It was only a few years ago Ashhar Farhan's small company HF Signals from India launched the Bitx40, a small 40m rig that was sold as a completed PCB, it was up to you how you housed it and cased it up. It sold in droves, and paved the way for the uBitx a fully functioning multi band HF rig cased, and complete, for a bargain price of HF entry to our hobby.
Since then sBitx was developed and again opened the SDR path of development, powered by a Raspberry Pi as it's engine.
Well Ashhar has done it again! With the launch of zBitx.
This is what he has had to say launching it on Christmas day on the Bitx forum:
After months of work, we finally have the zBitx in production! We were
able to price it at an incredible $149 USD for a 5 watt, 80M to 10 M QRP
radio with a large 480x320 touch screen that allows you to run CW, FT8
and other modes without needing even the phone that the original zBitx
used.
There are many things in the zbitx that will interest the tinkerers here.
The
size. It is just 15.5 cm(6 inches) by 80cm(3-1/2 inches) by 3.5cm(1-1/2
inch). You could slip it into your pocket (if large enough). This
includes the battery case that holds the two LiPo batteries.
Power:
The zbitx runs off two LiPo 18650 cells. You could ofcourse power it by
external DC source (max 9v). This is meant to be a field radio that
also works as a great base station.
Touch Screen: The radio sports a 480x320 resistive touch screen with large text that is easy to read and type.
Base
station: By plugging an HDMI monitor, keyboard and mouse, the zbitx
transforms into an sbitx category base station with reduced power.
Software:
The zBitx sports the same software that runs the sBitx radios. The
zbitx will ship with 64-bit software upgraded to handle the small
screen.
Schematics and Software: They will all be released in open source, GPL v3 on github in a few weeks.
Deliveries will start in February.
You can certainly bet this is going to be a hot winner in 2025.
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