So far I have to say the Han's QCX concept is really neat. It uses 6 passive components and provides an on-board DC, AC/RF meter, RF power meter, frequency meter and signal generator. Brilliant.
That coupled with the measuring functions pre-loaded in software and an expected list of values seems the best value for money in debugging a radio's circuit and wiring.
The spare A7 input could be put to fair use in the wiring phase of the project before being used for whatever the user feels like.
In my view if the Arduino is not functional, then there is not much to test since the radio would not be functional. So this is assuming the Arduino is at least communicating . And if it is, but has defective analogue or digital input failures then one side value of the test would be to determine if the pain of going through its replacement is warranted or not.
But as suspect, recollecting the list postings, that wiring issues and possibly alignment issues are main problems so far.
The test software will be small enough to fit alongside the factory firmware if it is deemed of value. That and a few components could be of great value imho.
And a pre-loaded software would avoid what could be seen as a daunting task of setting the Arduino IDE and loading a software.
In the mean time, I'll keep coding and see how much we can extract of the current hardware.
All the best,
73, John (VK2ETA)
