5 comments

  • Crunchified 1 hour ago
    This doesn't turn your phone into a ham transceiver at all. It turns your phone into a transceiver controller. Given that a cell phone is a transceiver, this headline is rather disappointing clickbait.
    • lovelearning 19 minutes ago
      I don't see it as clickbait since the realities of the Android ecosystem is a shared context.

      Most people know that just about every Android phone has a restricted hardware design, not an expandable one.

      So, "turn your phone into X" is bound to automatically evoke images of another device that plugs into the phone via common connectors like USB or the audio jack and an app on the phone to control that device. That's what the phrase means to most people in the context of Android.

      "Turn your phone into a ham radio transceiver controller" is neither needed nor entirely accurate, because then people will assume it can control _any_ ham radio transceiver.

    • alexwwang 1 hour ago
      Agree.

      We need a compact short wave transceiver device actually.

      • FabCH 1 hour ago
        Baofeng is 20 dollars? How much cheaper and compact do you need?

        And I know, I know, Baofengs are notorious for going over the allowed noise limits… but still…

        • takipsizad 1 hour ago
          Baofeng's are not shortwave radios afaik
      • RobotToaster 56 minutes ago
        A compact CB transceiver would be fun.
      • NordStreamYacht 41 minutes ago
        Yaesu FTW
  • landgenoot 53 minutes ago
    > 1 watt transmit can go miles yet sips your phone’s battery

    How far can such a device reach in a typical urban environment with the longer antenna?

  • bdavbdav 1 hour ago
    I used to use SDR for DAB radio in the nexus 7 in the dash of my BMW E46. It didn’t work very well but was closer to being some kind of radio receiver (not trans at least)
  • s03nk3 1 hour ago
    Is it so difficult to have schematics and pcb exported as PDF so that people do not need to fire up KiCAD to view the stuff?
  • RobotToaster 2 hours ago
    1w seems a little limited? A cheap baofeng is 8w.
    • lormayna 2 hours ago
      Only on the paper, the real power is around 3/3.5W
    • Kaliboy 1 hour ago
      Those cheap baofeng's are illegal to use where I live on most of the spectrum they can operate on. Illegal to press the talk button anyway.

      So maybe the 1w is also a regulatory issue.

      • asdff 31 minutes ago
        How does the FCC enforce this sort of thing? Are they listening in to certain frequencies nationally with the ability to triangulate a handheld down to actually identifying someone?
    • takipsizad 1 hour ago
      1w is usually okay and using 8w from a phone is probably way too much power demand