Re: Trouble ahead- mixed signals?
Hi Vic,
Thanks for your
reply. I was pretty sure that was your point of reference but
it is not safe to assume. My only interest in WSJT modes is to
evaluate propagation and I don't transmit with it (but I
might). I have had some contest and QSO party contacts that
are more interesting. I am glad to have those stations on the
air and when I want them I always know right where to look.
Just like WWV. I have used the other, load handling, digital,
teleprinting modes and enjoyed them the way you have pointed
out. Paying attention to "on topic", my uBitX is one radio I
use to copy those signals these days. I will try LinPSK on the
olde Pi just to see how it does.
Once upon a
time my computer was big and heavy and so was the display even
though the image was small and often hard to read. Now my
computers are tiny and easily ride in a shirt pocket. They can
reasonably operate from a small battery pack. My displays are
on 30 inch HD television screens now :) I have one a little
smaller that can also operate from batteries:) And another
that mounts on a Pi case! The weight and bulk of the vacuum
tube radios could induce injuries and required a lot of power
that was wasted in heat energy. Now we can carry some of them
in cargo pockets and operate digi modes walking through the
state and national forests! As my grandfather used to say -
"the only thing good about the good olde days is they are
gone!".
My 'legacy Pi'
will be used in cli mode in the kitchen to present recipes and
manage grocery lists. Just not both at once!
73,
Bill? KU8H
bark less - wag more
On 3/23/21 6:32 AM, Vic WA4THR via
groups.io wrote:
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
Yes, Bill, all my comments about the "little Pi" were referring to
the Pi-Zero, actually the first and only Pi I have ever had. I
gather it runs at about the same or slightly faster than the
original Pi, so I think the LinPSK program would work there. That
program has no issues on the Pi-zero. As I recall,the Pi-4 is
something like 10 or 20 times faster and it is commonly used for
decoding FT(x) stuff, but WSJT-X is still a bit marginal on the
Pi-zero. I have slowly got it within 4 seconds of finishing
decodes before the next cycle (I think it was like 20 seconds
behind when I started), and that is with a 10% boost in the clock
speed. Still, it may be good enough for my occasional use of that
mode. I have made a number of contacts that way.
I like PSK-31 much more as you actually learn something from each
contact and have the opportunity to have a conversation. Fldigi,
which many have running on Pi-3 and 4 versions, just was too much
for the Pi-zero and it would just lock up. I have toyed with the
thought of trying it again with some of the speed improvements I
made to run WSJT-X, but LinPSK works very well, so I will probably
stick with it. If you look at ADD/REMOVE programs in the Pi menu,
v 1.3.5 is what comes up, I think, but the author has upgraded to
1.3.7 to fix some of the logging issues I reported when I started
using it. There are a few other minor issues right now and we are
still in email conversations about them, but I have had many nice
QSOs running with just a Kindle Fire tablet connected via WiFi to
the Pi-zero attached to the uBitX, which works even out in the
boondocks as the Pi-zero can automatically become a WiFi hotspot
if it doesn't log on to a system.
=Vic=
|
Re: uBITx v5 with Nextion 3.5"
Evan,
Thank you for replying. Unfortunately, the Nextion is a Basic model, so I'd need the corresponding HMI file.
I'll have to keep looking.
73
Richard L-P
|
Re: Trouble ahead- mixed signals?
Yes, Bill, all my comments about the "little Pi" were referring to the Pi-Zero, actually the first and only Pi I have ever had. I gather it runs at about the same or slightly faster than the original Pi, so I think the LinPSK program would work there. That program has no issues on the Pi-zero. As I recall,the Pi-4 is something like 10 or 20 times faster and it is commonly used for decoding FT(x) stuff, but WSJT-X is still a bit marginal on the Pi-zero. I have slowly got it within 4 seconds of finishing decodes before the next cycle (I think it was like 20 seconds behind when I started), and that is with a 10% boost in the clock speed. Still, it may be good enough for my occasional use of that mode. I have made a number of contacts that way.
I like PSK-31 much more as you actually learn something from each contact and have the opportunity to have a conversation. Fldigi, which many have running on Pi-3 and 4 versions, just was too much for the Pi-zero and it would just lock up. I have toyed with the thought of trying it again with some of the speed improvements I made to run WSJT-X, but LinPSK works very well, so I will probably stick with it. If you look at ADD/REMOVE programs in the Pi menu, v 1.3.5 is what comes up, I think, but the author has upgraded to 1.3.7 to fix some of the logging issues I reported when I started using it. There are a few other minor issues right now and we are still in email conversations about them, but I have had many nice QSOs running with just a Kindle Fire tablet connected via WiFi to the Pi-zero attached to the uBitX, which works even out in the boondocks as the Pi-zero can automatically become a WiFi hotspot if it doesn't log on to a system.
