Roberts Rambler

Baofeng 888 radio removed from case, front side

Baofeng 888 radio removed from case, rear side

CM108 Soundcards with 3.5mm sockets removed

Baofeng 888 connected to modified soundcard

Raspberry Pi and 888 board fitted to original modified chassis

Making new back plate with battery charge module

This was the first portable Allstar node I made. I wanted something I could use anywhere on its own. It had to be battery powered and be a radio node and a radioless node so I could use it on its own without a radio. I wanted it to be different than other Allstar nodes I'd seen, I decided to use an old broadcast portable radio for its case. The Roberts Rambler looking like it would be ideal but proven a challenge to fit all the parts needed inside it. For batteries I chose the standard 18650 lithium cells which were made into a battery pack of 5 cells in parallel.

Radio

Radioless

Node Servers

A Raspberry Pi 3 is used to control the nodes using the hamvoip V1.5 image.

Remote control features on the Raspberry Pi allows status checking and monitoring remotely.

Radio Interface

The interface between the radio and the Raspberry Pi server is a modified CM108 chip based USB sound card. It is modified to provide the PTT switching of the radio and monitoring the COS output from the radio. The COS signal tells the server a signal is being received by the radio with the correct CTCSS tone.