so I’ve been playing with this for a few weeks now, and here’s a little clip of the initial tests.

I’m using an analog switch IC to simulate button presses on the Baofeng keypad via Arduino digital pins. As it’s a matrix, and my skills aren’t quite there to figure out how to get the Arduino to do this any other way, I figured 4x of these chips get me 20 buttons I can press, and then my code is simple. I have an Arduino function that sends a button press, and can call it like 

buttonPress(1);
buttonPress(2);
buttonPress(3);
buttonPress(menu);
buttonPress(up);
buttonPress(exit);

 This will allow me to define an unlimited amount of channels on the Arduino, and then use a gui on a yellow oled display to just tune the Baofeng to whatever frequency I’d like (like a software defined radio)

I can also simplify the menus, making macros for changing squelch or activating the inbuilt flashlight, or scanning.

I’m currently working on the ui - and then will start soldering all the buttons to my board full of switch IC’s!