We’re buzzing with excitement to share that Tog Hackerspace has officially joined the airwaves! After months of behind-the-scenes work, we’re now a registered radio club with both the Irish Radio Transmitters Society (IRTS) and ComReg. That means we’ve been issued our very own club call sign: EI0TOG.
This marks another great step for our growing radio crew. Just a few weeks ago, we hosted a brilliant radio day in the space, tuning into satellites, making contacts, and chatting all things RF. With the new call sign in place, there’s plenty more radio fun ahead.
In the coming weeks, we’ll be getting the station properly set up in the space. Once it’s live, members and guests will be able to hop on the airwaves and try out EI0TOG (with a licensed operator supervising, of course).
Stay tuned for more updates as we power up EI0TOG!
Curious about amateur radio or want to get involved? Swing by an open night or give us a shout, we’d love to get you on the air.
Read about this repair by our own Jeffrey, fixing an old-school CB radio setup.
A member arrived at the space one evening with a pair of CB radios: a Philips 369 (22AP369) and a MARC/CB base station (AP569). It’s hard to pin down the exact year of manufacture, but they likely date back to the 1980s. The two radios and the base station were mostly working, but with a few issues. One radio had no sound from its speaker, and the base station wasn’t outputting any power. Time to open them up.
Power Problems
Four screws and we’re inside. The base station revealed a transformer, an audio amplifier, and a nice fuse holder — with a clearly blown fuse, I could see without even taking out the meter. It was a 220V / 100 mA fuse, which I didn’t have on hand, so the repair was put on hold for a while.
Once I sourced a new fuse and installed it, it blew straight away. So did the next three.
In the end, I increased the rating on the fuse from 100 mA to 200 mA, and it held up. I adjusted the output to 13.8 volts, and it seemed to settle down. Maybe it’s just the age of the components that’s causing it to draw more current than expected?
Radio Repairs
Next up: the speaker issue. The sound worked perfectly on an external speaker, but nothing from the internal one. I noticed two mystery wires someone had added to the radio at some point. Curious, I opened it up.
I found a spare speaker in my stash with the same resistance (8 Ω) and rated for 0.5 W. It looked similar in size — the wattage might not be an exact match, but it was worth a test. A few crocodile clips later, and I had sound. Turns out the original speaker was just blown.
A little soldering and the new speaker was in. As for those mystery wires? I chose to embrace a little bit of mystery and just taped them up safely. Sometimes it’s okay not to know everything.
Antenna Adventure
Maybe I look like a radio person now. At the last Repair Café in Blanchardstown Library, someone randomly offered me a CB radio antenna — without me even mentioning radio! It was missing a few parts, but it worked well enough for testing.
With that, both radios were working again. I might be a few decades late to catch any actual CB chatter, but this was a fun little repair project. To actually transmit between the two radios, I’d need another antenna — but that’s a task for another day.
Check out our gallery for even more photos of the repair. Photos here.
Got something old and broken? Join us at a future Repair Café or electronics night at Tog Hackerspace and bring it back to life, or at least enjoy taking it apart!
We’re excited to announce a special event at TOG Hackerspace: a full day dedicated to radio, electronics, and signal experimentation, celebrating our recent membership with the Irish Radio Transmitters Society (IRTS).
Whether you’re a maker curious about what amateur radio is, a licensed operator interested in digital modes and SDR, or just love to learn how signals fly through the air, Radio Day at TOG has something for you.
This is a unique day to connect the local radio and tech communities, explore the fascinating world of wireless communication, and get hands-on with tools and concepts that are often invisible, yet all around us.
🗓 Date: Saturday, 14th June 2025 📍 Location: TOG Hackerspace, Unit 1B Motor City, Kylemore Road, Dublin 12, D12 CF6V 🎟️ Tickets: Free, but registration required – Reserve your free ticket here 🍕 Bonus: From 7 pm, join us for TOG’s famous monthly open social night — meet the community over chats, demos, and pizza!
📅 Event Schedule
🔧 11:00–12:30 — Multimeter Masterclass
Instructor: Jeffrey Roe EI7IRB Want to confidently measure voltage, resistance, and current? This class will give you hands-on training in using a multimeter properly. You’ll leave knowing how to troubleshoot circuits and understand key electronic measurements.
💶 Fee: €25 🎟️ Booking required – Book here Note: This is the only paid session of the day. All talks and demos afterward are free with a general ticket.
📡 13:00 — What Is Amateur Radio? A Beginner-Friendly Introduction to the Radio Hobby
Speaker: Adrian Connor EI9HAB
Ever wondered what amateur radio is all about? Adrian will walk us through this rich and varied hobby, from chatting across the globe with handheld radios to decoding digital signals and building antennas in your garden.
This talk highlights:
Voice, Morse code, and digital modes
Fun, license-free projects (like listening to satellites or airband)
How to get started in Ireland, including the path to licensing
The creativity, experimentation, and global community that makes amateur radio unique
To wrap up, Adrian will demonstrate a portable station setup, and if conditions allow, attempt a live radio contact!
🛠️ 14:00 — Packet Radio for a New Generation: Reimagined
Speaker: Ben Field EI9IUB
Once the backbone of digital amateur communication, packet radio is getting a fresh look. This talk explores the current state of packet radio, its potential in a modern context, and the ambitious goals for building a new Irish packet radio network.
We’ll look at:
What packet radio is and why it still matters
Emerging uses with low-power devices, mesh networking, and APRS
Ideas and inspiration from international efforts
How you can get involved in shaping a next-gen Irish system
Whether you’re into digital comms, infrastructure, or retro-tech with a modern twist—this one’s for you.
📊 15:00 — Hands-On With Filters
Speaker: Gary Cooke
This live, practical session dives into one of radio’s core building blocks—filters. Using function generators and oscilloscopes, Gary will demonstrate:
Band-pass, low-pass, and high-pass filters in action
How frequency and signal type affect filter behaviour
Applications in real radio systems—reducing interference, improving clarity, and isolating desired signals
This is ideal for anyone into RF design, SDR, or improving their shack’s performance. Come see waveforms in motion and leave with real-world insights.
This will be a drop-in in hands-on session and a chance to also get a cup of tea and have a chat.
🛰️ 16:00 — Talking to Space: Connecting Students with the International Space Station
Speaker: Daniel Cussen EI9FHB
How do students get to ask astronauts questions live from Earth? Through ARISS (Amateur Radio on the International Space Station)—a program that brings space communication to schools around the globe.
Dan shares the behind-the-scenes experience of helping set up an ARISS contact event:
Tracking the ISS as it races overhead at 28,000 km/h
The antennas, radios, and audio/video gear involved
Challenges in receiving video and audio from space
The human impact of seeing kids speak live to astronauts
An inspiring talk for fans of space, education, and the power of amateur radio to bridge worlds—literally.
🏠 17:00 — A Homebrew Amateur Radio Setup
Speaker: Tony Breathnach EI5EM
Tony takes us on a tour of his personal amateur radio station, built with DIY and budget-friendly gear. He’ll explain how he put together antennas, tuned radios, and tackled interference challenges—all from a home setting.
This talk is perfect for those looking to start their own station, especially with limited space or funds. Come see how creativity and perseverance can bring the airwaves to life.
📶 18:00 — Drones For Sensing and Communications in Emergency Applications
Speaker: Dr. Boris Galkin EI6HDB
Tyndall National Institute and the CONNECT Centre are involved in a number of projects with the Department of Defence and Civil Defence to explore ways to support emergency personnel using emerging technologies. Drones have shown themselves to be a powerful tool in a variety of applications in this talk, I will describe how radio communication equipment mounted on drones can be a gamechanger in the field.
🌐 Bonus Demos (during the day)
We’ll also have demos, tours and plenty of tea and coffee throughout the day.
🍕 From 19:00 — TOG’s Open Social Night
Once the talks end, the fun continues with our legendary Open Social Night. Meet the TOG community, hang out with radio operators and makers, and enjoy an evening of conversation, demos, and pizza. Everyone welcome!
🎟️ Tickets
This event is free, but registration is required so we can plan seating and space.
(Separate booking is required for the multimeter class – link above.)
👋 Get Involved
Want to demo something, share your gear, or help out on the day? We’d love to hear from you. Email info@tog.ie or come along to one of our open nights before the event.
We’re looking forward to seeing you on June 14th for a day of radio waves, learning, community, and fun.
Here’s a project write-up by our member Jeffrey Roe, who recently built a Slow Scan TV (SSTV) demo using a Raspberry Pi Pico. He showed it off during the IRTS AGM weekend and radio rally—blending hardware, software, and radio in true hacker fashion.
For the IRTS AGM weekend and radio rally, I wanted to put together a fun little demo to show off something radio-related that combines both hardware and software tinkering. The result? A working SSTV (Slow Scan Television) transmission system using a Raspberry Pi Pico. The aim was to send images over audio and decode them via amateur radio equipment—or in this case, a phone and an oscilloscope during testing.
Like all great projects, this one started with the classic struggle: trying to avoid soldering… and thinking it would only take an hour. How wrong I was!
Eventually, I gave in and soldered up a 3.5 mm audio jack breakout to plug into the breadboard cleanly. From there, things started to fall into place. I used a universal PCB with header pins and cut it to a smaller size.
With the jack connected and audio output sorted, it was time for some proper testing. I had an app on my phone I’d always thought might come in handy one day—and it finally did! Phyphox is like a mini lab on your phone. It can generate audio waveforms, which are perfect for our use case here. I used it to generate tones and verified the signal with an oscilloscope.
Once the circuit was wired up on the breadboard, the project used the following parts:
Part
Quantity
320×240 ILI9341 display
1
Raspberry Pi Pico
1
10kΩ resistor
2
100nF ceramic capacitor
1
3.5mm Stereo Socket
1
With everything connected, it was time to dive into the code. I followed the fantastic SSTV code by Jon Dawson, written for the Raspberry Pi Pico. The setup was straightforward, and before long, I had the system sending out a test image—a cat from @choiceIrregular, naturally—via SSTV.
If you’ve never heard SSTV audio before, it’s… unique. I captured a short video of the transmission. (Fair warning: it’s not exactly soothing—so maybe turn the volume down. Bonus: you can decode the audio from the video too!)
The final step was hooking the system up to a radio for real over-the-air transmission. On the transmission side, I used a USB-C to 3.5 mm adapter connected to my phone (using the SSTV Encoder app), paired with a “Kenwood” 2.5 mm TRS to 3.5 mm TRS connector-to-bare-wires cable. Using a connector block, I had a rough-and-ready USB-to-mic cable.
On the receiver side and another radio, I used another “Kenwood” adapter—this time to a 3.5 mm female socket—and then a simple 3.5 mm audio cable into my device.
And it worked! 🎉 Bonus: The photo below is a selfie of the project itself.
This little project was a great way to showcase digital image transmission using amateur radio, with a modern twist via the Raspberry Pi Pico. It sparked some fun conversations at the rally and hopefully inspired a few fellow hams to try it out themselves.
There’s also lots of scope for improvements. Here are a few ideas:
Moving it off the breadboard to make it more robust for events
Adding shielding—if I transmit too close, the screen goes white (I suspect interference on the SPI bus)
Saving received images—the screen has an SD card slot
Automating the sending side—currently, I have to hold the PTT button manually
Are you fascinated by space and want to learn how to receive data from satellites and weather probes? Join us in this TinyGS Station Workshop where you’ll build and program your ground station and antenna to receive data from space. This hands-on, beginner-friendly workshop is perfect for anyone interested in radio, electronics, IOT, antenna design, and space exploration.
About TinyGS: TinyGS is an open community-run network of Ground Stations distributed around the world to receive and operate LoRa satellites, weather probes and other flying objects, using cheap and versatile modules. With a TinyGS ground station, you can receive data from a variety of sources, such as CubeSats.
What You’ll Learn: During the workshop, you’ll learn how to build and program a TinyGS ground station and a quarter-wave ground plane antenna. No prior experience is required, and we’ll provide all the necessary materials, tools, and equipment to guide you through the process.
Materials Provided: All necessary materials, tools, and equipment will be provided for the workshop, including a quarter-wave ground plane antenna kit, a TinyGS base station kit, and a USB cable. You don’t need to bring anything except a WiFi device(computer or phone) configure and create a Telegram account. At the end of the workshop, you’ll take home your very own TinyGS ground station and antenna. You’ll be able to use your ground station to receive data from satellites and other flying objects and explore the fascinating world of space and radio. If you have any questions or want to continue learning after the workshop, we’re here to help.
Date: Sunday 25th of May 11 am to 1 pm
Location: Tog Hackerspace, Unit 1B Motor City, Kylemore Road, Dublin 12, D12 CF6V
Cost: €85 plus fees. Profit from ticket sales goes to fund Tog.
This event is part of Dublin Tech Week, a week-long celebration of innovation and technology that unites tech lovers, professionals, and communities across the city.
We’re excited to announce that Tog Hackerspace will be hitting the road and setting up a table at the SEARG 2025 Radio Rally & Electronics Fair, taking place on Sunday, April 13th, in the Woodford Dolmen Hotel, Carlow. The rally is part of the Irish Radio Transmitters Society’s (IRTS) AGM weekend and is hosted by the South Eastern Amateur Radio Group (SEARG).
📻 Event Details 📍 Woodford Dolmen Hotel, Carlow 🗓️ Sunday, 13th April 2025 🕥 Doors open: 10:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. 🔗 More info on the event here
We’ll be showcasing some of our radio-related projects, electronics builds, and all things maker-y. Whether you’re into amateur radio, DIY electronics, or just curious about what goes on in a hackerspace, drop by our table and say hello!
Expect to see everything from TinyGS satellite ground stations to homebrew antenna builds and maybe even a few surprises. If you’re a fellow maker, hacker, or ham radio enthusiast, we’d love to chat and connect.
This is a great chance to meet the wider radio and electronics community in Ireland, and we’re delighted to be part of it.
