Radio

Using an Android TV Box for Ham Radio

Ben1 Comment

If you want to get onto Digital Radio for less (way less) than $100, then you may be interested in this.

I have Apple equipment, and therefore miss out on a lot of the testing apps that are only available on Android. There seem to be more and more there all the time! I don’t want to purchase another phone, just to get a few apps, but I did hear of an alternative.

A friend of mine in Canada, Martin VE3KLR, gave me the idea of using an Android TV box and actually using it as a radio! He had already done it and believes it could end up doing a lot more than what I have posted below. With the amount of apps now available, you can talk on almost all networks now via Android. You sure get some funny replies when you say your on a TV box.

I had to do it as more and more people were talking about Android apps.

Not knowing much about Android at all, this project started to quickly become overwhelming, so I ended up putting it on hold for some time.

However I later decided to get back on this project. It just seemed to easy. So this is what I did.

The Box

I purchased a cheap Android TV Box, mine was worth $40.99 including postage. You could almost purchase any Android box, but I decided to get one with at least two USB ports, and blue tooth. Blue tooth will allow me to connect other things like keyboards, microphones and mouses as I want to. It also has wifi, which means less cords.

At first, I was using this TV Box with out old CRT TV, and it worked well, the writing was a little hard to read, but it still worked. I then plugged it into a HDMI monitor, and it worked very well, very clear and easy to use.

As this little box plugs into a nice TV screen, you could easily use this as a small computer by installing a word processor. Social media, YouTube and web browsing are easy also.

Once connected, I connected it to my Wifi. On my box, you can plug in a Ethernet cable which is handy if your shack is far from your router, but I chose not to at this stage.

When you get one, make sure yours comes with the correct AC plug for your country. You may want to think about if you want HDMI, Blue tooth and how many USB ports does it have. Remember, these boxes are meant to store and play video, so they usually come with a lot of hard drive space and grunt for what we are going to us it for.

Below are some pictures of the one I got, however I am not necessarily recommending it. There are heaps of options available, so do a bit or research first, but remember most reviews will be about how well they play movies, which is not why I got mine.

As I mentioned earlier, there are heaps of Amateur Radio apps now available, and new ones all the time, so you could install these on the same device.

I started with some of the basic apps, like Echolink, Peanut, Teamspeak and Zello. These also have the echo function where you can test sound also.

The Monitor

You probably don’t need to get a monitor, but you may want to when you see what I got. I purchased a small 9 inch monitor that runs off 12 volts. I was going to get a 5 inch one, but it ran of 8 volts, and the one I got is just that little bit bigger for my eyes. This monitor has several different input options so I could future proof this handy little monitor. It also had speakers inbuilt, so when using HDMI, everything sound and video is taken care of.

You can get larger monitors ones, or smaller ones, but I thought this one would sit well on my desk. It also came with a nice stand. You can see in the video how well it sits on my desk in front of my PC monitors.

What other things do you need?

For me, I found a mouse most useful. You can use the remote, but if you plug in a mouse, you almost don’t need a remote anymore.

A microphone is something else you should invest in. You can purchase these for almost $1 delivered, but I often think you get what you pay for, and the microphone is very important. Having said that, as you are going to use the microphone on digital talk groups only, some would argue it isn’t as important as analog.

A keyboard would be great. You could plug it in via USB, or connect in via Bluetooth. I haven’t done this as yet, but plan to.

You can plug in a USB Bluetooth dongle also should you not need to.

Other Uses

Another use for this is to put your electronic QSL cards on it. It makes a great slideshow for the radio shack! They usually come with large hard drives so lots of space for these.

As I mentioned earlier, it could be used for gaming, watching videos,

Mobile

The screen is 12 volts, so this could easily go in the car also, and the Android TV Box could be secured on the back of it. The box runs off 5 volts, so this could easily be also run in the car if your cleaver enough to drop 12 volts to 5 volts.

The TV box can uses wifi, so you should be able to connect it to your mobile phone.

I hope that helps get a few more onto the digital bands. It is a lot of fun on digital. I have made good friends all over the world over digital. Having this Android TV Box not only allows me access to Android Apps, but pretty much gives me a new radio so I can now receive and transmit on a different talk groups while using my current setup to work other talk groups at the same time.

Update: since writing this post, I have updated and changed my android TV box as I suddenly had sound issues. The one I ended up getting had a later version on android and more memory etc.

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Below are some other posts I have done on similar topics

Welcome to the site

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Hi there from Down Under, Melbourne Australia. Thank you for visiting my radio web site. Below is what items by category is available on this web site.