=Vic=
|
Re: Strange problem with the Nextion 2.8 LCD
#nextion
#v4
On Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 04:25 PM, Jim Sheldon wrote:
The metal case is partially shorting to the display¡¯s outer metal contact strip and causing it to be intermittent. ?Had same problem and had to insulate all 4 edges of the display to make it work
?
W0EB
thanks, i try now and this is the problem :-) Many many thank 73 Andrea IW0HK
|
Time to switch to a Teensy 4.0 or Raspberry Pi Pico, maybe?
How about a socket for a second microcontroller with DSP ability?
G7VFY
|
On Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 10:26 PM, Ashhar Farhan wrote:
These are more of hubris projects now.?
Yes, that is true. But it is so hard to resist thinking about these kind of things. Can't completely shake that ethos of the days when video hacks like you mentioned were a big thing. ?For a real project it is faster, less expensive, more maintainable and more reliable to use the now much less expensive 32 bit processors. But for the extreme sports aspect of programming it may still be fun doing.? Tom, wb6b
|
Tom,? the limit is really the? 2K static ram. I tried writing an FIR audio filter. There simply wasn't enough space for that. For one that is good enough, that is. A trivial implementation like that of usdx could still be done.? These are more of hubris projects now.? With more capability available from other devices like the Pico or the STM32 devices, using Arduino is moot. I am impressed by how easy the Arduino movement made it for people like us to take a stab at it, but its days are over. I am still in awe of the fact that Z80 had built-in dynamic ram refresh that could be hacked to make it generate video! It is no longer a viable technology either. - f?
On Tue, Mar 23, 2021 at 8:15 AM Tom, wb6b < wb6b@...> wrote: All this talk about FORTH makes me wonder.
I wonder if SD card reads, with the Nano for instance, could be optimized well enough that running FORTH byte code from a SD card would be fast enough for many projects.?
Just add a SD card connector and suddenly there would be vast amounts of space for code. Or even one of those 99 cent multi megabyte serial flash chips.
Many of us already have a SD card in some of our projects by virtual of having a TFT display, with a tag along SD card connector included. ?
Then that starts thinking about the more general case of languages that compile to "P" code. How efficient are P byte code interpreter loops compared to a FORTH byte code interpreter loop. Is one more magically efficient than the other.?
Because we all likely have ATMega328 and close relatives AVR processors in our parts boxes, it is fun to think of ways to extend their usefulness at low cost.?
Here is a random C to FORTH complier I found on Github.
Tom, wb6b
|
All this talk about FORTH makes me wonder.
I wonder if SD card reads, with the Nano for instance, could be optimized well enough that running FORTH byte code from a SD card would be fast enough for many projects.?
Just add a SD card connector and suddenly there would be vast amounts of space for code. Or even one of those 99 cent multi megabyte serial flash chips.
Many of us already have a SD card in some of our projects by virtual of having a TFT display, with a tag along SD card connector included. ?
Then that starts thinking about the more general case of languages that compile to "P" code. How efficient are P byte code interpreter loops compared to a FORTH byte code interpreter loop. Is one more magically efficient than the other.?
Because we all likely have ATMega328 and close relatives AVR processors in our parts boxes, it is fun to think of ways to extend their usefulness at low cost.?
Here is a random C to FORTH complier I found on Github.
Tom, wb6b
|
One of the reasons FORTH was popular back in the day was that many new home computers were being introduced and they had no software commonality. FORTH was often the first language available on a new machine.
My first shareware programs were in FORTH and I wrote a FORTH programming column for "Ami Project", a Commodore Amiga magazine.
--
? 73
??? Bob? KD8CGH
|
Re: Strange problem with the Nextion 2.8 LCD
#nextion
#v4
The metal case is partially shorting to the display¡¯s outer metal contact strip and causing it to be intermittent. ?Had same problem and had to insulate all 4 edges of the display to make it work
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
On Mar 22, 2021, at 6:02 PM, and_bov <a.borgnino@...> wrote:
? Today I mounted my Ubitx in a new metal box and when I turned the rtx back on for a test I noticed a peculiar thing. Mine is an Ubitx ver. 4 with 2.8 Nextion LCD display. Before I used a plastic box and the display worked perfectly in all its functions (the display firmware is ver. 1.100).
Now I have a strange problem, the display works but some "touch" controls on the interface do not work. The functions no longer work: TX STOP - VFO A BAND UP - BAND DOWN LOCK SPK. The MODE function works perfectly (LSB, USB. CWL etc.).
?
