| My thought's
around remote control started when I was about to sell my house without
be forced to go QRT. I had already started
to build up a second QTH at my summerhouse about 80 km from my home QTH. The
idea was to be able to use the station at the summerhouse even if we have to
live in a rented apartment in the city. I got a DSL internet
connection installed (2 Mbit/s) which I thought was a must at that time. I
started to look how other people had done. I found out that almost everyone
used PC-computers at both ends and different standard software like HamRadioDeLuxe, Remote desktop, Skype
etc. in different combinations. I was not satisfied with that I wanted to
keep the radio feeling with a real VFO and a Display. Later on I found
SM0LCB:s website and found that he had detached the control panel
from a IC-706 and used Internet to connect the
control panel to the radio. That was a much better solution I thought, but
the problem was that you still needed a PC-computer in both end and was
still depending on PC-soundcard etc. I did not wanted a PC at the
summerhouse. I don't have it heated up during the
winter and it's not possible to go there by car because of the snow. And
PC-computers always make trouble it's only a matter of time. Anyway Ulf had
done lot of work and described how simple the communication was between the
panel and the radio. I also have my own consulting company (Microbit) where
we are developing different telecommunication products for example
IP-telephones. The IP-telephones was using a very cheap and competent
platform and I got the Idea to make a product that will fit every Hams valet
and help everybody to be able to be QRV even if they lived
in the middle of a large city. I cut the cable
between the control panel and the radio and solder the wire from the panel
in one IP-telephone and the wires from the radio into an other IP-telephone.
We added some software to the IP-telephones which made it possible to set up
second session transferring the data from and to the radio over the Internet
in parallel with the Audio. And we were "On the Air". I showed the prototype
on several ham meetings and the interest was always huge.
That solution was not 100% suited for Ham radio use and nothing more was
done for a year. But later on I took up the project again and now,
several hundred hours of mainly software development, there is a
product made specially for ham radio use. |