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The New Gold Standard in QRSS Grabber Aggregators
In the course of testing "Occam's Beacon" with the new Real Time Clock, I just stumbled upon Scott Harden's excellent "QRSS Plus" aggregator...Scott has sorted the wheat from the chaff by detecting...
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Beacon Clocks & Chocolate Teapots
Well - the "Real-Time" clock isn't nearly so accurate as one might hope...It has been gaining 8 seconds per 24 hours - exactly the same order of error as I was experiencing with the Arduino timing...
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The Well-Tempered Beacon
After the disappointments of so-called "Real-Time" Clocks, I was pleased when the postman delivered a GPS module today...I had ordered the module from Hans, g0upl, who offers them at a fantastic price...
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Google Chrome debases...
There is, one supposes, somebody at Google who thinks they have their finger on the pulse. They might even believe their facile messages are witty and useful.I do not agree. "Aw, Snap!" means less than...
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Rising to the challenge
Bill Meara, n2cqr, has been hugely supportive of my recent fun-and-games with digital systems - but he's also been goading me..."I have encouraged Paul to take a break from the microcontrollers and...
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BITX Developments
Things have been moving on quite nicely with the little SSB rig over the past few days (when the pressures of work allow me to steal a few moments for leisure projects!).First, I've switched away from...
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Simplifying the VFO
The last few days have seen an annoying failure of the (clone) Arduino NANO that I was using to control the "Two DDS" RF generator system for the new SSB rig.I ordered a new NANO and received it...
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CW on the BITX
Having a microcontroller sit there controlling the DDS modules that make all the RF signals required for my BITX-inspired SSB rig tempts me to do more than just SSB - so today I tried some CW with...
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R(F)duino
I mentioned in an earlier post it was my intention that - "eventually - I'll be moving to just an AVR microcontroller on a board with the DDS modules".Well - it is accomplished...You see above the new...
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Hats off to China
As western science and ambition rests on its laurels / falls behind / looks on in in envy, China today successfully landed its "Chang'e 3" probe on the moon. The image above is from the downward-facing...
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Switching Band-Specific Elements
This post describes some initial experiments to add extra GPIO pins to the Arduino using a Microchip GPIO Expander.My band-specific plug-in modules (as used on my multi-band BITX and Occam's Dagger...
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Low- and Band-Pass Filters
I have just completed the new I2C controlled low-pass and band-pass filter boards for my multi-band rig...Despite my experiments with the MCP23017 last week, I'm using the Mircochip MCP23008 I/O...
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Farhan's New Transceiver
I'm excited to see that Farhan has used digital RF generation and (Arduino) micro-control in his new rig, the "Minima"... I particularly like the under-stated name; I'm sure little Minima is going to...
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Plumbing in the Filters
Having made and tested my new I2C-controlled filters, it was time to plumb them into the rig and go multi-band...I made up some little patch leads from RG58, so I could plug the filters into the...
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"Open" QRP Transceiver
As somebody with more than a passing interest in simple CW rigs operating under the supervision of a micro-controller, I was delighted to have opportunity to investigate the "Open QRP...
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Arduino DSP
Having spent much of 2013 keeping it simple with the Arduino, I thought it would be nice to start 2014 by waking up the little grey cells and doing something a little less facile...I treated myself to...
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Brian's Beacon
I was delighted to receive news of Brian, g3zoh's version of Occam's Beacon yesterday, including these great photos (reproduced with Brian's kind permission).Brian has built his system into an...
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Arduino SDR
Here's the latest news from the bench - I have my Arduino DUE running as an SDR receiver...You will have seen a couple of weeks ago that I had the Arduino DUE running (internally designed) programmable...
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Arduino SDR II
Last week's fun and games with an Arduino Software-Defined Receiver were just initial feasibility studies - stretching exercises before the competition began. Here's the real deal...Sure, it looks the...
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Arduino Due and the DDS
The SDR receiver is now running completely on the Arduino DUE...Previously, I had only the DSP functions on the Due, whilst the VFO and user interface were managed on an Arduino Mega. Now, all these...
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