iOS in the coming months.
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Filed under: Ham Radio Tagged: aprs, fiction, future, hr
One Response to “Baby Steps in the Second Century of Radio”
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- Matt W1MST, Managing Editor
I’d like to see a $1.5K “black box” HF/6/2/440 rig with a bluetooth and Ethernet interface and all control is done via a computer, tablet, or smartphone via the Bluetooth and/or network connection. The user interface needs to be a good one, perhaps using native applications for Android, iOS, Windows, and OSX, not something that looks like it was a student’s first “Hello World” Java applet, and not a rig that is an SDR firmware-of-the-month club experiment.
We’ve got the technology to do all this today.