February 15, 2025

This Week in Amateur Radio

North America's Premiere Amateur Radio News Magazine

Hackaday

via HACKADAY: AIOC: The Ham Radio All-In-One Cable For Audio and APRS

The Ham Radio All-in-one cable (AIOC) is a small PCB attachment for a popular series of radio transceivers which adds a USB-attached audio interface and virtual TTY port for programming and the push-to-talk function. The STM32F373 microcontroller (which, sadly is still hard to find in the usual channels) is a perfect fit for this application, with all the needed hardware resources.

With USB-C connectivity, the AIOC enumerates as asound card as well as a virtual serial device, so interfacing to practically any host computer should be plug-and-play. Connection to the radio uses 12mm separation 3.5mm and 2.5mm TRS connectors, so is compatible with at least the Baofeng UV-5R but likely many other cheap transceivers that have the same physical setup.

Instructions are provided to use the AIOC with Dire Wolf for easy access to APRS applications, which makes a nice out-of-the-box demo to get you going. APRS is not all about tracking things though since other applications can sit atop the APRS/AX.25 network, for example, HROT: the ham radio of things.

https://github.com/skuep/AIOC