Baofeng is not as easy or as powerful as a $50 surplus taxicab radio. ?Working as a community you may be able to find a local who can get a couple of dozen for the project. ?With patience, your surplus radio guy may find them for much cheaper. ?
The Raspberry PI is $35 and makes a nicely reproducible packet radio setup. ? ?G8BPQ PILINBPQ runs on it.?
?There are definitely things to learn while turning this concept into a community project that everybody in the community can build. ?Talk this up locally, and feel free to glom onto global help. ? Local participant-hours are the best, of course.?
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Tadd / KA2DEW ?
tadd@...
Raleigh NC ?FM05pv
North Carolina ham-radio chatRoom Network:?
Packet networking over ham?radio:?
Local Raleigh ham radio info:?
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On Dec 18, 2024, at 11:41?AM, David Clark via groups.io <cw.w4trj@...> wrote:
As additional thoughts to my previous--
Imagine the scenario of Western NC in Hurricane Helene.
Imagine a lot of people having a gizmo like a Blackberry (or like a Lilygo T-deck on meshtastic) but was a GMRS or VHF capable radio, capable of voice, with keyboard and small screen for short messages, capable of running low power and lasting a long time on battery as well as being charged by a small solar cell.
Would it be helpful? You bet.
Maybe it could hit starlink also, tho I'd prefer open access to airwaves like regular ol' radio.
All the pieces are there.
Take a baofeng uv-5r, ?add the guts of a digirig to a
Processor and a tiny keyboard and screen, and youre there.
It can be done now with various cobbling but we need something you can hand a 90 yr old woman so she can listen to/read the local emergency info and call for help if she needs it.
See what I mean?
This seems so obvious as to almost be comical. Everybody is tinkering around the edges of it with meshtastic and packet amd all that. It just needs to be considered with actual usability by normal people in mind.
A very capable device to perform a very simple task of keeping comms going no matter what. No national news or stocks or sports or facebook -- just the neighbors keeping in touch. One step above kids playing with blister-pack walkie-talkies.
DC
Tadd KA2DEW in NC