[HN Gopher] Goodwatch - A Ham Radio Wristwatch (2020)
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Goodwatch - A Ham Radio Wristwatch (2020)
Author : austinallegro
Score : 112 points
Date : 2024-06-30 22:34 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (kk4vcz.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kk4vcz.com)
| xavierstein wrote:
| This is delightful. I would love to start working on a project
| like this.
|
| Side note, as someone who works adjacent to the RF and
| electronics industry, getting my Ham license was the best thing I
| could have done to help my CS brain understand the radio and
| electronics side of what we do. If you've ever been curious about
| getting your license, I highly recommend it!
| api wrote:
| What's Ham radio like these days? My grandfather was a ham and I
| have fond memories of him teaching me about radio waves (and
| early computer programming!) as a kid in his den.
|
| I still remember that he was W4LMU, and searching on it finds
| this:
|
| https://www.qsl.net/kq4pl/skeys.htm
|
| His gear was huge, still used vacuum tubes (already retro in the
| 1980s but he was a Ham), and consumed enough power to run a small
| neighborhood. He'd be delighted with this.
| jonah wrote:
| Ham radio is a hugely diverse hobby these days.
|
| Personally, I had been thinking about getting my license, but
| finally did it as a extra skill for my SAR team application. As
| the younger guy with the rope skills, I got into infrastructure
| work. Towers and antennas and remote cameras and microwave
| links, etc.
|
| People are into everything from mesh networking to digitally
| encoded communication methods to hiking to remote mountaintops
| and seeing how many people you can contact to building prepper
| type SHTF communication systems to contesting and seeing how
| many/how far contacts you can make to setting up data
| collection systems for scientific research to supporting public
| safety, large events, and emergency communications. And a lot
| more I'm not coming up with off the top of my head.
|
| My local radio club was in an area with a lot of retired
| defense and aerospace type engineers but it also had younger
| folks from tech, media and anything else type backgrounds.
| ianburrell wrote:
| One big thing recently is POTA and SOTA where people go to
| parks and mountain summits to make contacts. The latter
| requires small radio, putting up your own antennas, and using
| Morse code.
|
| People talking on the radio is sort of dead. HF is still
| popular. There is FT8 digital mode that let's make contact with
| low signal. I've reached Australia, Chile, and Russia from west
| coast.
|
| There is a lot of hacking, but it doesn't seem to get into
| mainstream. But there are lots of things to build; I have
| little radio waiting to be soldered.
| technothrasher wrote:
| > People talking on the radio is sort of dead.
|
| That's a shame. I have vivid memories of one radio or another
| chattering away in my dad's study when I was a kid. Of
| course, to the point I guess, he's still around but doesn't
| really do any of that anymore himself. He now mostly plays
| with radio astronomy in his dotage.
| anamexis wrote:
| > People talking on the radio is sort of dead.
|
| I don't have any reference to how it used to be, but there's
| a fair amount of voice activity on the 2m and 70cm repeaters
| near me.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Lots of folks remember the 2m/440 activity in the days
| before unlimited cell phone minutes. Nothing compares to
| that. I'll say that, in my major west coast metro, the
| repeaters are pretty dead outside of nets.
| fsagx wrote:
| > People talking on the radio is sort of dead
|
| In my area, we used to have quite a bit of traffic on one 2m
| repeater, mostly around morning and afternoon commute times.
| We had a retired police officer who seemed to spend most of
| the day chatting. He went away, and most of the chatter went
| away with him. I would guess all the guys who used to talk
| while in their cars are still out there, but no one is
| getting the conversation ball rolling like he used to.
| DakotaR wrote:
| Somewhat disagree, it depends on the club. For example, I've
| experienced a lot more conversation on the W3OK repeater vs
| the W4MLB repeaters
| Stratoscope wrote:
| Something wild that a local Bay Area group of hams do is
| Parachute Mobile. It's just what you may guess: they jump out
| of an airplane with ham rigs strapped to their chest and make
| contacts from under the canopy.
|
| https://parachutemobile.wordpress.com/
| engineer_22 wrote:
| if you get licensed you may be able to obtain his old callsign
| as your own
| yock wrote:
| It's good to go into radio with an idea of what you want to do
| with it, then find a community of hams who enjoy doing that.
| People chase distant contacts, they practice emergency
| communications, they run low-power stations from remote
| locations, and many more kinds of activities.
|
| Mike - KE8ATC
| itomato wrote:
| You don't need a license to explore and have fun.
|
| Cheap, firmware hackable HTs are hawt, in particular the
| Quansheng UV-K5,K6.
|
| Tons of SDR receivers out there to explore, and many extremely
| exiting transceiver projects out there also. Just so much:
|
| https://github.com/jopohl/urh
|
| http://websdr.org/
|
| http://kiwisdr.com/public/
|
| https://meshtastic.org/docs/hardware/devices/
| rtkwe wrote:
| Listening is license free but transmitting in the US on any
| of the interesting bands (ie not just DMR or a walmart walkie
| where the device is licensed instead of the operator being
| licensed) requires a license.
| DominoTree wrote:
| Something really cool I stumbled upon recently - someone near
| me hosts a trivia show via ham radio once a week, and other
| folks in the area will listen for their callsign and then
| answer his questions
|
| Makes me really happy to run across random unexpected things
| like that
| the_plus_one wrote:
| I bumped into kk4vcz at Defcon in 2021. I was standing around,
| looking clueless, and playing with my Baofeng near the ham radio
| village. He approached me and asked if I could transmit on a
| particular frequency to help test his watch. I said something
| along the lines of "oh that's really cool, I've read that guy's
| blog and follow him on Twitter." He said something along the
| lines of "yeah, that's me."
|
| He even gave me a couple GoodWatch boards. Nice guy!
| wkat4242 wrote:
| He's also a hero of the MD380/390 mods and I believe also DMR
| access point boards and software. Great guy
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| By the same author https://www.amazon.co.uk/PoC-GTFO-Manul-
| Laphroaig/dp/1593278...
|
| The PoC||GTFO series, I only have vols 1 & 2, have to be some of
| the most fascinating books ever published. These and Stevens'
| Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment are the most fun in
| my bookcase.
| supportengineer wrote:
| How does one create a circuit board tiny enough to fit inside an
| existing wristwatch? I didn't see any photos of the circuit
| board.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Check the GitHub link. Their PCB replaces the original in the
| watch.
| _Microft wrote:
| This seems to be the replacement board shown here:
| https://github.com/travisgoodspeed/goodwatch/wiki/GoodWatch3...
| yock wrote:
| That would be a heck of a fun thing to build. Seems to require a
| heat gun though, which puts it out of my reach for now.
| robxorb wrote:
| Are there limits on what can be done in a wristwatch? I mean in
| terms of RF reception? Like, is it possible in such small sizes
| to receive any frequency, or is there certain limits, say based
| on heat, or necessary component footprint or other constraints?
| anamexis wrote:
| I think the primary constraint would be the antenna. Generally
| speaking, the longer the wavelength, the longer the antenna
| needs to be to efficiently receive it (or transmit it). You can
| still receive/transmit with a too-short antenna, but efficiency
| drops off very quickly.
| robxorb wrote:
| Thanks! This makes me wonder if it might be possible to build
| a wristwatch SDR, essentially the same as this project but
| with a very wide band into the Ghz, as with some small USB
| SDR's. It'd be so cool to have something so versatile in
| Casio form-factor.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| This watch uses a wire in the wristband. Can the antenna
| length be increased by simply using multiple coils?
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