holy cow.? if that quality sells for that much I really need to free up some time.

开云体育

Nice project Yves, welcome to the Bitx world.

Sounds interesting, $8 is a great price.
I assume it's something like this, 320x240 of RGB dots, qvga:??
? ? https://www.buydisplay.com/default/serial-spi-2-8-tft-lcd-module-display-320x240-optional-touch-screen

Will definitely require a special connector, I hope they are less than $8.
Down that webpage some under interfaces, they have several flavors of "8080 parallel interface".
Which sounds fun and retro, but I think I'll stick with SPI.

Could do plots and store a few fonts from the Nano, but that would be very limiting.
I'd simply spec a new processor, something between a $2 Blue Pill and a RasberryPi.
Better yet, let the builder choose the processor, run everything off of spi and i2c buses to minimize wires.
Forget 5v, most of the rest of the world did long ago.
If you do make a reasonably powerful processor possible, there are folks here that will use it.

A few possible projects we've already seen mentioned in the forum:
? ? panadapter, usable as a very low end spectrum analyzer
? ? sweeperino like device to plot filters
? ??A basic 100khz bw scope, with RF mixer so can see transmitted signal
? ? vector impedance analyzer? ;-)

If the processor has the muscle to support digital modes,
a display like that makes it possible to run stand-alone.

Jerry, KE7ER

Thanks for the summary.
I'm on a cell phone link, makes youtube even harder to deal with.
From what I saw, he was not terribly concise.
But did seem to know what he was doing, spoke of modelling his antenna before settling on the inverted L.

Jerry

开云体育

Sorry, they were on eBay.

On Mon, Apr 30, 2018 at 05:51 pm, Jerry Gaffke wrote:

I sat through the 8:17 minute April 1 2016 Steve Ellington video on the myantennas EFHW-8010.
Wow, now I remember why I mostly avoid youtube, maybe 10 seconds worth of? information in all of that.
Anyways,he has the matchbox about 5' up in the air, the wire then goes
straight up to 55 feet and then over, and he was planning to rip out his other antenna to make room?
for a second EFHW-8010 so he could swap patterns.? Which is to say that he likes it.
Oh, and on long 80m CW transmit sessions at 500 Watts he sees his SWR creep up suggesting
the transformer was maybe overheating, not an issue on the other bands.??
And he's very fond of LMR-600 coax.

Maybe Simon could give us an executive summary on his other dozen or so videos,
especially the one that's an hour and a quarter long.?
Did Steve E. ever manage to build something he liked better than the EFHW-8010?
What's a good video to start with for somebody wanting to build one from scratch?
Any tidbits not typically found in other material on EFHW's?

Jerry, KE7ER
?


On Mon, Apr 30, 2018 at 04:50 pm, Kelly Jack wrote:

There is a youtube channel by a ham called Steve Ellington that looks at various aspects of the efhw including construction and the myantennas version. Search "EFHW" and the channel came up in a number of the results.

?Jerry,

Re youtube videos- I agree the information rate can be low. One thing I usually do is speed up the playback rate to increase this and save time. Also some skipping through the intro to get to the meat. Some utubers are worse than others at getting to the point and some just talk slow.?

Of Steve's videos the ones I found most interesting / useful were the one on winding the toroids, the one experimenting with grounding options and a more recent one where he discusses using a different ferrite mix to handle more power. The titles of the videos should point people in the right direction.

No idea if Steve has found something better but I see he still seems to be experimenting with it as a new video went up a couple of days ago.

I'll try to watch the long one again shortly as given it was a presentation he gave and only a month old I presume it contains most of what the other videos have.

Regards



Simon VK3ELH?

Kees I'm still using your great VIA antenna analyzer. Fortunately a friend of yours helped with the soldering! ?I've since got the necessary equipment and am much better at it. ? The Fox Delta analyzer is good too.
Bo W4GHV?

Robert,

I responded to your note....let me dig it out and send it again (offline).

73 Kees K5BCQ

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Others,

Yes, there seems to be much interest and I'm looking forward to it .....I think.

Don and Ion are quite pleased too.?

