Don't laugh. My little V4 uBITX has been through the mill, and back again. The "labels"? come from a little hand held label machine thing, or sharpie marker. The residue of double sided tape is left over from the Nextion screen (RIP).?

The big hole on the upper left is now a "LED portal for the Operational Status Communication Device (OSCD)". It was previously a big old power switch.? The two voltage displays show the main board and final supply. I get a kick out of seeing the voltage drop on the final supply when I TX. The drop lets me know my very old surplus laptop power supply is weak, and that the finals still work, sort of.?

My ubitx did have a sexy past with a wicked dreamy interface. But heat, many months of 24x7 100% continuous WSPR /or/ FT8 all took their toll, plus questionable operating practices, and now we have but a distant echo of a glorious past. Sigh. But hey, today I had a great qso with a guy at the Swallowtail LightHouse VE9SLH (Rick) on the Bay of Fundy! All the way from Vienna Virginia with my humble "I had a hard life" uBITX!? And Rick didn't have a single complaint about the "steam house punk" rig esthetic. hahah

Here is a pic of the previously very sexy nextion. The massive power switch on the upper left was salvaged from a very old vacuum cleaner.?



Don
km4udx

开云体育

what about "rub on letters" and clear spraypaint??

available in white and black (white on black looks goood as does black on brushed aluminium/silver)

if a letter went wrong its easy to correct (some sticky tape and rip it off)

when all is finished .. some thin layers of spraypaint and the front looks like from a factory

i made a lot of projects with such letters ;-)

needs some practice but the end result is what counts

as an example i had to replace the bandswitch in my tuner .. a hamfriend gave me one with finer steps and more contacts ...

i made a new scale with these letters on a thin grey plastic sheet (hiding the original scale) and added additional in between settings on the switchable coil

not original anymore but the new scale for the bandswitch looks ok for me

... just one idea how you can make a front ... i bet there are other solutions (even carving on a cnc machine and filling the carved letters with paint is possible hi hi)

greetz sigi dg9bfc

ps i first spray some thin layers to secure the letters and then a thicker finish layer

Attached is the simple circuit I built to install an S/power meter in my Bitx20a I built a number of years ago. I found the plans online when I built the BitX but I don't know if it's still online now. It works fairly well with the BitX20a using a meter salvaged from an old CB. I haven't constructed that circuit since but may build it again in the future.


--
Tom Sevart N2UHC
St. Paul, KS

Thank you once again Evan. All is working now and is looking pretty sharp (at least to me lol)


I painted the case with silver/gray paint with a hammered finish. I'm not happy with the labels. The labels were printed on some decal paper on my home printer. I really need labels as I will always forget which is the microphone. or headphones or key. How have others labeled their uBITX rigs??
As said above I think that it all looks nice except for the labels. The Nextion screen looks really good with the finish on the case. I'm starting to doubt if I want to go through the effort of making or buying a larger enclosure just to have a larger screen.?
Next project? S-Meter or AGC, I don't know yet.?
Anyway thanks for all of the help.?

--
'72

Aaron,

Did you note that the drawing is upside down from the Raduino?? Pin 1 of P2 (TFT Display Header) is on the bottom side closest to the 18-pin header that goes into the mainboard.? Check to be sure you have the 5volts before you connect the Nextion to the provided 4pin plug.

73
Evan
AC9TU

I got my SD card issue figured out and was able to load the uBITX_28.tft file to my SD card. I decided to go with my 2.8" Nextion display for the time being because it allows me to use the uBITX V6 case. Once I get this continuous stream of headaches figured out then I will see about upgrading to the 3.5 Nextion. I loaded the UBITXV5_CEC_V1.200_NX?HEX file to the Raduino using the XLOADER software. The firmware on the Nextion and the sketch on the Raduino was loaded up with out incident and so far it looks ok.?
Now for the next headache.?
I wired the Nextion Display to the TFT Display Header on the Raduino. Here is my wiring:
Red +5V to pin #1
Black GND to pin #2
Yellow RX to pin #5
Blue TX to pin #11

Now I get nothing from the Nextion Display. It does not power on, the screen does not light up. I get nothing from it.?
About 10 minutes ago I had to screen powered up with a USB cable (5 volts) to load up the firmware and it was working just fine. I install it to my Raduino and there are absolutely no signs of life. I power it up using my USB cable and again it powers up with no problem. The only thing that I can think of is either I got the 4 wires wrong in the TFT header or I am missing something. I feel that the uBITX and Nextion display work just fine, it's the monkey on the keyboard that is messing up. I found a PDF file named?UBITX V6 2.8" NEXION TFT DISPLAY MODIFICATION
Here is the wireing schematic that I am using as a guide:

To make the connection from the Nextion Display Harness I took some 90-degree header pins, removed the plastic that holds the pins together, and that allowed me to hook up the wires. I have the Nextion Display wire harness going from the TFT header and then between the Raduino and Nextion into the 4-pin wire plug in the Nextion.?
I must be missing something somewhere.?

--
'72

Jonathan,
The v6 uBITX still has the control wiring that Dr Lee was referencing in the schematic that you posted. ?It was not clear that the red number was to be associated with the connector above it on the schematic, not the blue wire. ?The original color coded harness was included with my v6. ?You would have to retire the tuning encoder to the new harness, or pop the purple wire from the extra harness and replace the cut off wire on the encoder wiring harness. ?That is what I did for a mod for a friend. The audio connector is also on the v6 main board.?

