so i finally got fed up with manually logging everything during contests and started messing around with a raspberry pi zero w i had sitting in a drawer. been about three weeks now and honestly i dont know how i went this long without doing something like this.

the basic idea was to have it pull the frequency and mode data from my ic-7300 over USB using the CI-V interface, then auto-populate fields in my logging software. sounds simple enough but getting the serial stuff to play nice on the pi took me way longer than i expected. turns out there were some baud rate issues i kept overlooking — the 7300 defaults to 9600 and i kept setting the script to 115200 like an idiot, spent probably two evenings on that before i noticed.

anyway once that was sorted i started adding stuff. got a small 2.8 inch TFT display showing band, mode, and a running contact counter. added a little python script that queries the DX cluster via telnet and flags when a callsign i work matches a new entity on my DXCC list. its not polished at all, the code is kind of a mess, but it actually works most of the time.

thinking about adding an arduino nano to handle some button inputs for things like switching antenna ports on my manual switch without getting up — maybe run it over I2C to the pi. has anyone done anything like that, mixing the pi and arduino together in a station project? curious if thats the right approach or if im overcomplicating it

yeah the pi plus arduino combo is actually pretty common for exactly this kind of thing. the pi handles the heavy lifting — networking, running python scripts, talking to logging software — and the arduino is better for anything that needs to respond fast or deal with physical inputs without latency. I2C works fine for that if they're close together, SPI if you need faster, but for button presses and relay control I2C is totally fine.

one thing to watch out for is the voltage levels. pi GPIO is 3.3v and most arduino boards are 5v so if you're sending signals from the arduino back to the pi you want a level shifter in there or you'll eventually fry a pin. the other direction, pi to arduino, is usually okay since 3.3v is high enough to register as logic high on the arduino side but check your specific board.

i did something similar for antenna switching last year. used an arduino mega because i had one and needed more GPIO than the nano offered. pi sends a simple serial command like 'ANT2' and the arduino toggles the right relay. been rock solid, no issues. the hardest part honestly was just boxing it up neatly so it doesnt look like a rats nest on the desk.

the baud rate thing on the 7300 got me too, i think almost everyone hits that at some point. icom's documentation on CI-V is fine once you find the right version of it but theres so many forum posts with conflicting info that its easy to end up chasing your tail.

im curious about the DX cluster integration part you mentioned — are you just telneting into a cluster node directly from the pi or going through something like DXtelnet or whatever. i've been wanting to do something similar where it could alert me on a display or maybe even beep when a new one shows up on a band i have an antenna for. got a old pi 3 doing nothing and a small OLED i pulled off a broken weather station project so maybe its time to actually do something with it