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?you're welcome!

cheers

gordon

Thanks Gordon, that was by far what I was looking for, a real "Why" you do it the way you do.? I'll follow your advice and look for a VOX solution and be cautious about stray RF impacting the USB interface.? Great advice!
Thanks!
Josh Walton KK4LGZ

And you **don't** have to worry about that nasty 12mhz stuff on the USB wires being inside your radio.?

Hardly seems killer.
I'd shut down the USB interface, use the UART instead.
The chips come with boot code in ROM that speaks to the Arduino IDE via the UART,
if you use that?you don't need to worry about loading the special USB bootloader.?
And you have to worry about that nasty 12mhz stuff on the USB wires being inside your radio.?
This USB to UART dongle is configurable for 3.3v or 5v IO:
? ? https://www.banggood.com/CJMCU-CP2102-USB-To-TTLSerial-Module-UART-STC-Downloader-p-970993.html?cur_warehouse=CN

Alternately, on the blue pill I got, the +5v USB pin goes to a feedthru, then over the the 5v pin on the header.
Cut the trace immediately after the feedthru, then add your diode from feedthru to the header 5v pin.

Jerry

While laying out my substitute Raduino PCB, I think I might have discovered a fatal flaw in trying to use the "Blue Pill" as a substitute for the Arduino Nano. It seems that the Blue Pill board has no reverse isolation diode or any other reverse current isolation between the USB power source and the external 5V power source. There is a direct connection between the USB connector +5V and the 3.3V regulator on the Pill board. This means you can't power the board from an external 5V source while the USB connector is in use. In fact, trying to do so will probably fry either the PC's USB or the external 5V supply.

This is a major bummer. It seems that virtually every cheap ARM-based alternative board I've evaluated has some sort of flaw that makes it difficult or impossible to use as a Nano footprint-compatible substitute.

Anyone have any insights/ideas besides using a $20+ Teensy or a larger and more expensive solution? I might have to revert to the TI Nucleo; that was about $11, but it had a Cortex M4 core with FPU? & 256K Flash as? bonuses.

The naming contest for the upcoming new Raduino replacement board from W0EB/W2CTX/N5IB is over and the winner is Vince Vielhaber, K8ZW who submitted "BITeensio" (pronounced Bit-EEN-cio) as the winning entry.? Vince has already been notified that he has won the contest.

There were a number of really decent and catchy entries, but in the end, by unanimous decision of all the judges, Vince's entry of BITeensio was declared the winner.? Vince will be receiving, as his prize a complete board kit for the BITeensio card as soon as the production boards arrive from the factory.

Thanks to all that participated.

Jim Sheldon, W0EB, for the Triumvirate Skonk Worx of W0EB/W2CTX/N5IB

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You're forgetting one point - shipping costs.? Some charge very little, others charge way more than the device is worth.? It's still worth shopping around, or at least combining orders into one shipment.

Ron W7HD

When the customer gets a Nano in their hot little hands for $2.50,
the manufacturer might be getting half that.?
Spending a buck or so on a processor is a very big deal.?
Especially with 100,000 hobbyists scouring ebay for a listing that's $0.05 less.

You wouldn't think they would bother with cheating on IRF510's either, $0.50 on Mouser.
? ??

Most Nano clones seem to work amazingly well.
But I can easily believe there's some that aren't quite so amazing.

Jerry, KE7ER

On Mon, May 21, 2018 at 09:27 am, ajparent1/KB1GMX wrote:

Based on volume prices I cannot see why they would use scrapings.
The 328 in the 32pin smt is a dirt cheap part, even digikey get only 1.245$ at 100pcs and
it gets under a buck at higher volumes (5000 piece reel).? Digikey is not the cheapest around.

_._,_._,_

---

-- 
Ron W7HD - NAQCC#7587 OMISS#9898 KX3#6966 LinuxUser#415320
Editor OVARC newsletter

When the customer gets a Nano in their hot little hands for $2.50,
the manufacturer might be getting half that.?
Spending a buck or so on a processor is a very big deal.?
Especially with 100,000 hobbyists scouring ebay for a listing that's $0.05 less.

You wouldn't think they would bother with cheating on IRF510's either, $0.50 on Mouser.
? ??

Most Nano clones seem to work amazingly well.
But I can easily believe there's some that aren't quite so amazing.

Jerry, KE7ER

Should work fine.
That's all the FTDI/CH340 chip on the Nano clones does.
All USB communications go through the UART pins D0 and D1 via the CH340.

Jack,

I've used Smart Prototyping for all my boards the last 2 years. The quality is very good. I also used them for 2 small prototyping runs (only 5 and 10 boards). Those board were hand assembled. I thought the prices were reasonable. I let them supply the parts and the prices they quoted were straight off of Mouser's website. They will also let you supply parts if you want to go that way.

