The Field Station
A distributed field station, built one night at a time. The story in order, with the deep dives linked from each chapter.
This is the story of building a single-box field station: analog and digital voice, two mesh networks, packet, email over radio, and a web console to run it all, on one Raspberry Pi.
Each chapter follows what actually happened, roughly in order, including the nights things did not work. The chapters stay readable. When one touches something worth a proper writeup, it links out to the full technical piece in the Blog, so you can go as deep as you want or just follow the thread.
Start at Part 1 and read forward. New chapters land as the build moves.
Part 1. The Idea
Most ham stations are a pile of boxes that do not talk to each other. This one started with a different idea: put the connective tissue in one place and let the modes cross.
Part 2. Voice First
The first bridge was voice: an analog node tied to System Fusion and DMR. The hard part was not the wiring. It was teaching two radio languages to translate, and the first read on …
Part 3. The Console
Voice was bridged and the radios were talking, but there was no way to see any of it. So the next build was a web console, with a live map that shows where a signal flows and where …
Part 4. Going to Mesh
The station could bridge voice and watch its own health. Next came a different kind of radio: LoRa mesh, two networks of it, a command gateway, and an assistant you can reach from …
Part 5. Into the Field
Everything worked on the bench. The real test was driving out of range and finding out what actually reaches home. The answer was humbling, and it changed the plan.
Part 6. What's Next
The station can talk now, in more ways than most. The open thread is teaching it to listen. This is where the series catches up to the present.