Book Report: "Ham Radio for Arduino and Picaxe" Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit

[wb8nbs]

"Ham Radio for Arduino and Picaxe" Edited by Leigh Klotz WA5ZNU ISBN: 978-0-87259-324-4. Available from http://www.arrl.org.

Frankly I did not have high hopes for this book as the ARRL seems to mostly favour projects using PIC processors and I am an Arduino person. But received my copy in the mail today and my first browse through has left me very impressed. There are four PicAXE projects, two ATTiny projects, and 14 Arduino projects, serious, useable, real world projects. Anyone who thinks microcontrollers are toys should be made to read this.

The book opens with letters from Dave Sumner, K1ZZ, the head of the ARRL, Dave Dougherty from MAKE magazine, and the editor. That's followed by a discussion of Amateur radio, and the history of Hams and microcontrollers. Each project is then presented in separate chapters. Theory, Construction, and source code are all discussed in great detail. I only wish we had software this well documented at my job. Each chapter ends with a long list of related URLs, (many of which point to Adafruit) and links to appropriate source code.

There is a dedicated forum developing at: http://www.hamradioprojects.com

Here is a partial list of projects:

Timber: An APRS Data Logger
APRS Messenger
Airgate: A Receive-Only, Low-Power APRS iGate
Marinus: An APRS Display
Nanokeyer
Multimode Transmitter Shield
Thermic: a High Voltage, High Frequency, and High Temperature Data Logger
Dozen: A DMTF Controlled SSTV Camera
Buddy: A Rover’s Best Friend
Sweeper: An Arduino SWR Scanner
Cascata: An Arduino Waterfall
Swamper: A Cypress Waterfall for 2.4 GHz

Picaxe Projects

Axekey: A Simple PICAXE Keyer
Pharos: A PICAXE CW Beacon Keyer
Sunflower Solar Tracker

ATTiny Projects

QRSS: Very Slow Sending
Time Out: A Handheld Radio Talk Timer

[adafruit_support_bill]

Thanks for posting that. We do have a number of Hams here on the forums. :)

[wa5znu]

Thanks for the great review WB8NBS! The book has been out about a week and is doing well in the ham community.

I proposed the project to help build a bridge between the modern DIY community and the ham community, and got an enthusiastic response from Limor and Phil of Adafruit and Dale Dougherty of MAKE, at the Make Hardware Innovation Workshop at Xerox PARC in May. I

I hope Adafruit will carry the book, and one or two other radio and analog electronics experiments books I recommended in the first chapter.

Leigh.