Does there need anything special about the radio for Hamstr to work or do you think would a cheaper handheld do?
I'm aware ham has a longer learning curve, but it was something I was starting to investigate a few years ago, that I back burnered.
Discussion
Yes and no. Currently, since it is so alpha, and nobody is running servers, you would need to run both sides, a client and a server, so 2 radios. This also 2 computers. One on each side. The server runs unattended 24/7(or whatever you want to run of course). And a client. Any low powered device that can run python should work for both. I'm running a pi zero 2 just fine.
But... You also need a way to connect to the radios for ptt. You could use a hardware tnc device on each, or what I'm doing is running a software modem on each side. This has a serial connection to my handhelds alon with the sound cable(CPU modem software does the modulation). Your zap was tested on my house using two dirt cheap baofeng radios and 2 digirig sound cards. https://digirig.net/product/digirig-mobile/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=12829405880&gclid=CjwKCAjwy7HEBhBJEiwA5hQNoqP7xUrFFoNZLuHZIxQgcvbdutmYllCUH8ouws3acWQBl_r4siZnTRoCVZgQAvD_BwE
You don't technically need the digirigs, you could use vox mode on the radio and not have the modem send a ptt signal, but it's less reliable in my tests.
I'll try and draw up some diagrams and add to the repo.
Awesome. Thanks for the info. I was looking at a set of cheap handlhelds so that's perfect. It will be a couple of months before I can start spending some time on just learning the radio half, so don't hurry on diagrams on my part, but that would be incredibly useful.