Thanks again for visiting. This web site is still being built, so don’t forget to Follow us to get updates as they come. You can do this by the Follow Us box.

I also have a travel web site, so if you are interested in Australia at all, I highly recommend you visit it. One of our biggest trips was a 5 week holiday through outback Australia. We traveled through outback Australia to see why these remote locations are there, how they started, and what are they doing today. These locations are some of the most remote places in the world. This trip has an amazing amount of Australia’s information, pictures, maps and video’s and I guarantee you will learn something even if you are an Australian or been there before. See the Northern Australia trip via the link below. https://sangsteradventures.wordpress.com/

Hope to hear you on the air sometime soon!

73’s from VK3TBS, Ben, Melbourne Australia

Power without Power

Ben4 Comments

In 2019 my family and I went on a five week trip through outback Australia to some of the remotest parts. We had no access to power, reception, food or water for days. We took what we had.

Here is a cheap way to have power without having power, a rather inexpensive way to do it. I took this short video in outback Northern Territory in the top end of Australia.

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Below are some other posts I have done on a similar topic

Chirp

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CHIRP is a free, open-source tool for programming your amateur radio. It supports a large number of manufacturers and models, as well as provides a way to interface with multiple data sources and formats.

Supported Radios

Supported radios can be found on their web site at https://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Home. This list is updated as the software is updated.

Download Chirp

Chirp can be downloaded from the following web site. Should things stop to work or connect to outside web sites, it probably is because you don’t have the latest version. You do NOT need to uninstall an existing version of CHIRP before installing a newer one. Just install the new one and it will replace the existing copy. If you already have an old copy on your PC, make sure you close it first, otherwise you will get an error while installing.

https://trac.chirp.danplanet.com/chirp_daily/LATEST/

Update Chirp

On opening Chirp, it will tell you if an update is available. Simply click on the link, download the latest version that is appropriate to your platform, and then once the file has downloaded, run the file. It will update your software. No need to un-install the old one, and it seems all the settings, such as file locations, stay in the new version.

Connecting Tip

Chirp can easily connect to your radio without needing to look at the device manager anymore. Have a look at this:

Known Issues

Chirp list all their known issues online which is great. You can see the current list here:

https://chirp.danplanet.com/issues?page=13&per_page=100&set_filter=ewezetzft&sort=tracker%2Cstatus%2Cpriority

Download from Radio

I think the first step is to first download what is currently on the radio. This will give you a starting point which can be saved should your upload not work. At the very least doing this will allow you to check communication between your PC and radio works, and you will have a file that you can look at to see how it was programmed.

To do this, go to the Radio menu and click on Download from Radio or Ctrl-D. This will give you a small dialog box where you can select the Com Port, radio and model. Your model of radio may not exactly be on the list, so you may need to do some work to see which one to select as an alternative. For example, I have a Baofeng GT-3TP, but it is not on the list, so I have to select the BF-F8HP model.

You can then either edit what you have and then upload it back to the radio, or start from scratch. If you want to start from scratch, you may want to see what Query Data sources are available first.

If you have trouble connecting your computer to your radio, then first make sure it is connected correctly and all the way into the radio. If this doesn’t fix it, go to Windows Device Manager then right click and select properties. If error code 43 comes up, then right click on it and uninstall. Then from the Action menu, scan for updated devices.

Query Data Source

Chirp can can sync your radio with the repeaters listed on several different sites. This will save you a lot of time getting the latest frequencies, offsets, and tone squelches etc. These sites can be found on the Radio menu, Query Data Source, then you can see a list of them.

I usually use the RepeaterBook option and then from this you can select political or proximity depending on what you want to do. If you select proximity it will put the repeaters in distance and band order, not frequency, however you can change this prior to uploading to your radio.

For me, once I have selected proximity, I sort the list in order of frequency, however this doesn’t change their location channel.

Then select the Frequencies you don’t want in your radio, for example, the ones on bands your radio does not use. Right click and select delete, and move all memories up. You may need to sort again in order of frequency; however, this doesn’t change their location channel.

I then export the tab to a csv file.

I then open the CSV file in Excel and sort in the order I want, frequency. Be sure to re-number the location numbers once in the correct order. MAKE SURE COLUMN K = FM. Make sure you remove any comments in column O & R. You can also add any additional frequencies you want to.

Open the CSV exported file, now you will see the locations are in order of Frequency as set above. You can still make any changes required and save or save as which will update the CSV file.

I will add notes here on how to program your radio soon.

Other Reads

Here are some other posts I have done on similar topics