A few days ago I shared an e-mail from John N8RVE on his re-build of the SW-40. John used a "Muppet" board, Muppet being a combination of Manhattan and Ugly techniques. But there is nothing ugly about it really. I joked in the title of the blog post that the beauty of this technique is almost enough to get a homebrewer to abandon the Manhattan technique. Now, I was born on Manhattan island, and I went to Manhattan College, and I have been using the Manhattan technique for many years, so there is a lot of homebrew inertia at work here. But that SW-40 looked good. John mentioned that Chuck Adams K7QO has a series of YouTube videos on how to make Muppet boards. This morning as I waited for the bands to open up, I decided to take a look.
Wow, they are really great. I couldn't stop watching them. I kind of "binge watched" the whole series. Chuck Adams is a really great teacher. There are lots of great homebrew tips in those videos, and not just about the boards. I NEED one of those new G3UUR crystal testers, the version that also gives you ESR! I WANT a laminator, an infrared thermometer, some Krylon clear, and pool chemicals! And a harmonica reed tuner!
I've been sort of planning my next rig. It will be a version of the BITX. But having recently built two BITXs using the Manhattan technique, I kind of feel the need to do something different. I am planning to use some different circuitry (termination insensitive amplifiers) and MAYBE an Si5351. Perhaps plug-in filters. But now I want to also move forward in terms of building technique. I want to Muppet!
Very nice. A beautiful and educational project from Pete and Ben. I have to start putting "tune switches" in my rigs and ammeters in the bias circuits of my finals.
Not even the U.S. Postal Service's Anti-Crystal Steam Roller can stop an intrepid homebrewer. OM N9IZ got his Mighty Mite working and produced a really nice video and blog post on the project. You can just feel the enthusiasm: On the blog he writes: "Everything was assembled on a bread board for trial. I must admit to being overjoyed when I saw the visual waveform on the PowerSDR panafall display of my Flex-5000A main shack radio. So much so, that I ran through the house calling for my YL, KC9TAH. She was in the shower and thought I’d cut off a finger or something while in the mad scientist lair. Much to her dismay, it was only a nasty CW signal emanating from the Flex speaker. She did humor me by going out to see the marvelous project before asking me what I was going to fix for lunch." FB OM! Bill I thought you might like to hear that another MMM has been brought into the fold. You might remember that the crystal you sent me was steamrolled by the USPS. Believe it or not, it works! Not sure the frequency is exactly spot-on, but who cares...it works! I enjoyed it very much and made a youtube video of the testing process. I also took pictures and posted it all to my webpage. Most of my other projects have been more QRO in nature so I'm treading in uncharted territory. We'll see how far that goes, but right now I'm loving it. I have my issue of QRP Quarterly and plan to follow along in constructing the LBS project. All for now from Hoosierland. Hope you enjoy the blog post on my webpage. 73 OM.
This is so great. I saw pictures of Dale's receiver a few years ago, but somehow missed the video. I am the proud owner of a W4OP-built Barebones Superhet. And, of course, of a Drake 2B (mine has tubes!)
Oh man, we've all been there in one form or another. The struggle, the frustration, then, THE TRIUMPH! I love when his mother drops the plate. Thanks to John KC0BMF
It has been a while since I visited the Amateur Logic TV site. When I looked in last week I found George and Tommy building a spark transmitter. Pretty cool! The sparks begin to fly at about about the 23 minute point in this video. Very interesting. Way to go guys! SPARK FOREVER! (You will see that emblazoned on the QSL cards of REAL old timers. They were railing against those newfangled Continuous Waves. There is a lesson in there for me... )
Holy cow! Look at that rig. The whole HF spectrum. AM, CW, SSB, Digital Modes, Waterfall display, GPS. It may even have a Vector Network Analyzer! (Deep breaths Pete Juliano, deep breaths!) Michael KE7HIA is trying to get this project going via a Kickstarter campaign. He needs to get to $60,000 He currently has about $47,000 pledged. There are only 42 hours to go: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1703258614/psdr-pocket-hf-sdr-transceiver-with-vna-and-gps Wow, this rig would have been great for my Double A DR DX-pedition!
