Worth The Effort

This is what I've been messing around with while I'm not messing around with SDR software.
For a couple of weeks now I've been soldering and testing bits and pieces, trying to get this Rigblaster Plus and my radio talking. A while back I told you that I was playing with PSK31. I was using the very effective method of holding my microphone over a speaker and making contacts that way. It's a good method and one that works but it's not really perfect and it's only really any good for the PSK modes. Having a proper data interface is much better and allows one to try other modes including Morse, Hell and JT65 among others.
I got the Rigblaster as is. Just the box. I've had to buy a link cable between it and my radio. Buy a serial to USB lead to connect it to my laptop. Make a male to male 8 pin lead. Make a power supply and finally get my head around setting the jumper leads inside the box. Not as easy as it sounds because the connector to the radio had its own configuration.
With that all done I connected everything tonight and set the volume levels. It worked, so all the hard work has been worth the effort. I know it works because I made a contact in France and he's now in the log book.
I have another data interface to finish and an antenna to build before another mast goes up at the bottom of the garden. There's also some SDR experimentation to be done and hopefully in a couple of weeks the SDR might just end up going mobile.
Who knows what else I'll find to do!
Raspberry Pi maybe?