Program and build RPi Pico-based ham station utilities, tools, and instruments

Although much classical HF and mobile equipment is still in use by large numbers of amateurs, the use of computers and digital techniques has now become very popular among amateur radio operators. Nowadays, anyone can purchase a €5 Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller board and develop many amateur radio projects using the “Pico” and some external components. This book is aimed at amateur radio enthusiasts, Electronic Engineering students, and anyone interested in learning to use the Raspberry Pi Pico to shape their electronic projects. The book is suitable for beginners in electronics as well as for those with wide experience.

Step-by-step installation of the MicroPython programming environment is described. Some knowledge of the Python programming language is helpful to be able to comprehend and modify the projects given in the book. The book introduces the Raspberry Pi Pico and gives examples of many general-purpose, software-only projects that familiarize the reader with the Python programming language. In addition to the software-only projects tailored to the amateur radio operator, Chapter 6 in particular presents over 36 hardware-based projects for “hams”, including:

• Station mains power on/off control
• Radio station clock
• GPS based station geographical coordinates
• Radio station temperature and humidity
• Various waveform generation methods using software and hardware (DDS)
• Frequency counter
• Voltmeter / ammeter / ohmmeter / capacitance meter
• RF meter and RF attenuators
• Morse code exercisers
• RadioStation Click board
• Raspberry Pi Pico based FM radio
• Using Bluetooth and Wi-Fi with Raspberry Pi Pico
• Radio station security with RFID
• Audio amplifier module with rotary encoder volume control
• Morse decoder
• Using the FS1000A TX-RX modules to communicate with Arduino