Amateur radio has been a popular hobby for decades, and can be an expensive rabbit hole to fall down.

It’s easy to spend thousands of dollars on equipment, such as the FLEX-6600 series of SDR (software-defined radio) transceivers, and even then you still need a Maestro Control Console or PC in order to interact with it. Unless, that is, you have a Teensy 4.1, the Arduino Flex library, and a little ingenuity, as PJRC forum member KD0RC demonstrated with their TeensyMaestro Controller for Flex 6000 ham radios.

The TeensyMaestro leverages the Flex TCP/IP API to control the transceiver, via an interface built from nine mechanical encoders, two optical encoders, 20 multiplexed switches, and an Adafruit HX8357 TFT touchscreen. The snazzy-looking front panel is simply aluminum covered with laser-printed graphics under a clear plastic shield. A GitHub repo is available with schematic, BOM, builder’s guide, and user manual.