73
Evan
AC9TU

开云体育

Scott

Jonathan

my apologies! ?You were clear on what you were asking about. I took a snap read and went down the wrong path. I have been focused on the separate nano for S meter.?

Ignore my post!?

73
Mark

Hi 搁补尘ó苍,

All understood. It’s always a bit tricky when having a mixed voltage system. I think if the interface has a pull-up to 5V, the ESP32 input protection diodes in the IO will be fine. There may be an issue if the interface is hard driven to 5V.

I don't get it,

How would brass make a good core for VHF?? Its reluctance is higher than air, thus it reduces the inductance of whatever is wound around it.? Logically this would result in a lower Q than using an air wound inductor.

Cheers and 73

Jim -

Thanks - I did reference that video, but the reason I went back to KD8CEC's page is because I wanted to use his simpler S-meter circuit, using an LM358 chip. The penny has dropped on watching the Lockdown Electronics video is that I am using an *unused* pin on the Arduino - A7 clearly doesn't go anywhere, so I will solder to that. I will pick up the VOL_HIGH from the Audio1 connector on the motherboard.



The yellow & blue wires in the image are the new feeds to the Nextion - I fitted right-angled headers to the screen connector to make these easier to fit.

Mark - thank you for the detailed response, but that confused me further! KD8CEC was describing adding an S-meter to a v6, like I am, so I assuming his circuit boards are the same I am working with - OEM boards - so I am not sure why I need to connect to SDA or SCL - Ian never mentions them?

I have indeed built a second voltage regulator board to attach to the 12V connector on the motherboard - I am driving the Nextion from there, and will power the S-meter board from here, too - that way the Raduino's regulator is just handling the Raduino...

73 all,

Jonathan
G5LUX

Hi Dave,
It is true, it is an issue that I will have to solve in the next version. It is also true that the ESP32 seems to be more robust than specified, so far, I am not aware of any problems with the various units I have used.

搁补尘ó苍

Jonathan,

The main challenge is picking up the I2C (SDA/SCL) pins. Unless you have a custom Raduino, you need to identify the pins on the upside Nano and solder two wires to the top (or at least that is what I did on my OEM Raduino). A4 is SDA and A5 is SCL. Want to keep the i2c wires short and I would keep them away from the SSI551. It also uses I2C and being an analog device, easy to get noise.

Although there is a 5V out on the Nano, not sure it can drive a second nano. So you need to pull 5v from the 7805 (I assume that the V6 Raduino still uses a 7805 on board???). I have heard that you want to avoid using the 5V you provided to the Nextion because of noise. Can't confirm that if you don't you get noise...? I put separate 5V power supplies in my radio, one dedicated to the Nextion and one for everything else.?

A WIP:??? ?Works, but next gen will include better wiring distribution for 12v.

The Nextion is pretty simple, cut the yellow wire and have the one from your Raduino go to the RX pin, and then route the one from D9 to the Nextion. Final wire is the input from Vol Hi. That requires splicing in a wire to bring it over to the extra Nano. I have planned to use a shield cable there. Saw somewhere that you only want to connect the shield on one side to avoid ground loops. But my aged brain might be skipping a beat on that one. ;-)

73
Mark
AJ6CU

I am following KD8CEC's build for the simple S meter, having added the Nextion screen, from here:



Having built the simple board, I am stumped by the wiring: I cannot relate the HFSignals wire-up schematic to any of the pin configurations on my Raduino board.

Ian suggests the following wiring:




(The four red numbers correspond to the 4 wires from the S-meter board).

What I can't understand is where those numbers relate to the Raduino board? There are 26 pins on the schematic, but the Raduino board has 18 pins on its connector to the motherboard, and the Nano board has two rows of 15 pins - which are marked quite differently to the pins on the schematic (A7 on the Nano is the 11th from the left, not the first). And is line 3 (above, called VOL_HIGH) connected to the fourth port on the volume connector on the front right edge of the motherboard, marked as Audio1?

I guess that in theory, I could pick up the +5V & And from a suitable point elsewhere, but I'd like to make sure I have correctly identified A7, one of the Keyer inputs.

73
Jonathan
G5LUX

maybe use even thinner walls?? or make the walls from a honeycomb (not solid) wall??

greetz sigi dg9bfc

ps i still think that a small ferrite with fewer turns (to get the same inductance) has better shieding (most of the rf is inside core and not around) but hey ... hamradio is experimental physics .. not?!?

Am 20.08.2022 um 03:43 schrieb Craig Wadsworth:

It's part of the assembly instructions.?

Good luck, Scott

Jonathan,

The issue comes in that the newer (i.e. more recently purchased) screens require the use of the latest Nextion GUI editor. And for what ever reason, the latest version produces code that requires more memory than the older version. So if you have an "older screen", you can use tft's generated by the more efficient older Nextion editor and there are no worries...

However, if you are just getting into this, your screen will be a "newer" model and require the use of the newer Nextion editor...

The first impact that I have seen is that the amount of data that can be transferred via the QR code function has to be reduced to fit the function into the Basic versions.? Just went thru this with the smaller screens <=3.2 and I had to reduce the QR code max text from 80 to 50 in some cases. Does this mean you cannot get a full online configuration backup? I don't know, didn't test it. And of course you can always just use Ubitx Data Manager to create a local configuration file -- a recommended action since it has been a long time since anybody has heard from KD8CEC...

Just my thoughts here in that I prefer to reduce the risk of buying twice. But you are right, older screen, no intention of enhancing the screen, no problem. Newer screen, maybe some limited functionality restriction.

73
Mark
AJ6CU