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The parts to our Amateur Radio Robot, the HamRover, have arrived. To help us mock up the layout, we got out the good ol' scotch tape. The final rover will go in a water resistant case that we will mount on top of the chassis.  We will be making use of: Arduino Uno with HamShield: LoRa Edition, right angle SMA adapter, and SignalStick antenna 2.5W Solar Panel 900mA Solar Lithium Charger + 5V Booster 2x 18650 LiPo batteries wired in parallel (~4000mAh)  Tank tractor kit with dual motors L298N motor controller TTL serial JPEG camera MPU-9250 9 DoF sensor (Accelerometer...

We have quite a few new products to announce this week. 8 Watt Power Amplifier (440MHz) Looking to add a bit of umph to your HamShield, HamShield Mini or HamShield: LoRa Edition? Check out our new 8 Watt amplifier. Set your RF output to 20-23 dBm, and with the proper voltage input into the amplifier, your signal will be boosted up to 8 watts! Although not intended for transceiving operations, this amplifier is great for repeater projects and beacons. Get your 8 Watt Power Amplifier here. VHF/UHF Splitter/Combiner  Want to transmit on VHF and receive on UHF using one antenna?...

One of the original projects prototyped with HamShield was a robot that was controlled by the DTMF pad of a handheld transceiver. While it was a fun novelty, and made for a good promo video, but it wasn't entirely useful. You needed to be in visual range to operate the rover. But it was at least the start of amateur radio robotics. We have discovered over the last 5 years that our academic customers wanted to do amazing things with HamShield. They want to build satellites, rockets, landers and deploy semi autonomous rovers on simulated alien planets. It was done with great...

One of the often hyped promises of LoRa is extremely long range. However, would it be wise to launch a weather balloon with LoRa as opposed to APRS?Nigel Houwen puts both technologies head to head in their 2019 balloon launch, reaching an altitude of 101,433 feet: 2019’s launch included a single balloon which reached 101,433 feet. The flight carried carried a number of student payloads, the 900MHz voice telemetry system, a commercial APRS tracker board, my custom IRIS board, as well as a Raspberry Pi Zero W with a Camera V2 module, and a new experimental tracker based on the LoRa...

HamShield now works with Python on Linux. HamShieldPy is our new open source library that makes the power of HamShield available in Python. While we've been optimizing the library for Raspberry Pi users, it should work with only a few modifications for BeagleBone and other embedded Linux boards. You can use both HamShield and HamShieldMini with the new library. The HamShieldPy library, available on GitHub, already has DTMF and HandyTalkie examples so you can get started quickly. We'll be adding more examples over the coming months, and APRS functionality is slated for Summer 2019. Check out the HamShieldPy documentation for wiring information and installation instructions. You can buy a Raspberry Pi, HamShield, and HamShieldMini at...