so i've been messing around with a raspberry pi zero w for a few months now and honestly i dont think i can go back to doing things manually. started out just wanting to log contacts automatically when i keyed up on my IC-7300 and it kind of snowballed from there.

right now i have it pulling the freq and mode from the radio over USB using rigctld, writing to an ADIF log, checking the DX cluster via telnet, and flipping a couple relays to switch between my vertical and the dipole depending on what band im on. the relay board is just one of those cheap 4-channel SainSmart things from amazon, runs off the 3.3v GPIO no problem.

the part that actually surprised me was how easy the serial comms were once i stopped fighting the baud rate settings. took me like two evenings to figure out that my USB hub was the problem, not the code. classic.

anyway im curious if anyone else is running automation setups like this and what you're using. i looked at some of the dedicated logging software integrations but they felt like overkill for what i needed. also thought about an arduino mega for the relay stuff instead since the pi feels like a lot of compute just to flip some switches, but the wifi integration makes it so convenient for MQTT to my home assistant setup that i kept it on the pi.

anyone run into issues with RF getting into the GPIO pins? i havent had a problem yet but im running 100w on 40m sometimes and the pi is sitting pretty close to the back of the radio on the desk.

yeah RF into the GPIO is a real thing, ask me how i know lol. i had a pi 3B running a rotator controller and anytime i hit the key on 20m with more than like 50 watts the thing would just freeze up. turned out i had totally unshielded jumper wires running like 18 inches from the relay board to the pi header and they were basically acting as a little antenna. once i switched to shielded cable and added some ferrite chokes on the power leads it got way better. still occasionally gets a bit weird at 100w but its stable enough that i just live with it.

the MQTT to home assistant thing is great, i do the same thing. i have a dashboard that shows me band conditions, what mode im in, SWR reading from my tuner — all on a tablet on the wall. it genuinely feels like a proper shack now instead of a pile of random gear. the pi is doing a lot less than it looks like honestly, most of the MQTT messages are tiny and the CPU just sits there idle most of the time.

if you want to keep things really separate the arduino approach for relay control isnt a bad idea — you can talk to it over serial from the pi and the arduino handles the timing-critical stuff while the pi does the network side. best of both worlds and the arduino is more forgiving about weird voltage spikes anyway.

ferrite ferrite ferrite. seriously just put them on everything that goes near the radio. i learned this the hard way with a different project (was trying to use an esp8266 for remote PTT) and the 2m amp killed it twice before i figured out what was happening. now i just wrap a few turns through a type 31 mix toroid on every cable that comes within a foot of the antenna feedline and havent had a problem since.

also — have you looked at flrig at all? plays really nicely with rigctld and might save you some of the serial headaches if you ever add a second radio to the mix.