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Hotspots

Hotspots for Hams

Amateur radio operators are notoriously thrifty. We will wait to purchase something until we get a 5% coupon, or haggle over shipping. It seems to be a characteristic common to most hams. But we are also generous. The same ham that haggled over $1 at the swap meet might also give you the shirt off […]

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Hotspots

Hotspot best practices

The regulations that apply to amateur radio—including use of frequencies and control of our stations—also apply to our use of personal, low-power hotspots. It’s our responsibility to understand and adhere to those regulations. I think this is an issue worth thinking about so that we all can continue to enjoy the use of our personal, […]

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Hotspots

Portable Hotspot Operations

One of the great things about using hotspots for digital radio is the potential for portability. Hotspots can be small and they use relatively little power and data. In this post, I’ll discuss size, power use, and wifi access, and provide some use cases from my own experiences with portable hotspot operations. Hotspot Size Limiting […]

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Hotspots

Choosing a Raspberry Pi for your Pi-star hotspot

An important question to consider when building a pi-star based hotspot is what version of Raspberry Pi to use. You have three basic form factors to choose from: the zero, A+, and B+. The Pi-zero is the smallest of these three, followed by the A+, and then the B+. The latest versions are the Pi-zero […]