Features:
Coverage from 0 to 35MHz
Waterfall display that lets you see radio signals
Receives AM, USB (Upper Side Band), LSB (Lower Side Band), and Morse code (CW)
Modulates USB and LSB signals
Variable bandpass filter
Hardware:
Powerful ARM processor
Color LCD display
Dual DDS frequency Synthesizers
Quadrature Sampling Detector & Exciter
Digitally controllable instrumentation amplifiers
Morse Code key (the "Giblet" on the bottom right corner of the enclosure)
Magnitude & Phase measurement chip (for VNA and antenna analysis functions) with Impedance Bridge
Dual SMA connectors, smartphone style earphone/microphone connector, and USB port
GPS
Built in Microphone and Speaker
Internal Lithium Polymer battery with charger and high efficiency switching regulator
MicroSD slot
Pads for grabbing raw I/Q signals, both in and out.
Things it will be able to do with your help:
I designed the hardware to be capable of the following, but I can't write all the software myself. Please note that I can't guarantee when or if these functions will be added, or that they will work as desired.
Work as a full Vector Network Analyzer (VNA)
Work as a spectrum analyzer
Cover more modes, including digital modes and image modes
Work as an emergency location beacon
Antenna Analyzer
Frequency Synthesizer
Media player
E Reader / Picture viewer
Have improved audio
GPS Mapping navigation device
High end ARM development board
USB control of any features, including the possibility to operate the PSDR remotely. The USB port supports USB On-the-Go, making it possible to connect keyboards or other devices. Firmware updates will also be possible over USB.
Excellent Lucien! Thanks for sending this. I know what you mean about a project that doesn't work. It is rewarding and educational to figure out where you went wrong. I knew a guy who would ask, at a hamfest, "Does this rig work?" If the the seller admitted that it didn't, he'd reply, "Good, I pay extra for that!" He liked the challenge of fixing it. Of course, there are limits to this, and sometimes these challenges will make you wish you had taken up stamp collecting.
Hi Bill and Pete,
For me too, it's a happy day - I got the Mighty Mite working! Thank you so much for the inspiration to get into homebrewing...
I'm just licensed for a year now and this was my very first project (except for 2 basic kits that I build) and it really was a great learning experience. The best part: Since it didn't work out "plug'n play", I had to debug the thing and actually start thinking - so I put 2 caps in parallel instead of the wrong one I had used (I found them in a little box some guys at a hamfest gave me for free - never thought I would ever use something from it...). And I had to use the voltmeter to look for a short circuit. Basic stuff, but for me, this was a breakthrough!
Here are some more things I learned during this first project (don't laugh):
Where the heck do I plug stuff that's supposed to go to "ground" in? Now I know: usually to the negative pole!
When 2 lines cross in a schematic, that doesn't mean there's a connection!
How do these ready-made breadboards actually work? Had to try out...
It's important to think about the actual layout beforehand!
When debugging, trial and error doesn't help.
There's yet another crazy foreign unit called "gauge"! (I used smaller magnet wire than recommended, it still seems to work...)
9V-blocks get VERY hot when shorted for a minute or so!
Attached is an image of my ugly prototype, now I want to give it a better "home"... And here is a little video, demonstrating that it works, inspired by IZ1KSW:
These little frequency counters from China have a lot of potential. And they add a dash of digital color to an otherwise bland analog hamshack. I got mine on e-bay. My BITX17 has now been "accessorized" with 1) A rotatable Moxon antenna (big improvment!) 2) A 120 watt Communications Concepts Linear amplifier (another big improvement) and 3) This digital frequency readout. What next?
I am fairly certain that Pete Juliano will take pride in N2HTT's success on this project, and will attempt to attribute it, in part, to the Italian ancestry that they share. The Tarantella background music will definitely encourage that kind of thinking. In presenting this nice video, we continue with our "rigs not yet in a box" theme. There is something especially nice about the sound of receivers that are not yet boxed up. Mike has some great information on the construction of this receiver (and other projects) on his blog: http://n2htt.net/
I love this video. Colin finished his BITX a week or so ago and has been waiting for an opportunity to test it. Over the weekend he braved the winter of Northern England and, with his son, set up his new rig out in his snow-covered garden. Appropriately for a first contact with scratch-built rig, the circuitry was unencumbered by any kind of case or box. That's the way it should be done! Well done Colin! You are well and truly a member of the International Brotherhood of Electronic Wizards, and the diagnosis of "The Knack" has been confirmed (a severe case, it appears).
Hi Pete and Bill,
It's been a lovely fine day here in West Yorkshire, so I took a table out into the garden and set up my BITX circuit on it. I set up my SOTA dipole on a 9m fishing pole.
