I have been thinking about this for a while but just don't have the time to work on it.

An universal remote for radio's. There are some radios that have removable fronts but I would like to be able to remote control some "regular" radios.

I would like to use my IC-751A or Yaesu FT-897 in my car but only have a small display with a few buttons on my dashboard.

Take an Arduino or other processor and have it speak Icom's CI-V, Yaesu and Kenwood.
Initially I think it should have frequency read-out and control (VFO), band control and mode switch.
The "remote" will need a display, rotary encoder and 3 or 4 buttons.

Some friends and I did something similar in 1998 with a PIC but this was for a specific PMR radio (Teletron T-813). The museum we were volunteering for was donated 4000 channelized radios and these "remotes" gave them VFOs, auto repeater shift, memories and more.
www.jancorver.org/ombouw/t813/dtn/index.htm
(sorry in Dutch but you can see in the pictures what I mean)
This second example even had a keyboard interface to program some names and memories:
www.jancorver.org/ombouw/t813/rrt/index.htm

Willem,
Nice links, seems like it was a pretty good project form the photos and things I could pick out! As for your other ideas I think that controlling the radios wouldn't be too hard at all especially if you could find documentation of the commands from the head unit, our you could go the route of sniffing the wire . As for the Arduino, certainly capable but I think that the $30 price tag and extremely high level programing could become an issue at this point, something where a MSP430 could handle very well and very cheaply.

We are using an MSP430 on RIT ARC (K2GXT's) high altitude balloon for flight control, a $4 TI launchpad serves as a development board and programmer. Libraries are slowly surfacing and the chip is certainly not terribly hard to learn. I've been loving it ever since I started using the chip family!

If ham radio can almost standardize on a few MCU's that are not DIY trade-offs (Arduino) and very inexpensive, I think that a growing library database would be an impressive development that would benefit our advancement! at $4 for a development board, about $0.2 for a basic MSP430 and a whole lot of functionality wrapped into an easy to learn embedded C environment there is a lot to gain.

I'll have to write up a quick post about our Flight Computer, having written much of the framework myself and some of the other guys at K2GXT have done some impressive work on the command set I've certainly grown a well deserved liking to TI's nices line of devices!

Thanks,
- Brent, KB1LQD

Brent,

I bought the LaunchPad with this project in mind but have yet to play with it. The IDE looks a bit scary to me

Arduino is a bit more common but then again I see more and more MSP430 project popping up.

There is a Dutch saying:
"Beter goed gestolen dan selcht ontworpen / Better well copied then poorly designed"

So hopefully I will have some time soon and find some code snippets I can use as start off points.

Sjaak, W4RIS

Willem,
Definitely download the IAR Kickstart IDE, I think many find it more intuitive to use and well supported. There are some great resources out there now that the Launchpad has been out for a while. Check out this great blog that starts simple and works its way to bigger applications! Also, The datasheet and family guide on the MSP430 is your best friend sometimes

http://mspsci.blogspot.com/2010/07/tutorial-01-getting-started.html


- Brent, KB1LQD

Using an IDE to write C? Yuck!

Those radios may already be supported by Hamlib. Of course, I have no idea how well (or even if) that would work on a 20 cent microcontroller.

amusselm wrote:


I doubt hamlib would work on the MSP430 without serious rewriting... might as well be a new project hihi. Hamlib was made for Linux if I remember correctly so without Linux your missing much of the needed infrastructure for it to work. Am I right?


Bryce