I started playing with electronics back when I was 10 years old in Argentina, where I grew up. Then I got my ham radio operator license when I was 16 years old and I was very active in the ham club and on the air. It was then when I built my first vacuum tube transmitter and refurbished and old receiver (also vacuum tubes) that somebody from the club was throwing away. My interest for science and electronics grew and I ended studying physics but always tinkered with electronics, whenever I could.
I’ve moved a lot around the world for work (oil and gas) so my dedication to ham radio pretty much faded away. But it came back! Just recently, I got my ham radio operator license back and started to get active on 2mtr and on digital.
Due to lack of space outdoors, I had to settle for installing my center fed dipole on the attic (I have a long attic), but I quickly realized I needed more than 1 antenna. 80 mtr, 40 mtr, 20mtr….
And I didn’t want to run multiple lines to the attic, so an antenna switch was necessary.
I started playing with electronics back when I was 10 years old in Argentina, where I grew up. Then I got my ham radio operator license when I was 16 years old and I was very active in the ham club and on the air. It was then when I built my first vacuum tube transmitter and refurbished and old receiver (also vacuum tubes) that somebody from the club was throwing away. My interest for science and electronics grew and I ended studying physics but always tinkered with electronics, whenever I could.
I’ve moved a lot around the world for work (oil and gas) so my dedication to ham radio pretty much faded away. But it came back! Just recently, I got my ham radio operator license back and started to get active on 2mtr and on digital.
Due to lack of space outdoors, I had to settle for installing my center fed dipole on the attic (I have a long attic), but I quickly realized I needed more than 1 antenna. 80 mtr, 40 mtr, 20mtr….
And I didn’t want to run multiple lines to the attic, so an antenna switch was necessary.
ESP8266
I bought a 4 position manual antenna switch and very quickly realized (again) that I did not want to go up and down the stairs with kids and wife sleeping to switch the antenna. And more importantly, I did not want to run another set of cables to drive a wired remote controlled one. Wireless was the solution. I checked the prices, and they were outside of my budget for a switch. So, what’s next? I came up with an idea. Get a RaspberryPi and add a relay board and then I have my WIFI wireless relay control. Add some UHF female SO-239s and we have a WIFI Antenna Switch. Well, two problems with this, first it is really clunky connecting all those coaxial cables to the relays and there would be a lot of signal loss (and good luck tuning that), its bulky and pretty difficult to assemble in one unit and that would not work properly; second, it was more expensive than I expected, even DIY it was around 100 dollars. I built it anyway and, well it worked for a while. But I was not happy so I looked around and came up with a better idea (or so I thought!). I found the ESP8266, a WIFI module which is small, cheap, I mean 3-dollars-cheap and fully programmable. Combining this module with a standard relay switch design, I thought I had a solution for way under 100.00 dollars integrated all in one single PCB board, suitable for mounting on a proper box. Lets look at the design.
For More Details: 4×1 WiFi Wireless Antenna Switch
