Ian Renton

Software engineer and builder of robots
Dorset, UK

Hi! I'm Ian. My hobbies include tinkering with robots, radios and computers. For work I do the same stuff but get paid for it. I'm also a keen amateur cook, gardener and photographer.

I'm most well-known for creating amateur radio mapping software like Field Spotter and Plane/Sailing, robotics/animatronics projects like the original Raspberry Tank and the Billy Bass Sat Nav, and useful web apps like the Roast Dinner Timing Chart.

You can email me at ian at ian renton dot com, view my CV, or find me on the air as M0TRT.

Recent Projects

Fedi got fingerd

Have you ever come up with a joke name for a program that was so bad you had to write the program just to get it out of your head? Have you ever wanted to return your latest fediverse posts in response to a finger? Me neither. Until today.

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Spothole

Spothole is a utility to aggregate 'spots' from amateur radio DX clusters and xOTA spotting sites, and provide an open JSON API as well as a website to browse the data. It also features alerts for DXpeditions and xOTA activations, and of course a map. You can use it just as a web-based cluster to find interesting QSOs, or build your own software on top of it to take advantage of the single consistent and fully documented API instead of writing your own interfaces to many APIs.

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UKBOTA BunkerBase 2 Maps

For the UK Bunkers on the Air website relaunch in September 2025, I provided a set of built-in mapping tools for the new version of BunkerBase. The Bunker Dashboard prominently displays the map of activated and unactivated bunkers, and the same code also provides private map views for each user's activations and hunted bunkers.

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Famous Projects

Raspberry Tank

The Raspberry Tank was possibly the first tank-like robot powered by a Raspberry Pi, way back in 2012. It's smartphone- or laptop-controlled, streams video from its webcam, fires plastic pellets and can navigate autonomously.

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Field Spotter

An easy-to-use, mobile-first Amateur Radio spotting tool for outdoor activities such as POTA, SOTA & WWFF. It provides a geographical and band position display, with filtering, to allow you to easily find park-to-park and summit-to-summit contacts. It was the winner of the RSGB Construction Competition 2025.

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Plane/Sailing

“Plane/Sailing” is my home tracker for aircraft, ships and more! It receives radio signals via antennas on my house, processes them to share with popular tracking websites, and displays the combined results on a website using military symbology.

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Big Mouth Phatt Bass

To quote Winston Churchill, “No hour of life is wasted, that is spent making a Billy Bass play techno.” Big Mouth Phatt Bass is a Billy Bass hack using an ESP32 microcontroller to sync the fish motion to a variety of new songs.

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Linux on Linx 1010B Tablet

A guide on how to install Linux, plus a few bonus operating systems, on the low-cost Linx 1010B Windows tablet.

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Roast Dinner Timing Chart

Some Javascript magic to help you cook the perfect Sunday roast. Simply select your ingredients and a time to serve, and it will generate you a list of timed steps. The site was featured on 'Shop Smart, Save Money' on Channel 5 in the UK and has been the subject of a popular TikTok video.

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Hypixel Skyblock Bazaar Flipping Calculator

A quick weekend project to help my kid make money in the Hypixel Skyblock Minecraft server, this simple JavaScript tool has rapidly become the most searched-for of all my software.

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QSO Map Tool

Following the shutdown of the tool I used to make QSO maps for my blog posts, I decided to implement my own. I have expanded it to include some extra features I wanted to see, such as custom icons for outdoor activities, changeable basemaps and marker sizes, etc.

Use the web application →

More Projects →

Blog

145 Alive at Win Green

Written on Sunday 12 Jul 2026

For this afternoon’s 145 Alive event, I took a gamble and headed to every local ham’s favourite spot, Win Green. I had backup plans in case the summit was already spoken for, but luckily (and I think for the first time) I didn’t see another ham all day, and had...

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2026 Challenge Complete: Activate all POTA Parks within 20 miles!

Written on Friday 3 Jul 2026

It’s been a busy two years. In June 2024, after four years holding an amateur radio licence without talking to anyone, I finally discovered “my thing”: portable operating. Alongside the thrill of getting on the air and the beauty of being out in the wild, came an obsession with completionism...

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The Parks not Documented

Written on Thursday 2 Jul 2026

As I close in on the end of my “every POTA park within 20 miles” challenge, and start writing it up, I have noticed there were a few gaps in the list of activation reports. When I first started outdoor amateur radio, I breathlessly documented every single trip, somehow even...

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RSGB 2nd 144MHz Backpackers 2026 Contest Report

Written on Sunday 14 Jun 2026

Whenever you think there’s not going to be a hike, just a civilised walk from the car to the activation spot… there’s a hike. There’s always a hike. Today’s intention was to have my first go at the RSGB 144MHz Backpackers contest, and conveniently get a 2m SSB SOTA activation...

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Activation Report: The Heatwave Roves

Written on Tuesday 26 May 2026

Whitsun weekend, 2026. The country bakes under an unrelenting sun. Heat health warnings have been issued, with daily highs of 32C; the hottest May day since records began. Alright, time for some parks! Day One: 25th May On the first day, I tackled the four remaining parks of my challenge...

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