Hey all
Ive been thinking about my portable computing set up again, and I’ve come back to the Raspberry Pi.
So what Im planning to do is (finally!) produce a series of blog posts about setting this up as the best amateur radio portable computer that I can, its going to be more than just installing some software and getting on the air, although obviously thats what im doing to start with, Im planning to add some hardware – GPS, Led, Status screen etc etc and write my own software/scripts to use these to interface with the headless raspberry pi and software. For example I want to run be able to make sure that JS8Call is running and have a physical button I can press to send my locator which will be updated in JS8Call by a GPS connected to the Pi. That kind of thing.
Ill publish any software and scripts I write in case they are useful to any of you, they will be in this website as downloads probably.
Why the Raspberry Pi?
Its small, light, easy to customise and will run all day long on my USB power bank and as well as its own monitor I can easily connect to it with my iPad which is still one of the few devices I have that I can see in bright sunlight! There is plenty of software and resources online already which is mostly open source.
And most of all its a great learning tool. I plan to learn some new programming languages to add to my already broad skillset.
So if this might be of interest to you then please check back soon for updates, I will post on instagram (mark_m0iax) and facebook or you can follow the blog.The Beginning
The Beginning
My new Raspberry Pi 3B+ arrived today, so I’ll quickly list what I did to get it ready…
I begin by downloading and installing the Rasbian operating system, you can download the files you need from the Raspberry Pi website
To write the OS to a suitable Micro SD Card I use Balena Etcher which is available for all major operating systems.
Using the links, download to your desktop or laptop and write the image to the SD Card.
Thats the easy bit done 🙂 Next time I’ll get the Raspberry Pi running and start installing the essential software I want.
73
Mark, M0IAX