AIOC Cable Review - Should You Buy One?

The AIOC cable (aka the Ham Radio All-In-One-Cable) is an affordable, DIY digital modes interface for radios with Kenwood-style connectors, typically seen in cheap Chinese radios.

It's designed as an affordable option to get cheap radios up and running on digital modes like APRS that can often be cost-prohibitive. Excited about this prospect and at the urging of our users, we added support for AIOC in Direbox last release.

Radio enthusiasts really seem to love these things. But does the AIOC live up to the hype? How does it stack up when compared to established entrants like Digirig?

Our initial impressions of the AIOC are, frankly, mixed. Below is our full review, where we cover this little gadget, warts and all.

AIOC Cost: Buy vs. Build

Because the AIOC is more of a "project" than a "product," there's no singular place to buy one.

The AIOC GitHub repo has instructions on how to order the pre-soldered PCB yourself, but you'll need to order them in lots of at least 5 units for a total cost of around $60 USD. You'll also have to solder on the TRS (headphone) jacks yourself and flash the AIOC firmware to the board, so it's not exactly plug-and-play.

This could be a good option for something like a club buy or for someone trying to set up an extensive network of APRS digipeaters or WinLink nodes on a budget. But if you're just trying to buy a single AIOC to experiment with, you'll have to go to one of the many third-party sellers out there.

I bought mine on eBay for around $42 USD shipped. Another ham, NA6D, sells them for $35, but after shipping will also be about $42 USD. And if you want to protect your AIOC from the elements, you'll also need a case or protective shell of some kind. You can either 3D print one or purchase one for around $4-5 USD.

So your total cost for a one-off AIOC ordered from a third-party seller is just shy of $50.

This is the first glaring issue with the AIOC: Price.

The Digirig Lite is a comparable product and it retails for $40. It's also more flexible as it can accept interface cables from a variety of radios, not just Kenwood-style connectors. Being a product and not a project, the build quality is also higher.

There are other advantages, too, but we'll cover those later in the review.

In short, the AIOC is a good option if you want a hobby project, are buying them in bulk, and you only want to use them with budget HTs like the Baofeng UV-5R or the Quangsheng UV-K5 series. This is where the AIOC really shines.

Performance

Full disclosure: I know others have had good experiences with the AIOC and Direbox, but the AIOC did not perform well in our tests.

We paired the AIOC with a small army of Baofeng UV-5Rs and a Quangsheng UV-K5 running multiple compatible firmwares and problems emerged almost immediately.

The first glaring fault is electromagnetic interference from cheap Chinese radios. If you're using an antenna that's attached directly to your HT, like the stock rubber duck, triggering the PTT to transmit is going to overload the AIOC and lock the PTT open, rendering it useless as a packet radio terminal.

This issue is well documented and the solution seems simple enough: Use an external antenna that's farther away from the AIOC itself.

The problem is, cheap Chinese radios are notoriously deaf with external antennas. You'll solve the issue of crashing the AIOC in this configuration but you'll also lose a lot of packets in the process.

The other option is to move the AIOC itself farther from the HT and add some ferrite beads in between your radio and the AIOC - but that's not possible, either, as the AIOC is designed to plug directly into your radio. Perhaps alternative form-factors like the AIOB (All-In-One-Board) can remedy this problem, but at that point, why not just use a Digirig instead? It already has ferrite beads and the ability to add extra lengths of cable to avoid EMI.

To be fair, this is not a fault of the AIOC necessarily - Digirig can also get overloaded with EMI. We've observed this problem with Direbox, too. The problem is that "budget" HTs, for all their admirable qualities, throw off a lot of RF interference.

Since the AIOC is explicitly designed to work with cheap Chinese radios and only cheap Chinese radios, though, there's really no avoiding these problems, especially when the default form factor doesn't allow for much RF separation.

Conclusion

We really wanted to like the AIOC.

Not just because it's a great way to get into Direbox and APRS on a budget, but because we could've sold them in our shop!

However, we cannot in good conscience recommend or sell a product with so many problems.

The reality of packet radio is that it requires an investment if you want it to work well. Budget HTs are great for working local repeaters or for use as walkie-talkies on simplex, but they are simply not up to the task of passing digital traffic reliably.

And if all you want to do is dip your toes into the world of packet radio without any serious aspirations, you can always use APRSDroid or RTL-SDR for that.

The goal behind Direbox is that you can, with a high degree of confidence, pull the SIM card out of your phone and reliably send text messages and data to others. For all its laudable aims, cheap Chinese radios paired with the AIOC are simply not up to this task.

For those looking to get into Direbox, APRS, or other digital modes on a budget, we can confidently say that the Yaesu FT-65R series is a great HT for this use. And for those looking for more power, the Anytone AT-778UV mobile unit is also an excellent (and frugal) choice. Both pair well with Digirig.

While there are some configurations with budget HTs from companies like Baofeng and Quangsheng that can provide serviceable packet radio results, all of them require more RF separation than the AIOC's form factor can provide.