After much consternation I finally jumped in to the APRS world. I have a Yaesu FT-8800 in a mobile go-box that I figured I could use to put my signal on the air. I also realized I have a Garmin eTrex Vista that I’d been planning on getting rid of but I could use it for the project as well. So $50 later I had a Byonics TinyTrak3+ in my mailbox.

The instructions say it should take about an hour to build. Took me about 2 hours but I spent a lot of time fiddling with the camera.

It’s aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive!! ;D

I remembered I had some power stuff from my General class and I could use an alternate power connection. The pic quality sucks but you can see that the end LEDs are on.

OMG I can’t stop! Once I had power I had to make sure I could read and write to it.

Unfortunately when I ordered the unit I forgot to order the interface cable to connect to my radio. Good thing I can make my own. Unfortunately I learned a hard lesson today. PS/2 cables are a pain in the butt to modify. First I learned that only 3 conductors are used. Second I learned that they didn’t go to the pins I needed. With this gotcha I couldn’t really make the simple cable I wanted to. I also found that if you cut the outer shell off with a Dremel you’ll discover that they fill the pin area with plastic. >:( I used a butane soldering iron as a torch to melt the plastic so I could dig it out and access the pins to wire it was I needed. Once that was done I was off and running.

I got the mouse cable wired to the pins I needed to and then made a quick run to Radio Shack to buy an audio cable. That got cut in half and the raw end went to my new serial connector. Then I wired in the PowerPoles with 18# red/black zip line. Finally I heat-shrinked what I could as best I could to act as some strain relief. Unfortunately with so many cables coming out of the serial connector I can’t put it in a housing. My other problem is the mini DIN. I put it back in one of the molded shells I cut and electric taped/heat shrunk it to give it some strength. It didn’t work. It pulled out when I tried to remove it from the radio. I’ll have to figure something else out.

Raw Serial Connections

Wrapped Serial Connections

Radio Connections

After tweaking my configuration I was able to test everything together. To my delight not only did it all work but I didn’t smoke my radio either. Within about 10-15 minutes one of the guys was calling me on the air because he’d seen me pop up on APRS. I also used http://aprs.fi to confirm that I was showing up. I’m a happy camper.

I’m really looking forward to finding some cool uses for this. Eventually I see myself getting the more capable TinyTrak4 but this is a great way to get into APRS on the cheap.