Detecting Radio Usage (Rx & Tx) Using Raspberry Pi Pico W

XVF

I'm putting together a Pi project to detect the usage of our club's 6400M (remotely).

We'd like to see how much members use it, and how much transmitting it actually does. The software side I can handle, but having read the manual, I'm still not sure where to pick up the relevant inputs from the radio. The Pi Pico has max 3.3v inputs for ADC pins. Can somebody give me a quick steer please?

Go easy, I live exclusively in the software world!

I only have access to the physical radio once every two weeks, so I want to be able to test on a test rig at home.

Thanks.

Ted VE3TRQ

Why not use the software API to pick up that information? You can use an Internet connection to talk to the radio. Libraries for the API are available for multiple platforms and operating systems. That way physical access is not an issue.

You will need a VPN or other such secure access to the network the radio is on (ssh tunnel also comes to mind).

Mike-VA3MW

You can't ssh to the radio, but you can connect directly to the radio on Port 4992 and see exactly what is going on. It does send status messages all the time.

Anna goes over how to do it here:

https://youtu.be/sUhLGnixdaM

Ted VE3TRQ

ssh was only mentioned as a tunnel, Mike, not a means of connecting. You certainly can telnet in over said ssh tunnel :-)

KD0RC

If you use the API over TCP/IP, you won't need any physical connections to the radio. Does the Pi Pico have an Ethernet connector?

XVF

Hi. Thanks everyone.

I did not know there was an API! I was looking forward to doing a little ground-up Pi Pico project for fun, but things never work out quite the way you expect them to...

The Pi Pico W is a $10 board that has WiFi but no Ethernet, but I see from the above video (which is excellent by the way) that Annaliese has a Python project on Github that detects Rx and Tx states and turns on and off a physical 'On Air' sign - perfect for me to copy and butcher!

I wanted to use MQTT pub/sub and Node-RED to provide a usage dashboard for a bit of fun, so I'm looking forward to having a play. I notice that both of these feature in the video also! GNU Radio blocks too...

Every time I have a great idea, it takes but minutes to find out that someone else has already been there.
I must be getting old. Thanks again.

:)