I've got a Sony Xperia z, and I want to start playing around with what I can do with it. One idea that occurred to me was expanding its radio capabilities. I basically want to turn it into a mobile ham station. I want to be able to scan HF, VHF, and UHF frequencies and transmit on them... I have a basic idea of how to make the hardware for this project to work, but I have no idea what to do on the software side. I know the Z comes with the built in ability to listen to FM radio and it uses your headphones as an antenna, so I'm making two assumptions with that in mind: the input source comes in through the headphone jack, and this source can be expanded to other frequencies depending on what I plug into it. The wall I run into is I suck at java development. It's been years since I've used any programming language, and I know even less about hard ware/software integration on a mobile platform. Can anyone point me in the right direction to pursue this project?
Ok, how about this: I'm willing to pay someone to dev the app for me. I started looking into what it would take for me to program this and it's way beyond the scope of my skills. I was looking at buying a laptop just to work on this project, but I would rather spend the money on a quality product. Here's exactly what I want it to do:
A. Receive
1) Receive radio signals in the medium wave (mw) band all the way up to the VHF band.
2) scan a range of frequencies, with step options (I.e. Start a scan at a user in putted freq and then stop at another inputted freq and have the option to step up in increments as low as 0.001hz as the user desires)
3) store frequencies into a scannable Database or store freqs into a database of freqs to skip over
I'm assuming this would all be done by pulling in a signal from either the headphone jack or micro USB port.
B. Push a signal back out through the same port. So basically a receive or transmit mode. I get that phones don't have a built in transceiver. I can do the hardware as long as I have a signal going in one direction or the other and an app to interpret it.
So with pushing a signal back out I would like the option to either broadcast a stored file or directly from the microphone.
Now as for pay I was looking at spending 300 on a laptop so I could push that cost to a developer instead. Any mods after the initial app is finished would come with additional pay. Add on mods that is, not debugging issues. Any takers?
BranSidhe said:
Here's exactly what I want it to do:
A. Receive
1) Receive radio signals in the medium wave (mw) band all the way up to the VHF band.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you seen detailed specs on the radio? All I can find is that they identify if as "FM radio", so it is most probably just the VHF commercial broadcast band (88-108MHz). It is very unlikely that they would include a more expensive multi-band radio. A single-band VHF-FM broadcast band receiver would be much smaller than a multi-band receiver.
2) scan a range of frequencies, with step options (I.e. Start a scan at a user in putted freq and then stop at another inputted freq and have the option to step up in increments as low as 0.001hz as the user desires)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think this part would be native code -- C language.
3) store frequencies into a scannable Database or store freqs into a database of freqs to skip over
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And this would probably be handled by an Android application in Java.
I'm assuming this would all be done by pulling in a signal from either the headphone jack or micro USB port.
B. Push a signal back out through the same port. So basically a receive or transmit mode. I get that phones don't have a built in transceiver. I can do the hardware as long as I have a signal going in one direction or the other and an app to interpret it.
So with pushing a signal back out I would like the option to either broadcast a stored file or directly from the microphone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think I understand you completely but it is very unlikely that this radio has a transmitter. It is very likely only the VHF-FM single-band receiver, 88-108MHz in the US. With a rooted device you could probably create software which will scan and otherwise select frequencies but it would be useless to make the steps any smaller than 200kHz, unless you wanted to listen for very low power interstitial transmissions. It almost certainly will not transmit.
Again, do you have detailed specs on the radio? This job isn't for me though -- I don't have the device and I no longer have a suitable working environment for this kind of work.
Frank
ADDED:
Also, FM is essentially useless below 6-meters, although there is some rare Ham usage in HF.
Frank
Oh the phone def doesn't have a transmitter native to it. My thought process is to hook the phone up to a transmitter through either the USB port of the headphone jack and have it transmit that way.
I want the phone to be the interface of the system. I was thinking something like this: techlib.com/electronics/allband (it's .htm, I can't post full links yet) inline with the antenna and the phone (I.e. Antenna -> receiver/transceiver -> phone). The biggest problem I run into is I don't know how to make the phone work with whatever I plug into it.
And yeah, I accidentally left the g off of .002ghz so 2000 kHz is completely accurate.
BranSidhe said:
Oh the phone def doesn't have a transmitter native to it. My thought process is to hook the phone up to a transmitter through either the USB port of the headphone jack and have it transmit that way.
I want the phone to be the interface of the system.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is reasonable. You could even use the device to work some of the data modes on a suitable tranceiver. I think I've seen this done with the Palm, so the Palm might be a source for some of the code.
The biggest problem I run into is I don't know how to make the phone work with whatever I plug into it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have not looked at the USB interface yet -- my last serial work was RS-232 -- so I don't know what these things will let us do.
These Linux/Android devices have been out for several years and there might already be some software for this -- have you looked?
Seven more posts.
Frank
I have been looking around for quite a while now. There is a ton of software for turning a computer into a controller station(SDR), but not a lot for mobile devices. Wolphi .com is the best I've seen so far, but their device isn't what I'm looking for. I don't want to have a full separate radio, just an inline receiver/transceiver and have all other "radio" functions controlled by the phone. I dunno maybe I'm reaching here.
Thanks for all the input so far btw
BranSidhe said:
There is a ton of software for turning a computer into a controller station(SDR), but not a lot for mobile devices. Wolphi .com is the best I've seen so far, but their device isn't what I'm looking for. I don't want to have a full separate radio, just an inline receiver/transceiver and have all other "radio" functions controlled by the phone. I dunno maybe I'm reaching here.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Back in 2003 and 2004 I wrote a controller on Windows NT for my FT-897, and that was not a difficult task because I wrote it as a command line program -- no GUI. Are you intending to build your own radio, or just an interface for the phone/radio connection?
I looked at a few of the applications at wolphi.com and they all use only audio input and decode the audio signal. To control the device you would need USB, as you said. If no one has done this yet for any radio then maybe there is something in the USB implementation which limits it. I would probably have tried it by now if I were still licensed and had a radio to try it with, so I'm really surprised that a controller hasn't already been written.
I'm pretty sure I saw a controller written for a Palm PDA to control the Yaesu portable low power HF radio. I don't recall if it actually did any keying and transmitting though.
I don't think you are reaching too far. It seems to me that this can be done and it would be very useful if you do accomplish it.
Frank
ADDED 07:42:
After thinking back I recall that I had two or three connections between my radio and computer. An RS-232 serial cable connection was used to send commands to the radio and to receive replies from it. There was also one or two connections to send and receive audio; this was through two ports on the computer but I can't recall if it was separate connections or a combined connection on the radio.
The program I wrote had several options and one of them was to function as an echo repeater: it recorded a signal when the squelch broke and then retransmitted that recording when the transmitting station's carrier ceased. It was handy for other hams to hear what their station sounded like. An Android controller would probably use the same dual connection; for example, a command is sent through USB from Android to radio to key the transmitter then outgoing audio is sent through the headphone port; then the radio is unkeyed through the USB port.
The Android application will be a fairly typical Android application, except that is would communicate with a native Linux application that communicates with the USB port. This does not seem difficult to me and I'm really surprised it hasn't been done.
SGH-I717(AoCP6.4), SM-N900V/MI9(dlV), XDA Premium
Related
ok so i bought an att fuse and like everyone here mentioned about hang ups, weak signal, etc i thought i would just use my old external bluetooth gps unit.
so breifly here is the problem, it works fine when i use a single application like google maps. but when i try to put the information in the external gps app (start>settings>external gps) i have my problem.
under the hardware section, it states:
Specify the hardware port to which your GPS device is connected.
i do so click ok and nothing.. so i go back in to see whats wrong and the gps hardware port resets its self to "none". its as if the settings never save or reset them selves. i know on my old phone (tytn) this would be somthing i considered unusual (so i am kinda familar with the mobile) os.
i am not sure if there is somthing wrong with my handheld or if at&t has some kind of block?
anyway i tried to use the forum search and really didnt turn up any information so any help would be great i really like this phone.
thanks in advance to anyone that can help.
I've never had those settings stick on any of my WinMo phones.
You don't need to use that to use a BT GPS puck anyway, you set the COM port in the Bluetooth settings.
It won't let you make a selection from that drop-down because the GPS hardware does not function by exposing a COM port as with standard hardware, it exposes a GPS0: port, that is picked up by the GPS ID, and exposed to the system as COM4:..
Now because the GPSID has been replaced by HTC's version of it, it's designed to work only with their internal GPS. If you want support for an external GPS in the GPS ID, you need to cook the stock Windows Mobile driver back into the ROM..
That being said, you don't need the GPSID unless you plan to have multiple programs connecting to the GPS at once, so you should be able to squeek by..
thanks guys i knew i would get a respoce here. unfortunatly i was hoping for a easy solution to use external gps with multiple apps i see unfortunatly its not possible without alot of work.
at any rate i am still very hapy with the device i was debating on upgrading from the tytn amd so glad i did =)
Just wondering if it is possible to send raw information(1 0/on off, whatever) to say the audio port or the USB port. I would assume USB would be easier to code for, but the audio port would be preferred if possible. The obvious application of this would be for custom external peripherals which would be fun to mess with. If anyones got any info or a link to some docs that would help immensely.
Thanks.
Using Audio to communicate is entirely possible. It has been done for decades over telephone lines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modulation
USB on the other hand is a bit problematic, there's no host support on most android devices (there exist hacks for some) so there's no real way of connecting a USB peripheral to the phone.
Your best shot would be bluetooth I believe. I'm not entirely sure but you should be able to set up a serial connection over bluetooth.
Fulkerson said:
Using Audio to communicate is entirely possible. It has been done for decades over telephone lines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modulation
USB on the other hand is a bit problematic, there's no host support on most android devices (there exist hacks for some) so there's no real way of connecting a USB peripheral to the phone.
Your best shot would be bluetooth I believe. I'm not entirely sure but you should be able to set up a serial connection over bluetooth.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If Audio is possible then I think that would be the best bet. I just found this bag of IR LEDs laying around from when i was messing with wiimote hacks, so i thought hacking up a little light coming from some port on the device, i could make a remote app for it.
Found some good information for anyone else wanting to make use of the audio port.
http://perceptumvolo.blogspot.com/2010/01/demodulator-updated.html
Using audio is definitely very cool, but for real world use it is too intrusive. You can't listen to music at the same time and all notifications will screw things up. Bluetooth just works and was invented for this purpose.
In short: Is it possible to cluster, network or push device output from one device to another, share storage devices and network/gps interfaces?
The long version: I have been wanting to build an in-car device that would store media and act as a gps and what not, but haven't found a way that I want to implement it yet. I was thinking if I found a x86 port of android, got most of the voice stuff working, I could have a headless device that I could store music on and use as navigation. I know the phones are capable of that, but if I want to keep say 500 gb of music on me, how does one do that?
My thoughts were if it were possible to either cluster or network an installed android powered unit to an android powered phone, I could always have network access from the unit in the car and share the gps from the phone, or have the phone access the storage from the device (not through dlna, but the music app seeing it as physical storage) and allow me to push the output from the in car device to the phone and let me interact with the system how ever I need to I could accomplish a form of in-car entertainment.
I figured that there could be apps written that would let the in-car device act as a headless unit, with its only interface being audio, it could store navigation directions/maps and what not, so if I didn't have the phone that day, I could still navigate to where I needed to. The phone and the device could constantly be in communication with each other if the car was parked by a wifi hotspot or something, so if I chose to navigate somewhere when I was at home, the car would already have the directions. I could also have it pull any media changes through wifi, and always have an updated media library.
I know the phones are fully capable of doing this, but for most of it, you have to have a window holster for the car to use the gps, and wires running for audio and charging and what not, but if there were a way that the in-car device could be hardwired to the audio system and left alone, the phone could stay in my pocked, be linked via bluetooth and I could have a small button-pad or something that would allow me to initiate google voice search, control the media player and interact with navigation. The whole thing with linking the phone and device together would be so the mobile network could be shared between android devices and the incar device could pull the information it needed. The thought of the display sharing was in case I needed to interact with the incar device.
I know what I am going on about is specific to me, but my thoughts behind it were if it were possible to do at least the network sharing (with out tethering or mobile hot spot blah blah blah) that android phone and tablet owners could do the same thing. They could share their mobile network through their tablet and have a tablet that would be always connected, would share mailboxes with the phone and basically act the way the Blackberry playbook is proposed or how the Palm Foleo was supposed to work. If the devices had a network ability of some level, the tablet could pull text messages, email messages, contacts or any other sync-able item.. That way, this wouldn't just be done for my benefit, but it would take tablet and phone owners to another league. Two devices that share the same information from one source and don't have to sync with the same servers twice. It would take a lot of redundancy out.
I hope you guys can see usefulness in my idea, and can shed some light for me.
Sorry from bringing this back from the dead, but since I never got any responses I'll add a bit more..
Does android have anything that would work like blackberry bridge between two android devices?
Droid Vnc server and androidvnc works fine for screen sharing. What I really like is the hpc aspects to CPU cycle sharing over wifi/nfc. Really interesting possibilities.
