Review: SainSonic AP510

Well, just got the SainSonic AP510, it's a little 1W, frequency agile APRS transceiver. It has a built in GPS, temp sensor, TNC (Yes, a full blown TNC), and a 2mAh LiPo battery rumored to be good for 2 to 3 days on automatic reporting.

It's a little tricky to get set up, mainly because all the good documentation is in Chinese, and the English support forum is locked up behind a Yahoo! group (Who uses Yahoo! groups anymore).

I've had best luck with Linux + Win7 VM. And, yes, specifically a Windows 7 VM. The USB-Serial drivers are finicky on Windows, but work like a charm on Linux. So, using a VM, you can just set the ttyUSB0 to be COM1 in Windows, and it all works. I've yet to be able to get Chirp daily on Linux to read from the device successfully.

I had high hopes of just getting the firmware updated using Windows, and just using Chirp from thereon, but Chirp doesn't really have much in the way of config for this device. So, bad news: I'll have to keep the Win7 VM around. Good news? Doubtful I'll ever have to reconfigure it, actually.

More good news: This device is based on the AVR64 by Atmel. Which means, I could hypothetically reverse out the hex file, and load an arduino bootloader (Like optiboot), and port it over to an ATTINY or similar board, which could expand the hack possibilities greatly. I wish the author would release the source on his own, but it's China and they just see things differently there sometimes I suppose.

I looked at those a while back, and thought it was a very cool package. It's amazing how much technology they can cram in a little device. I figured it might be fun to play around with, but 1 watt where I live only goes a short distance prior to mountains on all sides, and the nearest logging station somewhere in Phoenix. I ended up getting a 65Watt Yaesu FT 2800M from HRO for $90 on a sale they had a couple of years ago. I paired that up with an Argent system APRS module that used a Garmin GPS module. It works quite well. I can travel from here to Austin and track pretty well all the way. The only reason I have it is so my daughter can follow our progress. It gives her time to do something with the disaster in her house, and hide the valuables before we get there.

I'm looking for a reason, but...

Does look like something to play with

https://oh2fxd.wordpress.com/2014/12...-aprs-tracker/

So, the bad news: One watt into a rubber ducky is all but useless for APRS. Not a single report has been heard.

Good news? The device's case is easily opened, and I'm in the process of tracing pins on the atmel avr, to see which GPIO's do what. There's some mods by folk to use the Arduino IDE with this device, however, avrdude (Linux avr flashing tool) works great too. I could have saved myself a ton of headache by using it to flash the hex file, instead of the tool provided by the designer.

So far, I've mapped out the temp sensor's GPIOs. However, I believe the GPS chip shares a few pins with the VHF radio??? Maybe some sort of chip select is being employed. Still hacking on that.