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Raspberry Pi portable Ham Radio station

Moleculo

Ham Radio Nerd
Apr 14, 2002
9,194
1,674
283
Late last year, I upgraded by portable station (mostly used while RV'ing) by adding a Raspberry PI 400 and 5V powered portable monitor to the mix.

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I found the Nexigo monitor on Amazon - was $150 when I bought it and now I see the price has dropped a bit.

Both the Raspberry Pi 400 and Nexigo monitor run on 5v, so I just plug them into the West Mountain Rigrunner 4004/USB which is also what the KX3 and amp plug into. As you can see in the pic, the Raspberry PI 400 runs digital mode stuff quite well - in this pic, I'm running FT8 with WSJTX but I have also since installed and used JTDX and FLDigi. For the OS, I just stuck with the native OS that comes with the PI. Most of the ham radio apps show up in the PiPackages Add/Remove Software app and others are simple enough to install. One thing to remember is that RPI 400 doesn't have a sound card built in. I just found a cheap USB Soundcard (also on Amazon), which worked fine.

This little portable setup is really convenient. It all neatly fits in a backpack and can be powered by some sort of portable battery. Of course, when running with an amplifier, the Rigrunner and a bigger battery is helpful. And, when you're done playing ham radio, the RPi 400 setup can do double duty as a RetroPie game console :)
 

Yes, I looked at the HamPi image and even installed it temporarily. Most of the apps that come with HamPi are available for easy install on your own, so I just didn't see the point. But to each his own.
 

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