Cool

Cool

Various quick little projects we may or may not have tried

  • USB-to-VGA transmitter –
      KK6MRI found this cool little hack to make a USB-to-VGA transmitter. Here is the wiki page for it. He demonstrated it to me while I was waiting for my adapter to show up … the article says $5 but I couldn’t find one quite that cheap. The instructions are straight-forward but I had a few conflicts using my (old) Mac so I fired up a fitPC and it worked like a charm! My only comment is that you should make sure you plug the adapter into a USB 3.0 socket.

      NOTE: As KK6MRI reminded me before demonstrating this to me, you should check the frequency and power level before trying this. No need to get in trouble for trying this out..
      This is how KK6MRI demonstrated this to me but not clumsily as I am in this short video below (click the pic). I should have mounted my phone but decided to try this one-handed. What you will see is my handheld receiving some static-filled sound. I have already SSH’d into the fitPC from my laptop and you will see me start the program routing the audio out through the adapter. As the song is playing, I will clumsily disconnect the antenna from the adapter then feebly re-connect the antenna.

     

  • KK6MRI – Ham Radio with Drones –
      KK6MRI has two ways (so far) you can use a drone. The first one he wrote about is using a small drone to help string a line over a tree, click. The second article was about using a slightly larger drone (DJI Spark) to lift a radio up high enough to reach Palo Alto from the East Bay, click