Shenzhen-based design home OpenEmbed is getting ready to launch alternative internals for the Quansheng UV-K6 and suitable walkie-talkie radios — turning it right into a Meshtastic-ready LoRa handheld dubbed the MeshWalkie.
“MeshWalkie [is] a handheld compact wi-fi multi-tool for LoRa and hackers,” OpenEmbed guarantees of its work-in-progress design, which has just lately had its first batch of PCBs produced. “It is also a ready-to-use particular person Meshtastic and Wi-Fi machine. It is absolutely open-source and customizable. So you possibly can lengthen it in no matter method you want.”
Fancy a slick Meshtastic handheld? The MeshWalkie is an Espressif ESP32-based alternative PCB for the Quansheng UV-K6’s housing. (📷: OpenEmbed)
The MeshWalkie, delivered to our consideration by LinuxGizmos, appears to be like at first look like the favored Quansheng UV-K6 walkie-talkie — and the rationale for that’s easy: it’s, no less than externally. “The reason being the [plastic injection] molding is just too costly, for about over 20k USD,” OpenEmbed explains of its resolution to reuse a casing from an current off-the-shelf product. “And the 3D printed [version] is just not rugged sufficient. Perhaps it may be a prototype, not [an] finish product.”
The housing, with its buttons, speaker, and microphone, is the one a part of the UV-K6 to be reused: internally, the MeshWalkie is all-new electronics constructed across the Espressif ESP32-S3-WROOM-1 with two Tensilica Xtensa LX7 cores working at as much as 240MHz, 8MB of flash reminiscence, and each Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Power (BLE) radios. To this, OpenEmbed has added a Seeed Studio Wio-SX1262 LoRa transceiver module, primarily based on the Semtech SX1262 — giving it long-range transmission and reception capabilities plus compatibility with the community-driven Meshtastic mesh networking challenge. Lastly, there is a a Seeed L76K multi-constellation World Navigation Satellite tv for pc System (GNSS) receiver.
The corporate has pledged to launch the PCB design underneath an open {hardware} license, however has not but achieved so. (📷: OpenEmbed)
All the above, plus a 128×64 LCD show, is housed on a customized PCB which is designed to take a seat completely within the UV-K6 housing — together with reusing its buttons, speaker, and microphone, and together with assist for an exterior antenna on the high.
The challenge is detailed on Hackaday.io, however whereas the corporate guarantees that it will likely be launched underneath an unspecified “absolutely open-source” license it has not but appeared on its GitHub account.
Replace (05/10/2025): This text initially recognized the donor radio as a Baofeng UV-K6; the challenge is as an alternative primarily based on the Quansheng UV-K6, and the article has been corrected accordingly.