Everything else works, but not these buttons at the top of the display. If I touch them they "turn on" but do not change the bands for example. I tried to put the firmware back into the display with but nothing changes.
What can it be?
73 and thanks, Andrea IW0HK
Roma Italy
|
Re: Strange problem with the Nextion 2.8 LCD
#nextion
#v4
Roma,
Did you leave enough of the Nextion wires to try the display not mounted in the enclosure?? There may be something in the mounting that is distorting the resistive touch screen.
Just a thought to try.
73
Evan
AC9TU
|
Today I mounted my Ubitx in a new metal box and when I turned the rtx back on for a test I noticed a peculiar thing. Mine is an Ubitx ver. 4 with 2.8 Nextion LCD display. Before I used a plastic box and the display worked perfectly in all its functions (the display firmware is ver. 1.100).
Now I have a strange problem, the display works but some "touch" controls on the interface do not work. The functions no longer work: TX STOP - VFO A BAND UP - BAND DOWN LOCK SPK. The MODE function works perfectly (LSB, USB. CWL etc.).
?
Everything else works, but not these buttons at the top of the display. If I touch them they "turn on" but do not change the bands for example. I tried to put the firmware back into the display with but nothing changes.
What can it be?
73 and thanks, Andrea IW0HK
Roma Italy
|
In the sprit of everything getting ever tinier, here is my MicroPython micro server farm.? An ESP8266 (a two dollar ESP board), an TTGO ESP32 board and an ESP32-CAM board. The ESP32-CAM board has an extra 4MB of ram. Lets me load more programs and libraries before running out of space on the virtual drive. The little boards are all connect to WiFi so I can remotely develop on them (den to kitchen) using a GUI named Thonny. The RPi-Pico, when connected, is via the USB port. Also use Thonny with the RPi-Pico. My last home server farm was eight foot wide by 6 foot tall. Tom, wb6b -----------  -----------?
|
Re: uBITx v5 with Nextion 3.5"
I should have stated that the prior file is for the Enhanced display.?
|
Re: uBITx v5 with Nextion 3.5"
Richard,
Try the attached tft file.? I do not have the hmi nor can I find where it came from, so cannot give them credit.
73
Evan
AC9TU
|
uBITx v5 with Nextion 3.5"
Hello all
I am looking for a 3.5" HMI file that:
a) is formatted to fit the entire screen correcty
b) supports DSP1, Spectrum, and Standalone Signal Analyzer, and CW Decode using a second I2C Arduino
The few 3.5" HMI files I've found either do not fit the entire screen, or have some subordinate screen pages missing, or still have subordinate pages from the original 2.4/2.8" screen size.
The radio is using CEC v1.200 firmware.
If anyone could point me to the right place I'd be grateful.
Many thanks,
Richard L-P
|
Arv:
Been there, done that. The Air Force bought my company's statistics package (Microstat) as a bundle with Zenith Data Systems computers. They said they wanted "an interactive training package" for the software. I couldn't find anything that didn't have a really punitive license agreement, so I wrote a Pilot interpreter. It was a fun exercise but I wouldn't want to do it again. Of course, the interpreter was written in C!
Jack, W8TEE
On Monday, March 22, 2021, 3:59:57 PM EDT, Arv Evans <arvid.evans@...> wrote:
Tom
I think Forth was the computer language that "almost made it" but was
just too nerdy for the time.? A non-ham friend in Texas tried to write a
front end for it (looked a lot like the Bourn Shell from UNIX) but by the
time he got it finished the computing world had moved on to other
interpreted languages.?
Arv _._
On Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 2:10 AM Tom, wb6b < wb6b@...> wrote: On Sun, Mar 21, 2021 at 09:42 PM, Jerry Gaffke wrote:
Read "Threaded Interpretive Languages" soon after it came out in 1981.
Wow, it is so much fun to see the future in retrospect. I found a readable copy on Archive.org and glossed over the introduction.?
I recognized the cover artwork from Byte Magazine. Had not seen the book. But reading the intro was the same things that were absolutely futuristic when I first read similar articles. And now that future is so far in the past, but still evokes the inner feelings of the unknown and marvelous things that will be possible in the future.
I may read some more, as looks like something I may have wanted to read back then. I fiddled in Forth a little. But could not or did not know how to save anything that I did in the interactive mode. So did not do much with it.?
Someone at the computer club I belonged to had used forth to create a controller that would calculate the volume of liquid at any level of an irregular shaped tank. He used it in a customer controller he designed for Cal Fire for dropping known amounts of fire retardant from whatever the large fire fighter planes were at the time.?
Also, the Sun workstations programmed their disk boot loader in a version of Forth.
Tom, wb6b
--
Jack, W8TEE
|
Newbies may not get it!
