I didn’t try transmitting since I don’t have a decent antenna system and don’t want to hurt the PA circuit. I might have to try and construct some sort of simple wire dipole inside my lair. Alas I am without a windows machine so no Rocky for me (Rocky is a pretty ice simple piece of software to run a softrock with, but it doesn’t work under wine) so I can’t use PSK and my morse code is not up to scratch for a QSO so I dunno who I would talk to anyway. Plus, I am waiting on a keyer from MJF which they seem to be taking forever to supply.

OK – enough rambling…

This year I hooked up with the Harvard Wireless Club (W1AF) and the MIT Amateur Radio Club (W1MX) for a joint field day effort. Here we are, after pulling down our antennas:

For me, this was a great year. I worked quite a few stations and built the confidence required to call CQ, work through noise and generally find a rhythm. I’d really like to work CW next year, but from what I could tell, most CW operators are going at 20+ wpm, way out of my range.

I was told about a program called morse runner, which I am running under wine on my Mac – it works very well and is a lot of fun. It basically simulates a competition like environment where you have to exchange signal report and a logging number with a computer simulated ham. I think its helping me listen to code in a “real” environment. If you are learning code (and already have a good grasp of it, its not for beginners) then definitely give this a shot.

I’d also like to try PSK31 next year. I heard quite a lot of it during FD and at twice the points, I wonder if its worth it.

Still settling into living in Boston. Work will keep me very busy but I hope to, from time to time, do some fun electronics stuff and post my _results_. Stay tuned….

I’ve always been into microcontrollers and have played with the arduino line of open source prototype platforms quite a bit. The problem is, I always feel like I am not really programing the AVR atmega chips – instead there is another layer of abstraction (the arduino programming language).

I bought a few atmega168 chips a while back and a USBtinyISP programmer kit from LadyAda. I got to building the programmer which was really easy – it took about 30-40 minutes. I also followed the instructions on LadyAda’s site to get the compiler and programmer software (avrdude) working on my Mac laptop – again, very easy, at least for me.

Remarkably I found it tricky to hook up the programmer to the chip – which is surprising since the atmega chips are in circuit programmable. Evilmadscientist has a nice page up though, which explained how to connect the programmer pin outs to the chip pins. The picture below might help anyone else who is confused. LadyAda should really document this on her site!

Now, when I checked the pinout on my cable it seemed to be backwards from the one above. That is, colmns 1 and 2 were flipped. I probably installed the ribbon cable wrong on Ladyada’s programmer. Anyway, I suggest others check before programming a chip. Just check where you have 5V and ground.

#include
int main (void)
{
   DDRB |= 0b00000011; // Set LED as output
   TCCR1B |= (1 << CS10); // Set up timer
   PORTB = 0b00000010; // turn PB1 on, turn PB0 off
   uint8_t i = 0;
   for (;;)    {
      // Check timer value in if statement, true when count matches 1/20 of a second
      if (TCNT1 >= 49999) // 49999 normal -- 20 Hz flash
      {
         if ( i >= 10 )
         {
                PORTB ^= 0b00000011; // Toggle the LEDs: 0 -> 1 or 1 -> 0 through the
                                     // xor statement
                i = 0;
         }
         else
         {
                i++;
         }
         TCNT1 = 0;
      }
   }
}

I have been working on the softrock radio as well. I built the USB interface and have been making some contacts with PSK and one (poorly) attempted one on CW using a paddle through the USB interface. It all works very nicely!

Now I just need to amp up the 1 watt out from the softrock into something more like 10 watts. That would be nice…. working on that now, $$$ permitting. This might have to wait until after the move to Boston.

Below is the build, essentially done. I need to better connect audio in and out. And I need to consider if I will add the DB9 serial connector. Marvel at the beauty of the Softrock TXRX V6.3 below.

And did I mention, it works!? Below I have it operating on the 40M band – tuned to W1AW at 7047.5 kHz. The software is Rocky. Rocky has a nice “auto IQ Balance” function which I had a bit of trouble getting to work nicely with an EMU 0202 USB sound card. I had the input volumes turned up quite high which seems to be a mistake. I tuned them way down and the software corrected itself very fast after that. I have absolutely no mirror images that I can see at all. Any images would have to be down at least 50-60 dB for me not to notice them.

The inbuilt sound card in my Macbook Pro does a pretty good job as well, but the EMU 0202 is an improvement. I’ll have to take some screen shots and compare them more systematically.

I did get a chance to transmit as well. I found I could get rid of the mirror images easily with the TX IQ Balance in Rocky. The mirror image was down at least 50 db after balancing. I have no idea what power output I have. I need to work on this a little more.

Problems and Concerns:

• The EMU 0202 sound card can sample at 192 kHz, but Rocky can not work at this frequency. Annoying!
• I suck at construction. I keep getting worn joints with the audio in/out and I’m wearing out the sockets.
• I really wanted to get this to work with my ASUS 901H Netbook, but it is really too slow to work at high sampling bandwidth. Also, the standard soundcard inside the netbook is terrible. Resorting to the EMU 0202 works, but sound out is choppy at times.
• The Local Oscillator Frequency is quite strong and radiates as well. I will measure just how much is radiated compared to a CW signal and it’s mirror image, soon.

In all, I’m very happy to have this project working. It is a bit ugly in places – I need to develop of construction skills a bit – but it has been a lot of fun. I should have it cased up soon and be ready to put into operation in the field soon. I should be upgrading to general license soon too (maybe extra as well) so I will be able to use this radio alone legally soon too.

I’ll be honest – his style is amateurish. The content, though, is largely interesting. He also speaks with a very typical (and to many weird) Australian accent, complete with bizarre inflections at the end of sentences. Yes, we Aussies do that. Its kind of a cross between being emphatic while asking a question at the same time.

Anyway I suggest checking it out – I hope he doesn’t run out of steam and keeps coming up with some interesting topics.

I’ll have an update on the softrock radio soon. Receive is working nicely!

The Softrock family of kits are all centered around the SiLabs SI570 chip, a programmable oscillator, that is clocked at 4 times the center frequency required in order to generate I and Q (90 degree phase shifted) signals for mixing with received rf and passing onto a computer which acts as a software designed radio. This is of course the latest and greatest thing in radio and the SoftRock Kits are exploiting this technology cheaply and making it available to the hobbyist to build themselves. If you want to know more, check out the SoftRock page or read up on Software Defined Radio.

Only problem is the soldering of the chip!!! Check out the image below.

That’s right, surface mount is the go here, but not only surface mount, it is pinless! The chi is pinless!!! I have never done this before, but I have so far managed to solder the sucker in place and once under the command of a pic chip that programs its frequency in, it oscillates quite nicely (at 4 times the needed frequency).

The kit I am working on has a transmitter stage too, so it is a full transceiver. I will post more on it as I build more. I just wanted to show off my soldering of a pinless IC. Still can’t believe it works.