Radio Frequency (RF) & Wireless Design

A few years back there was a new digital radio board that came out called ZUM Radio that was a 'shield' board for Arduino (embedded MCU)  but later became a 'hat' board for the also very popular and much more powerful Raspberry Pi boards (embedded CPU).

This board uses a vocoder which is basically a digitizing voice 'encoder' as the core technology. The vocoder reduces and compresses the data to a manageable data rate <9600 that can be transported over radio links.

The series of boards are available exclusively thru Ham Radio Outlet in the USA (search for ZUM)  https://www.hamradio.com/  , but may be found on Amazon or other online websites.

The current line up is based upon the Raspberry Pi Zero and has the standard 1.3" display but also offers the optional Nextion 2.4" or Nextion 3.5" displays for those who want larger screens and to see more information. There are also options for dual bands and duplexing.

The Arduino option is supported via the ST Micro STM32F446 Nucleo board, which is also MBED capable.  https://www.st.com/en/evaluation-tools/nucleo-f446re.html

Although Amateur Radio requires a license to transmit, this is a good starter kit for those who are interested in learning about radio from a digital perspective and can use one to listen without a license.

Power output for the ZUM radios are limited to 10 milliwatts so range is limited to antenna type, location, and directionality.