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Comment by Temporary_31337 | Hacker News Reader

My father is an avid ham operator and unfortunately at his age, his health is declining. Soon he will have to move from a remote location where he has all the antennas for various bands etc and I wonder if there’s some Internet to radio bridge so he could still use his equipment remotely?

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One of my favorite projects is the KiwiSDR network, which is essentially making radios available online for public use:

http://kiwisdr.com/

http://rx.kiwisdr.com

Your father could be anywhere and enjoy listening from... anywhere? :-)

Some modern radios have remote control software available. For example, Icom has software specifically for their radios: https://www.icomamerica.com/en/products/amateur/hf/rsba1/def...

For radios that don't have a network interface, RemoteRig sells a box that will network-enable most radios, either via PC control or using a detached control panel: https://www.remoterig.com/wp/?page_id=362

There's also no lack of ways to homebrew this using a RaspberryPi and the right cables: https://rigpi.net/

(FlexRadio also makes some very impressive programmable SDR radios that are entirely network controlled, if you were buying new equipment. Amazing gear, not cheap though.)

If any of his gear has CAT interfaces, a simple solution would be to use a PC with a CAT cable and the audio running to a soundcard. Flrig allows for remote control over the network and voice can be passed to the remote PC. He can do digital, voice, and CW all from the comfort of his bed with a laptop and headset. If he only has really old fully analog gear, this won't work and he'd be better off using KiwiSDR or buying him a "shack-in-a-box" type unit that would let him do anything from HF to UHF with his existing antenna and coax lines.

http://www.w1hkj.com/W3YJ/Remote_Article.pdf

But you can use whatever old PC you can dig up rather than a raspberry pi.

Checkout RCForb by remote hams.

My dad is a ham radio operator and uses this to use his equipment remotely. Your can run your own server and connect to it or use ones that other people make public (though some of them you need to be part of a radio club for)

http://www.remotehams.com/help.html .

Yes this is a thing. Modern rigs can be controlled over the internet pretty well. Sometimes you can even take the control head with you!

It really depends on which radios he has. A lot of modern ones will allow direct control via an Ethernet port

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