HAM RADIO REPEATER LOCATOR
Glen Worstell, KG0T

Updated April 24, 2005.

The Ham Radio Repeater Locator is a small microprocessor controlled system that you can install in your car, truck, or motorhome, along with a GPS receiver and a mobile 2-meter ham transceiver. As you drive along the highway the HRRL automatically and continuously determines the nearest 8 repeater locations and tunes the transceiver scanner for the appropriate frequencies and access tones. The HRRL will work anywhere in the U.S. and Canada (except Hawaii).

Version 1 of the HRRL won the grand prize in the recent international Circuit Cellar/Zilog design contest. Version 2 was described in the August 2004 issue of Circuit Cellar Magazine. The article is available online at www.circuitcellar.com .

In response to many requests I plan to make a Version 3 of the HRRL. The goals for V3 are:

• Easy to build.
• Low cost.
• Support for various 2-meter mobile transceivers.
• No user programming required (but complete source code will be available).

In order to complete the design of V3, I need some help from the user community. Here are the tasks:

• Send me information on how to program your mobile transceiver. I already have information for the ICOM 746-PRO. I particularly need information on the ICOM IC-207, and would like to have the data required to support many of the popular 2-meter mobile transceivers.
• Help me decode the latitude and longitude information encoded in the ARRL "TravelPlus for Repeaters" CD. The user will still need to create a database of repeaters; this can be done with a text editor but a much faster way will be to purchase the CD and download the necessary data to the HRRL with a program I'll provide. Send email if you can help with this effort. I have a good start, and will respond with the information I've discovered.
• Vote on the system you'd like. Currently I plan to use the Atmel "Butterfly", which has a display and most of the required circuitry and costs only $20. However, the display is a single line of 6 characters, which is a limitation. If you'd prefer the 4 line by 16 character display of the original HRRL, let me know. In that case I'll probably use either a TI MSP430 part, an Atmel AVR part, or possibly a Zilog Z8 Encore. If you have a preference, let me know. The cost will be slightly higher if the larger display is used.