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Re: 80 M and Shortwave receive to BITX40v3 (Non digital vfo )
Sorry guys. My friend has been on the road so he hasn't been able to plot BPF's. Tomorrow we are getting together for a LTspice tute and plot BPF for 80 to 10. 73 Ken On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 11:13 PM, Ken <chase8043@...> wrote:
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Re: Future Bitx40 Version
Jerry Thanks for the suggestion of headers. Actually I did think of it but I didn't have any on hand at the time. I have removed all BPF components from the board. I made up an off board BPF for 40 and 20. I soldered in 2 4-pin headers in L1 and L3 holes. Then used some wire to run ground up to the headers. I should be done sometime today and will post some pics. 73 Ken VA3ABN On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 10:56 AM, Jerry Gaffke via Groups.Io <jgaffke@...> wrote:
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Re: Why 16x2 LCD instead of 20x4?
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On 21 Jan 2017, at 06:31, John Backo via Groups.Io <iam74@...> wrote:
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Re: Why 16x2 LCD instead of 20x4?
if you want to push into dsp, it is best to directly get to teensy. we chose the 16x2 because it was the most easily, universally available display. i expect a number of people to scracth build this? On 21-Jan-2017 12:32 pm, "Jerry Gaffke via Groups.Io" <jgaffke=[email protected]> wrote: Check out post 17339 in the AT Sprint Yahoo group.? He's saying the Arduino environment is fine for simple things, but if you want more than that, best code from scratch. ? I've never messed with anything Arduino, but sounds about right.? I can imagine many of the libraries aren't tightly coded, and if I had critical timing with a bunch of interrupts going off I'd want complete control.? Could have some level of basic functionality on the nano under the Arduino environement so it's easy to hack.? And a completely separate project with code written from scratch to get more stuff working. |
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Re: Why 16x2 LCD instead of 20x4?
Check out post 17339 in the AT Sprint Yahoo group. ?He's saying the Arduino environment is fine for simple things, but if you want more than that, best code from scratch. ? I've never messed with anything Arduino, but sounds about right. ?I can imagine many of the libraries aren't tightly coded, and if I had critical timing with a bunch of interrupts going off I'd want complete control. ?Could have some level of basic functionality on the nano under the Arduino environement so it's easy to hack. ?And a completely separate project with code written from scratch to get more stuff working.
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Re: Why 16x2 LCD instead of 20x4?
As Jerry and Jack said, this is not exactly a cakewalk.
Yes,it is a trivial matter to drive the display; there is basically one library to handle many different displays. This is true no matter what the display chip, as long as one accounts for the right one. Of course, graphic displays have such things as fonts to help fill up space in the mcu. The problem is having enough room for the other functions. There is enough flash ram to accomodate many functions, but it is easy to overflow the limited amount of sram and give very strange results. One easy way is to call nested subroutines. Another is to have too many successive interrupts. These are not easy to predict. Hence the suggestion for a larger more capable mcu (like the 2560 or the Teensy). Yeah, you gotta learn something more...so what else is new? Etc... Yes, the Nano can handle some more functions. But one never knows until the event when one more is too many. And these are among the hardest things to troubleshoot in all computers. john AD5YE |
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Creating wiring harnesses with DuPont ends
When I was Arduino playing a lot the DuPont jumpers used to hook everything up always drove me nuts.? It seems you never have enough of the colors, lengths, etc. that you want. I finally decided to just make my own.? This video shows the Engineer PA-09 crimper that I ordered.? It takes a while to learn to use it, but once you do, you'll love it! (I'm low vision, so it took me longer, but still not that long) I ordered the male and female ends, along with housings up to 10 pins, from China through eBay, it took a while for everything to arrive but they were cheap and I ordered a lifetime supply. Once you can make the jumpers, and have the multi-pin housing available, your projects get to looking a lot less like a rat's nest and a lot more like an actual organized project! 73, |
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Re: ending raduino upgrades
Weird, I assumed that truncation was a yahoo thing. And weirder still, when I search for "hfsignals" on the groups.io webpage, the message summaries show the entire entire email address without truncation. Anyways, the email address is ? hfsignals at gmail dot com Hopefully that will sneak by the truncation demon. Jerry, KE7ER |
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Re: Why 16x2 LCD instead of 20x4?
I don't see how switching the display from 16x2 to 20x4 isn't trivial.? If using the normal hd44780 interface they are wired the same (and if you're ordering a BITX you should be able to handle the wiring).? Change the lcd.begin(16, 2); to lcd.begin(20, 4); and Bob's your Uncle, |
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Re: ending raduino upgrades
M Garza
On Jan 20, 2017 11:03 PM, "Steve Robertson" <bobs_otr@...> wrote:
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Alternative to using EEPROM for NV storage
I ran across this and thought other Arduino players may find it useful.
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Re: VCO/VFO stability
John and gang,
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This is a DL vendor that I bought from - quite nice price! I bought 680 + 330 to make 1000pf for C91 and 92 At 21-01-2017, you wrote:
Good job, Raj. |
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Re: Why 16x2 LCD instead of 20x4?
