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> The radio simply plugs into the USB C port on your Android smartphone and transforms it into a fully-fledged handheld radio transceiver. When I saw the headl
by londons_explore 2y ago
> The radio simply plugs into the USB C port on your Android smartphone and transforms it into a fully-fledged handheld radio transceiver.
When I saw the headline I was hoping someone had hacked the qualcomm modem and turned it into a software defined radio.
- luqtas 2y agobut then it's not a click bait
- bigfishrunning 2y agoI doesnt seem to be click bait to me... A battery free ham radio I can keep in my glove box seems really useful
- dfc 2y agoHow is this battery free?
- drewnick 2y agoIt uses the phone's battery, which is assumed to be something that is already managed.
- thanksgiving 2y agoMaybe it is too early in the morning or I am just an idiot but how do battery powered cars avoid the "spicy pillow" problem where batteries swell up?
- vel0city 2y agoGood BMS systems which don't stress the battery, limiting max SoC, liquid cooling, not using its peak current draw as often, etc. Also most drivers won't really use that many charge cycles per day or whatever. I easily use like 90%+ of my phone's battery every day, I'll use up most of my laptop's battery when I'm on the go. Both of these devices often sit at a high state of charge and goose the voltages more to get more juice out of the pack at the expense of how many cycles they're good for. Meanwhile it's not like I'm driving >200mi every day.
- dfc 2y agoSo just assume your Baofeng battery is also managed. Tada! Two battery free solutions.
- bigfishrunning 2y agoBy "managed", they mean periodically charged and discharged, and kept out of the heat. which is why I don't want to keep a baofeng battery in my glove bod
- jMyles 2y agoI agree that it is an interesting configuration, but I also agree that it is click bait. The clickbait part is the "Turn your Android phone" bit. Of course you can turn your Android phone into <x>, where <x> is a USB-powered device, for approximately the price of <X>.
- bigfishrunning 2y agoThe build cost of this (about $35) is very cheap for a ham radio with the features that it has, so "approximately the price of <X>" is what i'm taking issue with here
- zeroq 2y agoI'm not in the market and clicked the link out of curiosity, but yes, I can turn my android phone into a hair dryer if it takes $35 of auxilary equipement.
- Roark66 2y agoI'd love to see that actually... Most hair driers are very power hungry. 2kW is not uncommon (at least here where standard voltage is 240V). Achieving substantial amount of drying from a mobile phone battery would be quite a feat of engineering.
- zonkerdonker 2y agoDepends on how re-usable you want it to be....screwdriver and a hammer anyone?
- 0xEF 2y agoMake a small rechargable hair drier for camping/use where outlets are in short supply, and you've got yourself a saleable product, even it it only gives about 5 min of hot air.
- londons_explore 2y agoIf battery powered, it would be a very expensive device and require a big heavy battery. Power tool batteries, eg a dewalt 18v drill, allow a max discharge current of around 10 amps. So for a 600 watt hair dryer, you're going to need 3 power tool batteries! Imagine the cost/weight of that! To make it work without the high cost/weight, you're going to have to blow mostly cold air and hope the user is okay with that.
- eru 2y agoYou could run your hairdryer off an internal combustion engine, probably, I guess? And use the Android phone only for some control functions.
- 47282847 2y ago
- gbraad 2y agoyep... in short: it uses an ESP32 with a radio module. The Android app communicates over usb serial with a firmware which is Arduino based.
- amelius 2y ago> When I saw the headline I was hoping someone had hacked the qualcomm modem and turned it into a software defined radio. If anybody could do that, that would be a nightmare I suppose.
- londons_explore 2y agoSuch a thing is clearly possible - various debug and calibration modes for these modems make them output the raw I/Q values needed for a software defined radio. Unfortunately, in a locked down production phone, those modes are unavailable.
- amelius 2y agoI mean, if they could be hacked easily and used by malware then it would quickly become a national security risk.
- f1shy 2y agoMore accurate: “use your phone as a user interface for a radio module”
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- xnx 2y agoWould be interesting to see a USB-C dongle + software version of the Flipper.