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hpr2062 :: Now The Chips Are Definitely Down

Show about an interesting documentary I recently came across and new piece of hardware

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Hosted by MrX on Tuesday, 2016-06-28 is flagged as Clean and is released under a CC-BY-SA license.
Hardware, Electronics, Amateur Radio, Open Source, Linux. 3.
The show is available on the Internet Archive at: https://archive.org/details/hpr2062

Listen in ogg, spx, or mp3 format. Play now:

Duration: 00:40:46

general.

I’d like to start by apologising for the rather fast and excited speaking style of this show particularly towards the end, hope it doesn’t spoil the content too much, it was all done in rather a hurry.

In this show I describe a thought provoking documentary I stumbled upon from 1977, the documentary is about the the silicon chip and explores the far reaching implications it will have on society.

The title for the original documentary was “Now the chips are down”.

I came up with the altered title “Now the chips are definitely down” to signify that not only have the changes already happened but that it’s also had a massive cost reduction impact as my newly purchased piece of equipment demonstrates.

The new piece of equipment that I bought only became so affordable because of the great advances and massive reductions in cost over time. A similar piece of equipment cost me around £120 maybe ten years ago and due to inflation you can probably double the cost again. The price of my new piece of equipment was astonishingly cheap I thought though on reflection its cheap price may also be down to it being a more mass produced item than normal amateur radio equipment.

Links to Horizon documentary

Standard C510A /C510E links

Baofeng UV-5R links

Chirp links

Comments

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Comment #1 posted on 2016-06-28 17:16:30 by Mike Ray

Baofeng UV5R

Interesting show. I'm curious about the Baofeng. Does it talk out-of-the-box, and are ALL functions and menus spoken? In other words as a blind op would I be able to do everything with the radio that you can?

G4XBF

Comment #2 posted on 2016-07-03 13:34:47 by MrX

Re Baofeng UV5R

Yes it does indeed talk out of the box and almost all the functions are announced. Playing with the radio I notice that not all functions are spoken the band function button for example which changes between VHF and UHF function only beeps but you can go to any frequency directly at any time when in VFO mode which is spoken and you can then just type the frequency in directly. The VFO A/B is the same but again the same applies. Would imagine make an excellent radio for a blind op and you won't go far wrong at the price, best regards.

MrX

Comment #3 posted on 2016-07-04 17:17:56 by MrX

Re Re Baofeng UV5R

Just read your comment above again and realised I hadn't properly answered your question. yes most if not all the menus are spoken. When you push the menu button it announces “menu” and shows you on the display which option is selected. You can find out which option is being displayed by pushing the menu button a 2nd time, you would then push exit.

To change to another menu option you could either use the up down keys or use keypad entry which unfortunately only beeps within the menu option however again you can find out what option you are in by pushing menu a 2nd time. Hope this makes isn't too confusing and I still think a blind op could use it fine particularly if you upload a pile of frequencies to it using the open source chirp software.

Mrx

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