On Fri, Jan 20, 2017 at 06:24 pm, Steve Robertson wrote:
Even at twice the cost...how much is that in dollars and cents?? Quite a bit for many of the target customers. ?HFsigs is counting pennies to assemble and ship a functional SSB transceiver at $59. ? Fortunately it's easy to swap out the processor and display to something more capable if that's what you want. ?I'll likely wind up with a 32 bit ARM Cortex M4 Arduino compatible from PJRC, perhaps even with floating point in hw if I ever get through the Lyons DSP book. ?But I'd bet any code intended for wide distribution will have to fit in a nano with a 16x2 display for some time to come. ? Jerry, KE7ER |
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Re: Why 16x2 LCD instead of 20x4?
Jack Purdum
I think you're going to find out that it's not the flash memory (e.g., ~30K) that the real limiting factor. It's the amount of SRAM that's the real bottleneck. SRAM is used to hold all of the variables you use in the program. Also, each time a function is called, data are pushed onto a section of SRAM called the stack. Once inside that called function, any variable within it are also allocated on the stack. If that function itself calls another function, another set of stack variables are pushed on the stack. The bad thing is that, while you're paying attention to the flash memory usage at compile time, there is no compile time statistics that can tell you about runtime SRAM use. Indeed, it usually when you see weird things happening that you run your code using the function that measures SRAM stats as the program runs. That's when you discover you're out of memory, and it will almost always be SRAM, not flash. During one project, I was at 21K of flash use and only 56% of SRAM and it started acting up. Sure enough, SRAM was being overrun. That's why I switched to the Mega 2560 Pro Mini: physically smaller than an Uno, but about 3x the size of the Nano. Still, 256K of flash, 8K of SRAM (not 2K like the Nano) and not too bad on price: $15 quantity 1. I bought 10 for a club build and got them for $10. The change also allowed me to move away from a 16x2 LCD display to a 3.5" TFT display with 480x320, 262000 color display at a cost of about $8 and it has a hardware scroll. I've already posted the display I'm using for the BITX40, which is a 2.4" TFT display. (I recently saw one on eBay for $3.59.) The pixel resolution drops a little (320x240), but it's still very good. Anyway, if you're thinking about mods to the Raduino board, give some thought to a TFT display and a Mega Pro Mini to give you the resources you may need down the road. Jack, W8TEE From: Ken <chase8043@...> To: [email protected] Sent: Friday, January 20, 2017 8:14 PM Subject: Re: [BITX20] Why 16x2 LCD instead of 20x4? i'm going to use a 16x4. maybe add an smeter possibly power meter. 73 Ken va3abn On Jan 20, 2017 6:56 PM, "John Backo via Groups.Io" <iam74=[email protected]> wrote: That's almost true for the serial units. The basic parallel input 20x4 is about twice as expensive as the 16x2. |
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Re: Why 16x2 LCD instead of 20x4?
Even at twice the cost...how much is that in dollars and cents?? Not much, and again, more display real estate is always nice, heck, even if you didn't add anything, you could use larger fonts for easier reading (which interests me - I'm low vision).
If more analog inputs, etc. are needed, they are availabe in I2C modules, if program space is an issue, then perhaps we should stop using a Nano.? A Mega isn't that much more expensive, and offers a lot more.? It is larger physically, but even that can be overcome - they make small board versions, here's one source: http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Small-Meduino-Mega2560-R3-Pro-Mini-ATMEGA16U2-Arduino-Mega2560-Compatible-/152111349696?hash=item236a8affc0 Resistors paired with buttons and an analog input do work, a variation is to use a potentiometer, works well for menus where you want to scroll through (i.e. just twist the dial and scroll through). Membrane key pads are cheap and work well, a 4x4 (giving 16 buttons) can be done with 8 digital pins. I'm not in favor of chopping up the raduino board, but it appears to me that we can use separate boards.? The Raduino appears to consist of a voltage regulator that feeds the Nano, the Si5351 chip and support components, and the display.? The Nano and display are already separate boards.? The Si5351 with it's support components is also available on a separate board from ADA Fruit and on eBay: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-si5351-clock-generator-breakout/overview The voltage regulator doesn't appear to be necessary when using separate boards.? The output from the BITX is 12v, that can be fed to the Nano Vin (pin 30) and it's internal regulator will bring it down to 5v.? 5v from the Nano could feed the display and the Si5351 board.? The Si5351 is actually a 3v item, but it has a regulator to drop from 5 to 3, plus level shifters so it can be used with 5v circuits. K3NG has an interesting rotor controller project using an Arduino...it can communicate with a PC using Yaesu and Easycom protocals, so Arduino libraries for rig control are available.? His method of configuring how the code is compiled by editing a separate file where you choose what options you want is interesting too.? Here's a link to his project: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-si5351-clock-generator-breakout/overview It should be noted that his project uses a Nano too...but he's announced that he's dropping support for the Nano and moving to the Mega. It's been a while since I Arduino played, but I'm looking forward to my unit showing up and playing again! 73, Steve, KA0NEB |
Raj vu2zap