What I am looking for is to have the ability to use two separate android devices, but have them communicate via wifi/bluetooth or what ever and act as the same device in the sense that when the device with the data plan gets a text message or phone call, the notification goes through the other device that would be physically docked to audio equipment or what ever...
I have a Droid X, Droid Incredible, Droid Pro and a first gen Droid laying around.. Currently the Droid Pro is my in use phone.. The rest are just laying here. I want to be able to dock one of the others in my car, turn the GPS on, link it to my droid pro and have the other phone use the droid pro's active data connection for guidance/searches etc, and it would be docked to car audio, so it would need to access the pro's sd card, and have access to the pro's phone audio, or the ability to route calls from the pro to the other device via bluetooth or whatever, not by call forwarding.. This way it would be a sort of infotainment/telematics system..
Think of the possibilities this would open up for android tablets etc. If You could reply to text messages from your tablet because the tablet is linked/bridged to the phone in your pocket... That would make these tablet/laptop combos more appealing because it would the perfect convergence between tablet and phone.
Oh, and I guess, the other thing is that I have multiple cars, so one device would go in each car, and then when I got in the car, the one in that car would link with my phone, and everything would be the same, car to car, or device to device...
I guess another way to bump this:
Would it be possible for an app to do ADB to ADB via bluetooth or something, because then an app could be written like pdanet that would allow the network to be shared at least?
I dont remember the name of the app I think the name of it is Dashboard? and it will store/push all texts/emails etc. to every device u have dashboard installed on...Best buy has an app kinda like that too...Like the Idea of the screen sharing is that kinda like remote desktop/control?
I just search how to neywork cluster android came across your post ..... if you use the Google apps like Google play music/maps as well Google hangouts since with Google voice you can easily do what you want with out the need for both devices being together you can upload 50000 songs 9n play music for free and any device with ur hangouts and voice will receive ur calls and email notifications .....just need to make sure have Internet
Why do they bother to still design tablets with the CPU/GPU on board? When I think about the future of windows with windows 8 I think about tablets being heavier to run the x86 architecture and I wonder why not just use something like intels widi and transmit only the picture to a tablet and have a server plugged in doing all the processing, maybe even running another instance or switchable session of the OS attached to a standard desktop display/keyboard mouse. The tablet would of course still need a processor but only to process a ready to go image, audio and to interpret touch inputs and transmit them to the server. This would allow for larger batteries and be much more cost effective in the long run.
Of course we will still need today's style for outside the home/office but like the desktop there is still a market for the LAN only machines.
Maybe this is already available and someone can point me to where I can buy it now! :x
You want the cloud? Not ready yet. Until then, splashtop will have to do. Also, botnet.
jdeoxys said:
You want the cloud? Not ready yet. Until then, splashtop will have to do. Also, botnet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, nothing over the internet. I'm simply talking about a wireless display with a battery but one that can transmit touch inputs. Not sure how else to put it but if you have seen the wireless transmitter and receivers for HDMI, similar to this.
Does anyone see where I'm going with this? Windows 8 is touch screen but the best I could find that are desktop-like is the dell ST2220T which only has 2 touch points that is not cetified for windows 8 which I believe accepts up to 4.
Next I looked at tablets and there are a few budget(if you can call $500 with a small display, bad/slow graphics card and little storage budget) that look promising but could easily have 100 hardware issues that would drive me nuts and then theres the name brand stuff like samsungs $1,000 pc tablets which still suffer from built in gpu's that suck.
My idea would simply be the cost of a screen and battery if you already own a desktop with say, intel widi (wireless display) and some sort of input receiver to receive the touch commands from the tablet display. The performance would be virtually unlimited!
Are you basically talking about a device that connects through your local network to a transmitting PC running an OS of your choosing? Sort of like a portable monitor that doubles as a touchscreen?
Constant wifi or similar connection would drain the battery as well. Also, that would require a whole separate computer to run the system itself (if you're doing it at home), or a fast, VERY low latency broadband connection to a cloud (so forget about the device being very cheap just because you have to somehow pay for the server-side as well). Otherwise you'd be struggling with laggy UI which is the exact opposite of what everyone wants.
So... not for a few more years... or decades
Tristanlogd said:
Are you basically talking about a device that connects through your local network to a transmitting PC running an OS of your choosing? Sort of like a portable monitor that doubles as a touchscreen?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Like a portable monitor with touchscreen that transmits touch inputs/commands wirelessly back to the desktop just like a mouse.
I don't think transmitting through networks is a good idea and thats why I mentioned the Intel WIDI wireless display technology that is already in most new Inte'ls so all we would really need to change on the PC side is a customized wireless receiver for the touch inputs.
