With almost everything being shut down from the virus, there must be something good happening. I think I have found at least one thing. Since we can't gather together the ability to hold meetings via video conferencing has been really taking off.
Last Saturday we held the monthly meeting of the North Georgia QRP Club via Zoom. We had around 25 people show up. Mostly members, but also a couple guests including Hans Summers from QRPLabs checking in from Turkey. He gave a brief history of the QCX transceiver. and informed us that they are only a couple hundred short of having sold 10,000 kits. He also spoke a little about the multi mode, all HF band QSX that is in development. We also heard from some of out local members, and got to see some pictures of their shack, and work bench. Except for a couple little glitches, from not being familiar with the software every thing went quitae well. Now waiting for the next meeting.
NO this is not the FBI's Most wanted List, or is it?
Last evening I got to attend another meeting. This one would be a little frather drive from Atlana than the NOGA meeting. This was with the homebrew group from the Peal Amateur Radio Club located in the Greater Toronto area. I usually only get together with some of them at FDIM, so this is a plus for me.
This meeting used a different software package, but also worked quite well. Except for also being the first time most of have used it. We had 17 people in the meeting including several that joined in via cell phone. As with the NOGA meeting there was a guest calling in. He was Rex Harper from QRP ME, and he spoke about the 'Buildithon' project that has been scheduled at FDIM this year. He is still working on the kits, and is planning on having a virtual Buildithon. Also heard about the progress being made on the Direct Conversion Receiver, which is to be the club 'Buildithon' this year.
Possibly the RCMP most wanted list ?
With the aid of the video conferencing software we are still able to get together with our friends. Of course most of us have more time to get on the air, work on projects, or start on the list of things the Wife has been wanting done 'forever'.
My last comment on the matter is something a friend said in one of his e-mails. " I feel like a teenager again, gas is cheap, and I'm GROUNDED"
I had started on the TinySA from Groups.io HBTE, but am still waiting on some parts that I had orderd than have yet to show up. Looking around I found a UHF version that covers 240 to 940 MHz. This only uses a single si4432 transceiver module, which I have on hand. So I will try to do a similar UHF version of the TinySA. Since this does not need the input LPF, mixer, and a high local oscillator, it should turn out to be a small instrument.
I have previously used a ESP32 development module, but that was quite large. Looking around aroound I found a Wemos ESP 32 mini that looked like it would do nicely.
It gets much of its size from having the IO pins as two rows of 2 wide headers .
Fortunatly the SPI and I2c pins are all located on the inside rows of pins, and there are enough extra pins available for the every thing else I need.
I can also put right angle headers in the outside row of pins and connect directly to them without having to have additional connectors on the circuit board.
I had neen very happy using a joystick for the user input device, but they are a little large for what I had in mind, and also they used 3 IO pins. I also wanted a couple extra control buttons available for the UI. I decided to go to keypad made up of a resistor divider string with switches to ground at each intersection. This can be read using a single ADC input.
Using surface mount components, the entire keypad can be layed out on the top side of the PCB, without taking up any extra space in he cabinet. I designed and 3D printed a small case, and the buttons for the keypad.
The software to read the keypad is quite easy. First you have to find out what ADC vlue is returned with no keys pressed and when each key is pressed. These values are reduced about 10% to prevent false readings. These values are put into an array.
The keypad function checks to see if a keyis pressed ( reading lower than none pressed value). If it is a short delay to debounce and another reading is taken ,then simple for loop compares this to the values in the array. The value of the last array item lower then the read value is returned to the calling program.
int readKeypad() {
int i;
int key;
// analog value for each key press measured and adjusted down about 10% to prevent
// wrong readings 0 position is no key pressed
int key_val[] = {3500, 3200, 2900, 2600, 2200, 1700, 900, -1};
if (analogRead(keyPadPin) > key_val[0]) // No key pressed
return 0; // just return
else
delay(5); // debounce
i = analogRead(keyPadPin); // get pressed key reading
for (int n = 0; n < 8; n++) { // check to see which key is pressed
if (i <= key_val[n]) // compare against array of measured values
key = n + 1; // bump up so you can use simple if test for a pressed key
}
if (key > 7 )key = 0; // helps to clean up clean up extended switch bounce
return key;
delay(25); // set max repeat rate
}
This works quite well, except for a little key bounce from the really cheap switches I had on hand. I put everything in the printed case, and loaded a modified version of the menu system I had used with joystick.
Now I need to grab some of the si4432 code from the TinySA on the HBTE group and see if I can get it working in the receive mode, then write some sweep and display functions.
