Nowadays, ham radio represents a great opportunity for Makers and engineers alike to explore the world around them. Whether it’s text messaging over APRS while backpacking or communicating with the space station as it flies overhead, one Seattle startup is on a mission to enable your Arduino to talk with people and things far away using VHF and UHF frequencies with the aptly named HamShield.

Have you ever wanted to innovate with amateur radio but could not figure out what band to choose or which was the easiest to hack into to gain more advanced features? In an effort to simplify this, the HamShield is super easy to control. To get started, Makers can write their own Arduino sketch and turn their board into a transceiver in a matter of minutes. This allows users to build APRS trackers, transmit and interpret Morse code, race remote-controlled cars, or even transform the…