uBITx.net site developer, Mike ZL1AXG has been playing around with Ian Lee KD8CEC software releases and giving Ian feedback.
Mike gave the following review on the BITX20 group of v0.30:
This worked faultlessly for me, and I loved being able to adjust the step rate (I have it set on 10Hz now).
The band stacking registers and band switching is fantastic. I had intended modding the software myself to get band stacking and easy ham band switching, but I no longer need to bother! I may still add front panel buttons for band up/band down functions, but the menu band changing function is fairly handy already. It would be good to have a SPLIT function (in addition to A/B) and perhaps a limited number of programmable memories (10?).
I like the way that you can select either ham bands or general coverage RX. You go into the band change menu, and then hold the switch down for longer to toggle between modes.
I have some minor suggestions for improvement. The main thought would be to change the display of the RIT function to show the frequency offset rather than the absolute frequency (i.e. show -0.415 KHz or +0.001 kHz etc). This reflects how most people think of incremental tuning. Once you are done setting the RIT and exit the menu it would show the absolute frequency as normal on the display while the RIT still turned on. The display should, however, continue to display “RIT”/ There is a whole other line above the frequency display to show function settings on RX. Similarly you could show the keyer mode on the first line (e.g. STRAIGHT, IAMBICA, IAMBICB).
I love the way in which you have corrected the frequency display below 1MHz and opened up the RX to 1kHz to 100MHz. A shorter press allows you to set the step function. A long press on the dial switch gives you dial lock. This works well. I like the way the step speed increases when you turn the dial faster, but the dial no longer goes crazy, throwing you half a Megahertz away on outside the ham band. Well done!
The function to monitor ADC levels could be very useful for those having issues with CW keying. My uBITx has always worked fine with both manual and paddle keys. This suggests that the resistor tolerances are probably a bit narrow. My resistor values may be closer tolerance than what others have received. A check on the monitor function shows this to be the case.
I didn’t find documentation on exactly how the ADC monitoring function works. I believe it shows a continuous stream of readings on the port (0 to 1023) with 6 readings at a time. However, I don’t think you can exit from this function without turning off the rig? This allows you to press dit, dah or the manual key to get a reading for the ADC value being received by the arduino. This then allows the setting ranges to be adjusted.
If you are still fence sitting about a software upgrade you shouldn’t be! Upgrading the stock software is reasonably straight forward. Let me tell you that if you have a stock uBITx, you should definitely be downloading this sketch and increasing functionality and ease of use. It is a fine effort.
Mike notes that v0.33 released today adds several new features including some of his suggestions above.
The final release (v1.0) will be a MUST for everybody as it comes with essential bug fixes and many new features, while working with the stock unmodified uBITx.
