DKARS Magazine 201507

An interesting “Kickstarter’ initiative
HamShield for Arduino (VHF/UHF transceiver)
HamShield lets your Arduino talk to far away people and things using amateur radio bands (Coverage: 136-170MHz, 200-260MHz, 400-
520MHz)
Turn your Arduino into a powerful radio transceiver!
HamShield lets your Arduino talk to far away people
and things using powerful amateur radio bands!
With the power of Arduino, you can use the Ham-
Shield to build and invent amazing things in minutes!
Here are some examples, right out of our
sketch toolbox:
Packet Radio
Long range mesh networks
Emergency communication networks
High altitude ballooning
Talk to repeaters
Tracking devices (APRS)
Interface the HamShield to your computer!
Beacons
Weather stations
Repeaters
Remote controlled robots
Automated satellite tracking and reception
Weather satellites
Scanning police, fire, business, FRS, GMRS,
and MURS frequencies
Logging and recording radio traffic
Touchscreen handhelds
Bulletin board systems
New inventions!
The HamShield supports a wide range of VHF and UHF frequencies,
covering 3 amateur bands. This includes the 1,25 meter or
"220" band (220 MHz to 225 MHz), which is notoriously hard to
find equipment for! It also can transmit on MARS bands.
Getting your Ham license is easy too! All that is required is a
Technician license: http://www.arrl.org/getting-yourtechnician-license
The HamShield supports both voice and packet radio modes.
You could even invent your own digital modes with enough skill.
It is compact, lightweight, and works great with any Arduino or
Arduino compatible that supports Uno-style shields.
The HamShield is the product of 12 months of design, engineering,
and prototyping. This May 2015, we had our final design.
We need your support to bring the economies of scale in our
favor, fund the final development, part purchasing, and production
of our shield, and help bring innovation back to Ham Radio.
With the HamShield, you no longer need a dedicated radio or
piece of equipment for each type of operating mode. There is
also no need for complicated radio interface cables. The radio is
now under your complete control!
Practically no experience is needed to use the Ham-
Shield. Unlike other complicated, software defined
radio boards, the transceiver core is a proven, commercial
grade radio transceiver. There are a growing
number of ready-to-use Arduino sketches we are
actively developing. They are all ready to be uploaded
to your Arduino!
As the community writes more Arduino sketches,
this radio toolbox will grow. What will you write?
But the HamShield is even more powerful than just
being the utility army knife of existing radio transceiver
technology. The HamShield will bring true
innovation back to Ham Radio, and yield new concepts
and technologies.
Have you ever thought of a new, really cool, dream
technology for amateur radio, but simply did not
have the time, money or skill to take it to completion?
Now, you can write a new program and bring it
to life within minutes! We can't wait to see what
people invent next with this shield!
The HamShield is powered by the Auctus 1846S radio
transceiver IC, which features a fully integrated
FM radio transceiver. This amazing chip, with a software
defined radio core, allows the ability to offer a
wide range of features such as sub-audio CTCSS/CDCSS modes,
DTMF encoding and decoding, tail noise elimination, RSSI,
squelch, VOX, volumes, and even a very powerful tone encoder
and decoder (which may be fast enough for some digital modes
if you are creative enough!) Both 12,5KHz or 25KHz FM channel
bandwidth can be selected. You can also leverage the powerful
ADC and filtered PWM output circuitry for digital and audio
modes right from your Arduino sketches! There is also no complex
software defined radio processing required.
The HamShield is a wide band transceiver and can operate
across the following frequency ranges at full power:
134-174 MHz
200-260 MHz
400-520 MHz
Contained within these ranges are three Ham Radio bands: 2
meter (144-148 MHz), 1,25 meter (220-225 MHz), and 70 centimeter
(420-450 MHz)
While the HamShield is intended for amateur radio use, the
shield can be used for prototyping new, non-amateur radio technologies
in a lab setting, or possibly with use with an FCC
granted temporary auxiliary license!
DKARS Magazine, editie 13 -17- juli 2015