I won't "push the button" until May 2nd since they are on "Labour Day Holiday" through May 1st. That will allow me to check for errors and read your comments.

73 Kees K5BCQ

The subjects are too difficult to sort so I'll start another thread.?

There are really nice serial interface 2.8" TFTs with touchscreens out there for pretty low prices ($8-$9). I would like to know just what you can do with an existing Nano or a Protoneer (much faster and way more storage). Seems like we have enough pins coming off the existing controller to support an SPI (4 pins). May need a small board between the existing Raduino? and the TFT (level shifters, etc). What functions could you support with firmware ? In other words what capabilities could be added if you don't worry about DSP, FFTs, etc. and other microcontroller intensive stuff.?

Keep it simple and minimal..... starting with the existing uBITX and a 2.8" TFT with a SPI interface. What would you suggest ?

73 Kees K5BCQ

Hi all, 

Calibration has been challenging for me. 
In case the below will be helpful, here is the procedure that has ultimately worked well for me. 

Thanks to Ian Lee (KD8CEC) for his nice firmware and uBITX_manager utility, and to others who pointed me in the right direction on a different thread. 


Step 1: 
Downoad:  

Within the Zip file you'll find a file name UBITX_CEC_V1.073_16P.hex   (This is the file you'll need with the standard display that ships with the board)  - extract that out; you'll use it in Step 2. 


Step 2:
You need to update your factory radio to Ian's firmware which is accompanied by a nice UI to load the parameters easily from uBITX_Manager utility. 
Follow the instructions here (using xloader): 
  but ultimately pointing to the firmware that is referenced in Step 1 above. 


Step 3: 
Download and install the file here:   
Note - when you run uBITX_Manager; the uart speed is 38400 and not the 57600 used by xloader. 


Step 4: 
Connect uBITX_Manager to the radio
"Read from uBITX"
Press "Decode =>"
"Load from file" using the .btx file that I attached as screen images and text file.  These are my final numbers and they will get you close.  My factory-fresh calibration values seemed to be out and it was very difficult for me to bring them to something that is "sane" simply by ear. 
Press "<=Encode"
Press "Write to uBITX" - click through the next couple of dialogs
Press "Rest"  (Reset)) - your radio is now running with the new firmware and my calibration figures.  It should start to sound right. 

Step 5: 
See this post:  /g/BITX20/message/47482 for the 7074 LSB/USB "trick". 

With the attached file for my radio, the BFO calibration should be "close enough" so the calibration function accessible via the radio's menu will work ok now.  Then, I adjusted the BFO frequency for the best unwanted sideband suppression. 


Step 6 
Now that the BFO is set properly, I then calibrated the main frequency by setting CW frequency (in uBITX_Manager) to 700 Hz which is the same as my commercial rig CW sidetone.  I also ensured that the commercial rig was receiving CW on the same sideband as the uBITX ( lower sideband "CWL" for 40m ).
I then tweaked the main calibration setting  until the CW note of the received signal was the same on the commercial rig and on the uBITX.  I used an antenna switch to flip back and forth.  

Step 7
Fine-tune the BFO setting by using the 7074 "trick" and the radio's BFO calibration setup menu item. 


Good luck! 
Dave
AE6RQ

--
Dave Beal
AE6RQ

For planning, put me down for four (4) of each.??
OBTW-? Sent this a bit back, no reply...
"<ARS.N5LXK@...>

I'd already replied that I would like 3 of the SMT AGC kits/boards when they're available.? But I'd like to add 3 of the click boards/kits to that as well.

73,

Carl, K0MWC?

Hi,

I just received a pack of 10 cheap Arduino Nano boards from Amazon today. After reading these posts I was concerned I was going to have issues with uploading programs to them with my Mac.?

It turns out I already had a driver for the CH340 installed. It is signed and works.?

This driver was installed some time ago, so I don't remember the details. However, I went back and checked the Plist file for the driver and I believe the link below is the driver I have installed.

Plist of my driver is located here (from terminal):
view /Library/Extensions/usbserial.kext/Contents/Info.plist

Here is the link:?

Most likely I installed this driver using the "Homebrew" package installer for the Mac.

-- Tom, wb6b