Vulpes

An ESP32-based radio orienteering controller.

What

Radio orienteering, or amateur radio direction finding (ARDF) is a sport where people run around and look for hidden transmitters. One necessary component is a controller on each transmitter that tells it when and what to transmit.

This is my attempt at a simple, easy-to-use controller with a low parts count. Rather than programming a microcontroller and/or using DIP switches, time delays, and sync cables, the ESP32 development board lets you set up each controller using a web browser.

[need links here for ARDF resources]

Hardware

I designed a simple custom printed circuit board (PCB) to make assumbling this controller easy to do. The repo for schematic and board design is here: [link to new repo].

Because the ESP32 doesn't track time when it is powered off, and I wanted to avoid specific delays (e.g., push a button two hours before an event starts), an additional real-time clock (RTC) is included. The RTC runs on a watch battery to track time when the controller is not powered on.

Software/Firmware

General Settings

Cycle Settings

Network Settings

Access Point

When using as a wireless access point, the network SSID is "vulpes" with no password. Navigate to http://192.168.0.1 to access webform.

License

GNU GPLv3. See LICENSE file for details, and https://choosealicense.com/licenses/ if you're like me and don't understand all of this stuff.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Mark Fickett for his arduinomorse library.