ARNSW Home Brew Group - Smart phone and tablet apps for Ham Radio

Today at the ARNSW Home Brew group, a different kind of meeting. We turned to a survey of applications for Ham Radio that run on popular tablets and smart phone. Convener, Peter, VK2EMU rigged up an impressive camera on a tripod to project devices on to the big screen.

Peter showed a number of apps that generate audio tones, including sweeps, white and grey noise for measuring frequency response. We announced our plans to bring a tone source for an RF generator to iOS. I showed some phone apps including Morse and PSK31 decoding, antenna calculation and naturally I plugged my own free app for watching WSPR spots called WSPR Watch.

There was some home brew electronics on display with another great project from Stephen, VK2BLQ, showing a Drew Diamond design with the addition of a PIC based frequency counter.

The meeting did decline into a bit of an Android vs iOS discussion and we ended up discussing the demise of support for Windows XP and what that might mean for those who cling to it. I mentioned that people who see an iPad or iPhone as being out of reach should consider an iPod Touch as these start at AU$249 and run all the same software as an iPhone.

A huge turn out today, perhaps due to the weather, all kinds of interesting transport was on display, this one with space for your gun.

Today was also the last meeting with John, VK2ASU in attendance before he heads north to his new QTH. John has been a generous contributor to the group, net coordinator of the Home Brew nets over many years and super helpful to us newbies - we will miss you mate.