Ray
AB7HE

I put a 5 amp rectifier between the power jack and the switch and then a wire from the switch to a pair of fuses.? It is reverse polarity protection without ever blowing fuses.
--
Lee - N9LO? "I Void Warranties"

?

Note that without a RF gain control you have to jockey the volume control to keep the signal out of the red when a strong signal blasts.

Whoops. I just posted info on the ubitx Raspberry pi setup. Working great after a long day of troubleshooting and cussing at Linux. ?Nice setup.

Going to figure out the no computer required WSPR mode outlined in the CEC firmware. Bo W4GHV?

On Mon, May 21, 2018 at 02:02 am, Tom, wb6b wrote:

Hi,

I've managed to get the CEC uBITX Memory Manager running and the uBITX_CEC firmware uploaded to my uBITX from my Mac.

uBITX Manager:

I have Microsoft Visual Studio Community (a free version) already install on my Mac, so Mono was already installed. When I first tried to run?uBITX_Manager it crashed with the warning "The Carbon driver has not been ported to 64bits, and very few parts of Windows.Forms will work properly, or at all".

After a little Googling I found the solution was to run mono in the 32 bit mode with the following command:
mono --arch=32 uBITX_Manager.exe

The uBITX Manager UI runs painfully slow on the Mac. Scrolling is next to impossible. But, with patients it is useful. The buttons will be covered over often, but just hover the mouse over them to bring them back.

The manager crashed when connecting to the USB serial chip unless the "Linux" mode check box was checked.

Also, I already had the USB serial driver installed because I'd purchased a temperature logger from this company "Elitech" and the driver was included with their software. However, the Mac "Homebrew" installer now has an updated signed driver for the CH340 chip. I found this on Github:??

uBITX CEC Firmware Upload:

I decided the best way to upload the firmware was through the Arduino sketch IDE. I downloaded the firmware source code and compiled it. The only issue I had with comping the code was I named the base directory with the version number of the code as part of the name. The source code wants to be in a directory named ubitx_20. I installed this directory under the "~/Documents/Arduino/" directory where all my other sketches are located. I have a fair number of libraries already installed, so it is possible you may need to add a library here or there if the CEC uBITX firmware needs any other libraries.

Running the Firmware:

The firmware seems to be running just fine. I used the uBITX Manager to copy the memory values from my Radiuno and save them to a file. I'm particularly interested in using the CAT interface to control my uBITX from a Raspberry Pi.

This software and the fact that it exposes all the memory settings, may have already started to point to some of the mysteries involving my radio. I have noticed my receiver is about 100hz low on sideband signals. That is no big deal. However, it looks like my transmitter frequency is about 1khz low on CW. I can't quite wrap my head around the standard factory setup calibration method and if it could result in an unwanted difference in the transmit and receive frequency calibrations (or fix it).?

I wanted to try the IF shift to get a handle of where my radio may be operating in the 12Mhz crystal filter bandpass. Interestingly, tuning the IF shift up a kHz makes the received SSB signals much clearer. So, maybe my uBITX is out of calibration.?

There truly are a lot of numbers and such to digest in the uBITX Manager, but I'll read the posts (and the synthesizer chip's app notes) on how the calculations are done and then I'll know for sure when my radio is calibrated. At least now, rather than not quite knowing what the assumptions are in the factory calibration, I can directly experiment with the values to understand them and see what works.?

Tom, wb6b

Google Steve Ellington ?or DX60 on YouTube. He made a nice one for that rig. W4GHV?

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In addition to that your finals are not protected either.?

Once I get into the firmware then I make what I want.? I'm seriously considering
an interface without the rotary encoder.? Hows this... Up and down button
tht increments/decrements at the current setting for step size.? the operation is
shot push one step, push and hold increment at fixed rate like keyboards do.
I also want a non-menu system (save maybe for cal) so more buttons for things like
band, Rit, VFO select, Upper/lower and so on.

I may drop in Ian's version to try.? Right now I want to test the power chain.


Allison

Based on volume prices I cannot see why they would use scrapings.
The 328 in the 32pin smt is a dirt cheap part, even digikey get only 1.245$ at 100pcs and
it gets under a buck at higher volumes (5000 piece reel).? Digikey is not the cheapest around.

The actual part is assembled elsewhere so boards are likely assembled elsewhere.
Its not like there is engineering involved as its already defines and the bootloader
is out there too.

I picked up a while back via amazon 10 pro-minis for about 2.35 each!?
If I have to I can substitute the pro-mini with a bunch of wires to put the right mini pins
at the Raduinos nano's locations for them.? I don't need or want USB cat and both
boards use the exact same chip.? I have a proto Raduino using a pro-mini,
Adafruit Si5351 board and a cheap backlit 2x16 LCD.? Words exactly the same
save for I use a FTDI RS232TTL-3V3 to program it instead of a usb cord and set?
IDE for the demilove rather than nano.

Allison