一期一会

This post is dedicated to those who constantly don't know how and have plenty of any other reasons to not do things themselves. This one rig has been built within 5 hours, and I have two of them.

As you already know I have interest in some tech stuff, and especially radio comms. Not like HAMs doing it CQ DX all day long just to connect with some remote island with which I can connect using modern tech with less than 1 second, but I prefer to make things usable. I love things that are practically can be used to make things easier of funnier, whatsoever. So you will not see mee messing with huge antennas, big rigs, stuff like this, just to satisfy my ego being the best no1 op. Absolutelly not. But you actually can see me cycling around chatting with my PMR446 radio, or driving somewhere in my car chatting on my CB radio. This is what I mean by 'usable'. Long story short:

I already have one CB (27 Mhz) Radio Gateway built on OrangePI Zero H5 and Anytone AT-500M, and I recently gave away my old gateway in a pipe ver.1 to one of my friends (just few of them actually), so I decided to build me one again. Lemme show you what was inside in a previous version first:

As you can see this one is pretty simple design with radio ontop of an OrangePi unit. Actually this huge heatsink is a bit overhead here and OrangePI H5 CPU is lot warmer than transceiver, even with a cycle like 90%TX 10%RX. So in a ver.2 I've decided to put two small heatsinks on both of them. Real challenge here is not in heatsinks actually, but in a small sealed compartment which 50mm tube is: no matter how many heatsinks inside, they will just heat-up internal space.

Only two possible solutions here:

1. Give it up on 50mm tube, use 120mm+ tubes or even completely different casing.
2. Just put this one in a shady spot and be sure it is perfectly ventilated there.

As I like this casing and won't give up on it - have only one option left. Of course you can do holes in it and put fans but you know what? You can do it. I will not. I prefer perfectly sealed container that can work no matter of weather conditions. And yes, it is an outdoor setup in a first place.

Let's get back to a point. This is a new rig internals:

As you can see here - it is more compact this time, have right sized heatsinks where they should be. Also features Passive PoE as previous one, which is temporarily connected directly to the supply. This radio have lot brighter LEDs which became a kind of a nice feature in the end. 

While it is +24 outside, it have +55 inside on CPU chip (hotter spot there). Obviously possible to overheat, but again, this is a not rooftop setup exposed to a direct sunlight, and I personally think to put it under a tree.

Here is few more pics of a complete thing mounted on a tripod: