I met Mary at the Huntsville hamfest showing SwapMyRigs.com with her Father AE4S. This is a unique product that allows you to remote your head unit from your radio without running long coax or complicated brand specific multi-wire solutions up to 100', in some cases further.
I haven't watched the video yet, but in visiting the website I think this has a lot of promise. I've been thinking about how I'd install a radio in my daily driver, which has virtually no space (5-door compact), and decided I will have to use a removable faceplate radio. However, running the wires and not having my car look like the typical whacker-mobile was going to be problematic. This looks like it'll be very helpful in that regard. Chris
Neat idea but I can’t remember a time that a cable has actually failed in a remote install except for the mic cable to the rj45 gender changer. Thats usually just a reseat the rj45 cable and it’s good. This solution wouldn’t necessarily fix that problem in a mobile install. The idea of one cable between the RF deck and the head is advantageous instead of a data cable, a mic and speaker cable.
Sure. The thing to keep in mind is that you install that one cable then You can just repin the boxes if you change radios. No re-running of proprietary wires needed. Not to mention any rfi benefits.
Remains to be seen if this is worth anything as we have no price set. I stick to Yaesu for mobile ops so when I start a new build I know it won't be difficult to upgrade. Even with most modern vehicles I can have the interior out in about 3-4 hours being careful. Then its usually quicker on the install. Just did a SHO Taurus in a day with including a big audio setup with subwoofers and radios. I don't know if the cost/benefit will work out except maybe for the few who change radios like underwear. As you said above you have to reconfigure the boxes each time so they cannot be hidden without easy access. That to me is another complication to consider. Most installs in modern vehicles leave a lot to be desired because people take the easy route and just bury cable under carpets and such which we all know where that leads. Its better to learn how to strip out the interior then have a plan. Once you have done it its relatively simple to do it again. This setup even though one cable is not immune to carpet burials so my advice is learn your vehicle so its easy to get it apart quickly. Remember to check systems as you reconnect sensors and you will be fine. Side note, if you must do under carpet look for an under carpet raceway. Will save a lot of hassle.
$90 with a 15' cable. https://www.swapmyrigs.com/shop When does the HDMI version come out? Bit much for a car install but it has me thinking about a remote garage install for a better antenna location. I would need to get creative with cabling since I only have a 1" conduit to my garage for (non RF/non AC power) "fun stuff". I saw someone homebrew a device to do the same with their 857D over a local network. It was a bit more complex.. It used a pair of raspberry pi's to capture and regenerate the RXD/TXD control data between the head and the radio body. It also piped audio.
So I installed an IC-7100 and another dual band radio in the Ram and because I didn't want the dash to look like a hack job I ended up running (2) CAT5s, a USB and a speaker wire extender so that I wouldn't have wires hanging off the back of the remote heads. The 2nd radio had similar cable runs. The girth of all the cables were barely able to be contained in a single PVC wire sleeve that is just over an inch in diameter. So, if I plan to never change radios again before I get sent to the nursing home, this will work nice - but we all know that isn't going to happen. Two of those VGAs laying flat under the rugs to the back of the cab would have been way better and cleaner.
I bought one for my ID-5100 and moved my faceplate over to my computer workstation. As I'm using a mag mount antenna, the length was limited from where I could place the antenna to my operating position. All I can say is this is a fantastic accessory. When you order, it comes already configured for your radio so it's truly plug and play.
This reminds me of the 1980's when the MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) Protocol came out and allowed many synthesizers and other devices to talk to each other. That was a breakthrough in technology. Glad to see its thoretical concept being used here.
Looks like an interesting concept to fix one thing that irritates me about ham mobile radios, where as often as not the remote head doesn't have a mic connector or internal speaker. It's easier to run one good cable protected from damage and interference is something commercial mobile radios have long understood and you still have to find a place to put an external speaker, too.
Slightly misleading video banner. Makes it seem like you can control 16 radios with one head unit. Really just a simplex mux/demux setup. Takes all the signals/audio and puts them on one 15 pin wire. Nothing real complicated here, but could make life easier for some installs and those who swap radios all the time. Now, if it would extend the data port from a remote unit to the front, that would be quite useful to some people who may do something like VHF Winlink in an EMCOM situation.
That's what I'm looking to solve with it. I can mount the body of the radio in my trunk, run one cable to the front of the car, connect the mic, head, and run a wire to the aux input of my stereo and call it good. Chris
This just seems completely pointless. You have to have the xtra boxes and its really not that hard to remote a radio. How often do you switch radios in your car? I switch cars before I switch radios. I remote my Ft-8800, its like two skinny cables. Even the FT-891 was a piece of cake. This just seems like a solution looking for a problem.
