N3BKV’s Ham Radio Hacks

I've been running Node-RED on my home network for a while now, controlling various ham station functions and monitoring gear remotely. The problem? Accessing it from outside my network meant either opening it directly to the internet (yikes) or dealing with VPN clients on every device I wanted to use. VPNs work, sure, but they're a pain. You need to install clients, manage configurations, deal with connection drops and if you want to give access to other hams in your club? Good luck walking everyone through VPN setup on their computers. Plus, most free VPN solutions limit you to a handful of users. I wanted something better. A secure web portal that I could access from anywhere with just a browser. No client software, no complicated setup for users, but still locked down tight with proper authentication and encryption. That's when I decided to build out a proper web portal on 44Net using Traefik and Authelia. After getting it working, I packaged the whole thing into an auto...

  I've been using a WaveNode WN-2 power meter at our remote station for years now. It's a fantastic piece of gear - four independent RF channels, high SWR alarms, forward and reverse wattage monitoring and a Windows app that displays everything in real time. Check it out at: https://wavenodedevelop.com/controllers/wavenode-wn-2/ But here's the problem: the data lives in the WaveNode application and nowhere else. I wanted that data in my Node-RED dashboard. I wanted it in Grafana for historical trending. I wanted to trigger automations based on SWR readings or power levels. The WaveNode software wasn't designed to share its data with other applications. So I built a bridge. The result is WaveNode-to-MQTT, a small Windows utility that grabs all the WaveNode data and republishes it to MQTT topics. Once it's in MQTT, you can do anything with it - display it in dashboards, log it to databases, trigger alerts, whatever you need. Here is the project link: https://github.co...

  I just spent a frustrating morning/afternoon trying to deploy a new Raspberry Pi image for testing a script I developed. It should have been simple - flash the latest Raspberry Pi OS Lite (Trixie), configure SSH keys and hostname in the Imager, boot them up, and get to work.  Except none of my customization settings actually applied. At all. Here's what happened and how I fixed it. The Problem I was using Raspberry Pi Imager v2.0.0 to flash the latest Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit) Trixie release dated 2024-11-24. I went through the OS customization dialog like I always do: • Set a custom hostname • Configured my SSH public key for authentication • Set my timezone • Configured WiFi settings • Set my username and password Clicked "Write," waited for it to finish, popped the SD card into a Pi, and... nothing. The Pi booted to the initial setup wizard asking me to configure keyboard, mouse, and locale. All the customizations I'd carefully entered were complete...

  I always thought it would be good to have information resources on my computer that aren't internet dependent.  What if I’m out in the field doing a POTA and need a reference manual or some medical information? Or my cable modem goes out and I really need to look up an old club newsletter from 2016? Kiwix is an app for offline reading on the go, remote areas, emergencies, or independent knowledge access. It is a program you can install on your Raspberry Pi, Windows or Mac computer that gives you offline access to resources like Wikipedia, TED, Stack Exchange, or your favorite website (via Zimit) so you can have a library of manuals or other reference materials specific to your needs.   Let’s install Kiwix – to download the program go to https://kiwix.org/en/applications/ Pick the correct version for your computer and install the program. Upon starting the program and choosing Categories you will see a list of databases you can download, including the entire Wikip...

  I had a big problem with my blog. Since it’s hosted on Blogger, there were issues with Google and Bing indexing it. I must have spent nearly two weeks trying to figure out why search engines were having trouble with redirects and couldn’t index the site. After some research, I found out this is a common problem with Blogger. So, I decided it was time to set up my own web server. That way, I’d have full control over everything—from which content management system and plug-ins I use to how the site is hosted. I had a spare Raspberry Pi sitting around that I could use, since my site doesn’t get a lot of traffic. All I needed was a static, internet-addressable IP address. But those are generally hard to come by without an expensive business-class internet connection. As hams, we have access to millions of IPs for free, thanks to some forward-thinking operators from the 1980s via 44Net. Here’s a link to an article and a short video on the history of 44Net: https://www.ardc.net/ardc-ki...