astrid.tech

Yesterday I walked around town with my AT-D878UV blasting APRS signals to measure the reception of my I-Gate. Turns out, it has horrible reception! I suspect it's because of the antenna, the tiny ~10cm-long one that my RTL-SDR came with. It seems I'll have to hook up it up to a… read more

As promised from my frustrations while taking a walk , I finally got an I-Gate set up in my bedroom. Sadly not a digipeater ( yet ) but it's something! read more

Installing NixOS with multiple encrypted ZFS pools, decrypted with one password

This article describes how I got a NixOS install working with multiple encrypted ZFS disks. read more

I went out on a walk with my extendable antenna to test the APRS signal. When I came home and looked at aprs.fi I got a grand total of... 2 APRS packets out. Turns out there is horrible I-gate and digipeater coverage in the Peninsula. The nearest digipeater is 11 miles away,… read more

APRS on the trip back for Thanksgiving

I decided to take my radio's APRS functionality for a spin on the ride home this Thanksgiving break. Unfortunately, there was horrible coverage along most of the trip. It seems I got picked up by the W6DXW-1 digipeater in King City, KI6ETL-10 in San Jose, and WA6TOW-2 in Pacifica… read more

Misadventures in configuring an AT-D878UV radio

Last week, because my Baofeng UV-5R's VHF band appeared to be broken and I wanted to experiment with APRS, I decided to splurge on a Anytone AT-D878UV radio. I received it from eBay today, and I was super eager to try it out! However, I ended up encountering a whole bunch of… read more

Testing a Raspberry Pi 4 with SPI TFT Screen

Today, my Raspberry Pi 4 and TFT/case bundle came in the mail, so I decided to give it a spin and see how it works. This will be used for an upcoming project that I will not spoil. Assembly The case came with 4 screws to screw the Pi into the bottom of the case. ![The Pi,… read more