I added up all of the wall warts (7) and their wattage rating for the input (110v AC). This came up to 222 watts total. The white unit for my 15″ LCD monitor drew the most at 165watts.

After being wired to my Ham Radio power supply, I used my Kill-A-Watt meter, and it only shows 57 watts of usage max, with everything on. Im running

• 4  Scanners
• 2 Meter radio
• 15″ LCD
• HT Battery Charger
• PC Router
• Amplified PC Speakers

Not bad for an hour of cutting and wiring. Since the wall wart plugs were plugged in 24/7 they were always drawing a little bit of power. My big power supply has a switch on i, so I can turn everything off at once now. Im saving about 165 watts now.

The next step is to run a power line from my Solar Panel system and controller in my garage into my Ham Shack, so I can get free power from the sun for my desk equipment. I think I will need another 1 or 2 sets of panels to run it enough, but that will come later.

I found some kids toys, made for text messaging. Most of the models use InfaRed, but one set I found at Toys R Us for $20, that uses RF on 49.860Mhz. They are made by Digital Blue and are branded as WWE. Model number is WE5500.

Each radio is factory programmed with a unique 4 digit ID code. You can view the code in the LCD. This allows direct messaging to the correct unit that you want. The keyboard is the old cellphone type using 1ABC 2DEF 3GHI etc. It has a small 1 line LCD.

After testing them and sending a few messages, I opened one up, to see how it worked.
Inside are 2 boards. The main keyboard / LCD board and the RF board.
Luckily the manufacturer was nice enough to label the pinouts on the headers that connect the 2 boards.

Jack 1
GND
GND

Jack 2
RX-Power
RX-Data (audio)
TX-Data (audio)

Jack 3
6v +
GND
TX Power (4.15v – goes to GND/Low when Transmitting)

With these simple connections, it makes hacking easy! It can easily be wired to a higher powered Ham Radio.

Open up the case and find the RF board.

WaveWare POCSAG Paging transmitter board

We will remove this board, and use its wiring.
Cut the coax at the BNC connector.
Unplug the 6 pin plug.
Unscrew and remove the RF board, and then remove the BNC Connector.
Find the RED wire on Pin 9 of the DB-9 Connector and remove it from there and also from the solder side of the Encoder board.
Find the BLACK wire on Pin 1 of the DB-9 Connector and remove it from there and also from the solder side of the Encoder board.
Discard these short wires.

Now that the power wires have been removed from the DB-9 connector, you can use it with a standard Serial cable or a USB-Serial converter.

Your case will now look like this.

Now that the power wires have been removed, all you need are 4 wires from the connector from the RF board.

Encoder End

Computer End

To use your own transmitter you will need the following wires from the 6 pin connector on the RF board.

I will be starting on this project in the fall, once my kids are settled in school and I will have more free time. I would like to make it into kits to be able to sell for the DIY Ham Operator. They wont bee too technical and most hams who can solder should be able to complete these. Im thinking this can be built for under $200, minus rotor motors.

Planned features.

Controller

• Large 4×20 character blue LCD for easy reading.
• Possibly use a 2.8″ x 1.5″ graphic LCD
• 12 volt controller operation.
• Full turn Rotory Encoders for simple knob turn manual positioning. 1 for Azimuth, 1 for Elevation.
• A few user selectable memory preset positions.
• A 16 LED ring to show basic position of Azimuth.
• A 16 LED ring to show basic position of Elevation. (Only top 1/2 would be used)
• Wireless control to rotor box. Use 315Mhz (license free) transceivers for sending and receiving position data.
  These have a range of about 500′ when using a 1/4 wave antenna.
• InfaRed remote control capability.
• Internet or PC control.
• Be able to save a few passes and not require PC to be on to be used to auto track, after data is saved.

Rotor Box

My idea is to not require any special rotor motors, modify them for special position or limit sensors.
Any simple TV antenna rotor could be used or even linear actuators for Elevation.
The box will include heavy duty relays, so you can power your own rotor motors at whatever voltage they require.
The outside control box would mount to the antenna boom using a clamp. The control box will include a special digital sensor that can read magnetic compass, along with a 3 position tilt sensor. The compass will be able to tell the Azimuth setting and send it back wireless to the indoor controller. The sensor board can also tell Elevation and send it back inside wireless. The box will need to be mounted on the antenna boom, and will need to be positioned to North and set to 0* elevation (flat) upon install, to calibrate.

• 12 Volt operation. Can handle up to 35 volts, so you can also power some rotors with same power line.
• 315 Mhz wireless transceiver to controller
• InfaRed remote capable (perfect for portable use)
• Relays for rotor power
• 1 or 2 aux relays for preamps or antenna switching.
• LED to light when moving.
• Possible LED for signal link OK from inside controller.
• Setting for standard rotor motor or stepper motor

Please leave a comment if you have any other ideas, suggestions or criticism. I would love to hear your input.