_._
On Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 3:10 AM Tom, wb6b < wb6b@...> wrote: On Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 01:12 AM, Ashhar Farhan wrote:
I still have the FORTH book on my shelf!
This is bringing back nice memories of days gone by. I'm sure there must be a Linux FORTH interpreter out there. Preferably one that is not so committed to being a write only development system, and play with it some. Maybe to really relive the day, try to do things that produce ASCII plots. Or turtle graphics.
FORTH did fit the state of the art of microprocessors from that era. The Nano is a supercomputer compared to what we worked with back then.?
Tom, wb6b
|
Poke around here:?? Still lots of people active in the world of Forth, some not that old. Likely far more people than in this little Bitx enclave. And looking at that webpage, I now vaguely recall that the meetings I attended were likely that of the Silicon Valley Forth Interest Group, not the now famous Homebrew Computer Club. Vaguely recalled, because there was seldom anything said about Forth at any meeting I attended, except for the time Charles Moore came by to give a talk. I had a rather snarky remembrance of an encounter with Charles Moore in a previous post, He's an interesting guy, still around, has done far more in his career than I. Here's a recollection from somebody that knew him, a comment in that Hackaday post: ##################
WS?says:? ??
I knew Chuck, he¡¯s a great guy. I went to school with his son Eric, brother of Forth. I still have one of his custom boards running the Novix NC4000.
One day, I went to visit Eric. His dad was developing some software. He was typing on a home-made keyboard that was made from 7 limit switches attached to his leg with Velcro. He was typing 7-bit ASCII using his fingers and left-right part of his palm. Not only was his typing very fast on that thing, he has also developed a custom predictive dictionary system that made him that much faster! Chuck was the most intelligent person I¡¯ve ever met. I miss you Eric!
################## A chording keyboard like that might be a great addition for digital modes on a portable uBitx ? ??https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard Jerry, KE7ER
On Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 12:28 PM, Dj Merrill wrote:
On 3/22/21 3:17 PM, Arv Evans wrote:
There are probably a few of us still around that once were adept at Forth.
You guys are bringing back memories.?
|
Me too!? I dust it off once in a while and reverently put it back in its place.
_._
On Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 2:13 AM Ashhar Farhan < farhanbox@...> wrote: I still have the FORTH book on my shelf!
On Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 11:58 AM Tom, wb6b < wb6b@...> wrote: On Sun, Mar 21, 2021 at 09:42 PM, Jerry Gaffke wrote:
I just recently (about a month ago) read the PostScript Bluebook
Cool, enjoyed looking at your hand crafted PostScript code.?
At one time I was one of the few laser printer controller designers around. I was relocated by a company to Silicon Valley to design a controller for them. Was nice to be in SV and have all the moving paid for. Stayed there about 10 years. Now I don't think I'd care to live there, much prefer the pine trees here.?
We were working with Adobe to incorporate one of their proof of concept designs into a real product. So we dealt with PostScript a lot. When our design prototype was working, we had to run extensive test suites and stress over every little pixel, and get the results QAed by Adobe.
However, it could be difficult to get things done with them. They had evolved to the place that we would have big meetings with them. A conference room full of managers. Other than myself, maybe one engineer. Every question that could have been answered in three minutes by talking to the right engineer would always be answered with we can't disturb our engineers and would disappear into the void. Eventually many questions got plausible answers.?
My favorite thing was I was going to design a custom ASIC to handle the logic rather than their discreet design. There was an obsolete eeprom used in their design and I was going to integrate that into my chip. They said Oh No, so and so (one of the founders) designed that part of the firmware and the timing is critical with that chip and none of the other engineers can touch it. I tried to explain that I could make the timing any way needed (mostly slow) so if they are using some software subroutine that can't be changed by anyone, I can still make it work. It ended up after much subsequent high level manager to manager communication, my design incorporate the obsolete eeprom.?
But, I remember experimenting a little with hand writing PostScript just to see what it could do. And reading about PostScript somehow evolved from a Navy battleship training docking simulator, or some such thing.?
Also my first exposure to Neural Nets. The company I worked for hired a new Phd engineer/student who was trying to create and train a Neural Net to do font hinting. (a way to jiggle some of the pixels around so they look smooth when tiny fonts don't really have enough pixels to not look jagged.)
This was way before any of the modern training algorithms were developed, that has made the AI comeback possible. Too bad, the early attempt at this was beyond the technology of the time. I rely liked the guy. He did all this hard core AI stuff, but he would drop by my office and I'd help him with making some of the more bread and butter logic designs more practical. Enjoyed learning a tiny little about the AI thing he was doing.?
Tom, wb6b
|
Vic WA4THR
Bob Benedict, KD8CGH
Jim Sheldon