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Portable Powered APRS Station

W6UFC

W9WDX Amateur Radio Club Member
Mar 20, 2013
11
0
11
45
Riverside, CA
Heya -


W6UFC here and just put together a quick project dealing with Packet Radio Equipment.

The fun thing is it runs completely off 10,000mAh Cell Phone Battery and has a 9V/12V switch which comes in handy.

The battery also powers the following during the 'duty cycle' (I'd say around 5 or 6 hours, need to play with it some more though)..

1- PK232MBX
2- Vortex 3550 (1GHZ/512MB/30GB SDCard) - running FreeBSD 9.1
*onboard Line-OUT/MIC/VGA/10/100 Ethernet/3 USB Ports/USB Powered.

3-External USB Speakers (they are optionally controlled via FreeBSD 'sysctl')
4-Optional Backup (1k/mAh) Battery that I have can be charged via the 10k/mAh battery while doing my thing..

Still have some playing around to do, and I am aware Solar could be a better option, but for under $300 bucks - this hardware has been dropped many times, so I find that worth the buck right there..

Anyways, in the photo you can see it's powered by a Yeasu 1500M for now, and the Monitor is running WindowMaker (which is an awesome low memory choice).

Xastrix is the APRS Client being used at this time frame, though the MAPS take a little bit of loading due, but that's ok it 'just works!'..

Here's quick photos, it's not 100% completed..but you get the point..

By the way it's playing a collection of MP3's if you look closely in the monitor on one of the photos..

Index of /pg
 
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