Cobra 19 DX IV Upgrade

The code is finished to a feature complete state so I have installed the whole system in my Suzuki Jimny.

The Cobra CB is installed where the ash tray was and looks really tidy tucked away down low. You can be listening to music on one of the other sources and when the squelch is opened by a signal the head unit will make the CB the active source switching over to it and showing the channel, frequency and RSSI. When the squelch closes it returns to the original music source. If the source was Bluetooth or USB playback it will be paused and will resume where it left off.

Testing so far is positive with it all working as I hope at the start of the project.

Now I have someone following the project I guess I should give some more detail.

For this project I have created 4 programs:

• A C program for the AVR on the Nano board in the Cobra CB.
• A C program for the stereo system head unit.
• A C++ QT program that simulates a transceiver.
• A C++ QT program that controls a transceiver.

The program for the head unit is a modified version of the original software so is copyright of my employer. Therefore I can not make the source available for it. I may be able to make a binary available.

The rest of the software is my own work so I can make the source available under some open source licence.

The AVR code started life as an Arduino project but I find the IDE painful and the sharing of code between project is not ideal. I moved the project to a more conventional AVR/GCC/Eclipse project but it is still using some of the Arduino libraries.

Because I based the CB interface on the Yaesu FT857 CAT interface I was able to use an USB to mini-DIN 8 cable designed for that radio for testing with a PC. The QT PC programs allowed me to get the bugs out of the protocol and also gives me simple remote control for the CB from a PC should I want.

All of the software is functional complete and reasonably bug free except the head unit code which has the main features working but still needs refining and debugging.