Hell, I'm thinking about calling a friend who is an EE and getting something made if nobody else is...lol.
aard said:
Constant wifi or similar connection would drain the battery as well. Also, that would require a whole separate computer to run the system itself (if you're doing it at home), or a fast, VERY low latency broadband connection to a cloud (so forget about the device being very cheap just because you have to somehow pay for the server-side as well). Otherwise you'd be struggling with laggy UI which is the exact opposite of what everyone wants.
So... not for a few more years... or decades
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Eh the technology is here with http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/intel-wireless-display.html
Using wifi isn't efficient, but tablets use most of their energy on the display and processing. Since all you would be doing is signal processing vs actual computation @ the tablet end you would use considerably less juice. Like Half.
You are talking direct wireless connection from tablet to monitor, not going through a wireless router or connection? Interesting idea, but why not just go through a wireless connection? Wouldn't this also kind of tether you to your pc? Splashtop or Logmein allows you to do this anywhere.
Tristanlogd said:
You are talking direct wireless connection from tablet to monitor, not going through a wireless router or connection? Interesting idea, but why not just go through a wireless connection? Wouldn't this also kind of tether you to your pc? Splashtop or Logmein allows you to do this anywhere.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
All I'm talking about is a PC or laptop with a second display thats wireless. Then we call it a tablet because it has a touch screen that sends signals back to the PC or laptop to move the mouse or rather gestures. Not cloud computing, I have done this and it's terrible. Cloud is basically remote desktop which is choppy and worse then current tablets. What I'm talking about would make the performance increase as Intel claims virtually no latency with WIDI and even 5 milliseconds would be hard to notice considering how laggy android is as it's basically a virtual machine.
Hereis a clip I just found, not sure if it's available yet but:
Now ASUS brings another solution to the table, the WiCast, which can be connected to any computer and any television and promises latency-free 1080p video and audio.
Hello everyone!
I hope there isn't a topic already for this, but I searched and didn't find anything, mostly also because it's kind of difficult to describe my problem.
To begin with. I have one of those chinese car stereos that run WinCE 6 in my car. It's not the first one, I actually went through quite few of them to finally find one that suits me. I thought I did, and mostly it's true, but there is still one feature that bugs me a bit.
My stereo has two USB ports. One, mini-USB on front - for music/videos/pics, second, full size USB on the back - for 3G/WiFi adaptor. This is as described by the manufacturer/seller.
Now, obviously, many of us would think, that since it's "universal serial bus", it shouldn't matter what I put in which port. So the rear port should accept music on USB flash drive and front port should work with 3G modem. Right? Right? Wrooong!!!
For whatever reason, my stereo only accepts music in the front port, with annoying little cable that is to convert the mini-USB to full size, just bumping up and down as I drive. Also, since I have a built-in USB port, which I would like to use for this and plug it's connection to rear port on the stereo, bugs me a lot.
But no, the rear port only works with the 3G modem and seems to completely ignore any flash drive connected to it.
What's funny though is, that the front port actually works with the 3G modem too! So the front is a "2in1", but the rear is only designated for 3G/WiFi.
Since I don't want to let this just go and get used to it (+ my OCD is fighting heavilly with me on this, lol ), I started to look around to figure out what might cause this. I loaded Total Commander on the unit and plugged two flash drives to the stereo. Both with music files, both formatted the same. In totalcmd it showed them as USB (front) and USB1 (rear) (or something similar, the key part is the "1"). It always added the "1" to the rear one, even though it was connected alone, without the front one.
Now, this is where I believe the problem is. I think/hope/wish that the music application on the stereo only works when pointed to the "USB" (front) device. Since there is probably no way to decrypt and re-program the music app, I was thinking about renaming the USB connections, or, basically switching them for each other.
So to get (finally) to the bottom of my question, is there a way to switch the description/name/purpose of the USB ports in WinCE 6.0 platform, preferably of course in a way that it would stay like that even after restart?
Many many thanks for any help or pointing me to the right direction! Also please let me know if there is some detail that might help identifying the problem.
Today I installed an app called USB Device Info from the play store. What it shows is that it cannot connect because of SeLinux.. CLUE?? So I went ahead and looked on how to connect via USB with Linux. I downloaded Terminus from Play Store and was able to read the files. Previously, I read it's a 'read only' connection. I'm researching how to change the 'read only' to 'read and write', and also extract and find these files. I'm currently looking for my "extracted files".