I heard a strong German station calling CQ, so I gave him a call and hoped for the best!
How amazing to contact someone in another country using a rig and mic you've made yourself! Do I qualify as a REAL radio ham now? Do I have a confirmed case of the knack? :-)
Although I may appear underwhelmed in the video, (besides the air punches!), I did really get a kick out of the QSO.
73 and huge thanks to both of you for the encouragement and support.
To: "soldersmoke@yahoo.com" Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2015 9:22 AM Subject: Cheap, open source Arduino SDR project
Bill
First, thanks for Soldersmoke and all you do for us QRP hackers around the world. I'm a big fan!
I've detected you are getting sucked into the world of microcontrollers of late. I know you are not really that excited about SDR but this is a radio that combines Arduino, the currently popular SI5351 and a Softrock to make a very functional SDR. I started this project last year which uses the fabulous Teensy 3.1 and companion audio shield. I recently packaged it all up and it looks like a QRP radio now. Still doesn't transmit but as I like to say thats "just a small matter of software".
There are several posts about it on my blog. The most recent:
Subject: Re: Cheap, open source Arduino SDR project
Wow Rich that is really beautiful. Amazing! I am also sending this to Pete Juliano, but I was at first hesitant about this because I feared that your combination of Si5351 and TFT display might be TOO exciting for him. Deep breaths Pete...
73 and Thanks, Bill
From: jessystems@verizon.net To: soldersmoke@yahoo.com; Subject: Re: Cheap, open source Arduino SDR project Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 06:03:40 -0800
Hi Rich & Bill,
Wow –really exciting project Rich! Congratulations and Bravo!
This is so exciting, for all hams, as this just shows the power of the available low cost technology that is now on the market. Your project is really tempting as I have a V6.2 15M softrock sitting in a box (somewhere). I was somewhat put off with the Power SDR as the opposite sideband rejection is not too good –it is clear you have cracked that nut.
Thanks for sharing Rich and yes Bill I am taking very deep breaths.
73’s
Pete N6QW
Jan 23 at 9:27 AM
Pete Juliano
me
Thanks guys! When I saw the Teensy 3.1 with the companion audio codec board the first thing that came to mind was a portable SDR. Since its Arduino compatible I am able to leverage the SI5351 library, encoder library etc so its mostly just putting software blocks together. The digital filter design is a bit tricky but Loftur VE2LJX did quite a bit of work on that and now it works really well.
I hope to add CW decoding and PSK31 at some point. I've used less than half the flash on the Teensy so lots of room for new features. I'm hoping if the word gets out I won't have to do this all myself!
Pete - too bad you missed the Black Friday sale - Teensy 3.1 and the audio shield for $18. Deep breaths...
I did this for Pete. And I did it to start out the new year with something different. And because I needed the crystal for my beloved BITX and didn't want to buy more crystals. After successfully broadening the filter in my Barebones Barbados Superhet (originally built by Dale Parfiit W4OP) I decided to replace the VXO with an outboard Arduino/DDS device. Nothing new in that (I was playing with this back in October), but in what I think is a symbolically significant twist, I pulled out the tuning cap for the VXO and, in the hole left by the tuning control, replaced the knob with a BNC connector. That connector now carries DDS signals into the receiver. The crystal was at around 23.125 MHz -- that's why the LCD display is showing 23 MHz. It works great. I was listening to the DX station in Iran this morning. Here is a video of the October 2014 experiments:
After watching all Pete's work with the smaller Arduinos, that Uno R3 board seems HUGE. That's what I should stick with. Great idea using those robust terminal strips. Thanks Pete.
Back in March 2013 we ran a blog post linking to a video of a beautiful superhet receiver built by Lee Snook, W1DN (that's his shop). Then the video disappeared. Today Peter Parker, VK3YE, alerted us to the reappearance of the video. Some Googling led me to Lee's YouTube channel and many other videos of some truly amazing homebrew projects. Here is his YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/swradios/featured And here are all his videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/swradios/videos
Congrats to Pete for his amazingly fast development of a 40 meter superhet receiver using a single Adafruit Si5351 paired with an Arduino Nano for ALL of the frequency generation. No more VFOs, no more crystals. It sounds great! Amazing stuff.
Who needs LM386 ICs? Pete goes discrete! Love the MePads. And I knew Pete was going to test it with his finger! He's just taking stray hum from the power lines and coupling it to the input through that Exacto knife. Seems to me like these boards is getting close to actually receiving signals.
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