73,   KC8GRQ

This is just to test it to see if it would work.
I will build a better system that saves all of the tones and allows me to choose from a menu system on the LCD.

It stops 7 utility poles from my house and the other service stops 1000′ from my house, since they dont cross the count line and intersection. I had a WISP, but they jacked their prices up, added a 5GB /mo cap and the speeds were horrible. Most of the time I got less than 1gig download, altho they claimed 3gigs.

I had an extra Belkin F5D6050 USB WIFI adapter that I modified with an N type connector to fit the connector for the antenna.
The unit has 2 antennas. I used the main antenna coax and soldered it to the N connector.

Right now its night out, so I cant climb up on my roof to test the range yet. Im hoping it gets the weak signal from the bar down the road so I can have some decent internet service.

Standard adapter, with right antenna removed.

Inside the adapter and view of actual antenna element

USB WIFI Adapter modded with N connector

WIFI adapter and 15db parabolic dish

Keith, KB8SOE setup a laptop running a PBX server into the a HSMM router to handle and direct all of the calls. He was able to simply add new phones and users in under a minute and have them in the system and ready.

Jack, NX8A took off to his spot in the field with some equipment a little too fast and didnt get time to be briefed on how to set it up and use it, but he was able to get it going on his own, with no problem, only asking for his phone’s extension number from Keith.

WB8RCR and N8ERF decided to see how far they could go with a basic setup and test the 2.4Ghz signal though some trees. At first we couldnt connect to the from Keith’s setup with his 15db omni, only up at 12′. There was a baseball fence in the way, so that might of blocked some of the signal.

John, W8QN went across the street from the park to the Fire Dept parking lot and pointed his 15db parabolic dish towards WB8RCR and N8ERF to get a better signal from them through the trees. He had some trouble finding where they were but once he got a signal, his mesh ode was easily able to repeat them back to everyone else.

Once we had signal from everyone, and we all knew we cold call each other with no problems, Keith decided to try a conference call. He setup a conference in the PBX software and did a simple drag and drop of each extension number into the conference. In under 1 minute, all 5 nodes/extensions were talking to each other with no problem.

We were using basic VOIP network phones alone with some old analog phones and a VOIP adapter. Everything was pretty much plug and play. No setup was required to the MESH routers (besides the initial HSMM Mesh firmware and callsign/SSID setup).

Del was able to download and use a VOIP software for his Android based phone.
The software is called  C SIP Simple and is available for free on the Android Market.
Keith simply added him to the list, gave him an extension number and a password. This is required t prevent unwanted users on the network. The main PBX computer controls all of the users.

Some small problems we had were the trees. 2.4Ghz is very dependent on line of sight. Although we were using just the basic stock antennas on some of the routers, better antennas would definitely work better, but the trees would still block some signal.
We also needed a basic list of all of the extensions and who had what number. all we needed was a basic piece of paper to do it, but without knowing who is at what extension, its a lot of needles calls back to “base” at the main PBX server to lookup extensions. It would be nice if we could use true VOIP phones and be able to list them in the phone’s phonebook.

We also should figure out a “safer” power solution. The routers take 12 volts, but the VOIP to Analog phone adapters take 5 volts. The problem is that they use the same barrel plug size, so someone might accidentally grab the wrong adapter and blow a VOIP adapter if powering it with 5volts. I suggested that we add a 7805 voltage regulator into the VOIP adapters, so we can safely run them on 5 or 12 volts without worry. This would also make it more flexible to run direct off a car battery and not need a power inverter to go up to 120volts, then back down to 5 or 12. This is un-needed wiring and is not as efficient.

We didnt use all of the higher gain antennas, but we werent really testing for range today, it was mostly to make sure it all worked, and without problems. We might go out another day to test real life range with better antennas.

Here is a map of where our nodes were.

Lots of spare supplies

The stack of HSMM Mesh routers

Del's mesh router and his phone running VOIP software.

The main setup with 15db omni. Keith is working on laptop.

The unit I got was a commercial band UHF Transmitter. Ive been testing it with a UHF stubby dummy-load type antenna.
The unit was made by WaveWare and I dont think its made or sold anymore. Its sad, since the POCSAG encoder board inside is really useful for my needs.

My idea is to pull the transmitter from the unit and use my own VHF transmitter. This will allow me to use the freq that I want and use higher power. I have an older Alinco VHF mobile radio and also use an external high power amp.  I will post updates once its setup and working on the new radio.

WaveWare POCSAG Paging encoder / transmitter

Below is the POCSAG Encoder board. This takes the RS-232 serial port signal and produced the FSK audio tones for the transmitter.

WaveWare POCSAG Paging encoder board

Below is the transmitter portion of the unit. It is a Tekk brand crystal controlled UHF radio.

WaveWare POCSAG Paging transmitter board

This is what POCSAG sounds like.