Tag: W8TEE

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JackAl is here!

Jack W8TEE and Al AC8GY have  released details of the JackAl board following FDIM (preceding Dayton Hamvention).

Friday night is a sort of Show-and-Tell at FDIM and they used that opportunity to show their JackAl board in action. The photo above shows a little more about what it is and does.

At the show, Al hooked up a noise generator to the µBITX to show how the filters work. (There are 4 preset filters for CW and 4 for SSB.) In addition, you can customise one CW and SSB filter to the bandwidth you desire. You might be able to see that the skirts are pretty steep for the filters on the scope in the background. The setting of the CW custom skirts are set differently, in that you pick a centre frequency (e.g., 700Hz in the shot below), press the encoder, and then you see this:

In this case, turning the encoder CCW increases the bandspread (i.e., the 440 red number above, although it looks orange in the photo) by simultaneously moving the skirts (480Hz and 920Hz) further apart. If you turn the encoder CW, you narrow the bandspread. Most CW users will probably center the bandpass on their favorite sidetone frequency, which centers the bandpass on that frequency.

The demo used a 5″ display, although a 7″ display is also available. The third knob on the front is for a second encoder that we use for everything from setting the CW keyer speed to adjusting the filter skirts. You can see some of the plots on the panel at the rear of the picture above for some of the board’s features (e.g., filter responses, compression, etc.) Those will be included in the documentation when the (downloadable) manual is finished.

The JackAl board has the following features:

  • 5″ or 7” touch screen 800×480 TFT color display
  • Dual VFO’s
  • RIT
  • S meter
  • RTC
  • CW keyer, 5 to 50wpm (we could go up to 100wpm, but…really?)
  • Up to 50 CW preset messages, selectable at runtime…perfect for contest messages
  • Touch screen function and control selection (e.g., band changes, RIT, mode, VFO, VFO increment, LSB/USB, etc.)
  • Automatic LSB/USB selection based on frequency (overrideable)
  • One touch frequency increment changes (1Hz to 1MHz in multiples of 10…the white underscore in the frequency window)
  • Dual encoders (frequency, features)
  • EEPROM storage of user preferences (one-click reset to “factory” defaults)
  • Uses Teensy 3.6 processor (1Mb flash @180MHz) and companion audio board
  • Support for 3 external CW push button switches (NO) for sending stored CW messages (e.g., contesting)
  • Hardware AGC using IF take-off
  • Audio AGC with adjustable threshold
  • Mic compressor with adjustable threshold
  • 8 band audio equalizer
  • Receive audio filter: 48dB/octave (8 pole equivalent DSP filters)
  • 4 CW presets (150, 300, 400, 600, [or none] Hz 3dB bandwidth) + 1 user-defined knee frequencies (at runtime!) filter
  • 4 SSB presets (1500, 1800, 2200, 3000, [or none] Hz 3dB bandwidth) + 1 user-defined knee frequencies (at runtime!) filter’
  • Variable Notch filter, encoder adjustable, use specified Q
  • 7 watt power amplifier

The board will be distributed with all (surface mounted) parts in place. The user must supply the Teensy 3.6 ($30), its supporting audio board ($15), and the 5″ ($34) or 7″ ($44) touch screen displaying (using the RA8875 controller chip, BuyDisplay.com).

We expect the JackAl board to sell for $50.

We may need to adjust this price as we have only received “ballpark” cost estimates for the board since we only have the Gerber files for the Beta board.

Currently, we are using less than 20% of the available flash memory (out of 1Mb) and less than 15% of the SRAM (256K), so there is plenty of memory resources available for adding “stuff”. The board also brings out a number of I/O pins to help your experimentation. With the exception of removing one SMD resistor on the µBITX board and soldering two wires to those pads, all interconnections are via existing connectors.

Our best guess is that after finishing the modified Gerber files, production, Beta testing, and writing support manuals, it will be probably two months before we begin distribution. We will announce its availability here as soon as we can. BTW, if anyone knows a high-quality PCB manufacturer who also does pick-and-place at reasonable prices, we are getting quotes and would like to know about them.

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Finding a compiled Hex file for the arduino

Jack W8TEE has provided directions on how find a compiled hex file:

1. Go to your Preferences settings (File –> Preferences) and check “Set verbose output during” and check “compilation”
2. Compile the program. Do not upload as that erases all temporary files, including the hex file. In other words, just click on the
check mark icon that appears below the File menu option.
3. Scroll down the long list of output your compile generated until you see: “Linking everything together…” followed by a series of
lines with path and file names. The hex file for you program will be one of them. Just use that path name to find the hex file.

While you’re there, use a text editor to open the *.lst file. It shows a blending of C and assembler generated by the compiler. It’s an interesting way to find if one way of writing a piece of code is “better” (i.e., faster execution, or perhaps using less memory) than an alternative way.

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W8TEE JackAL Board at FDIM

Jack W8TEE provides a bit more insight into the JackAL board that uses the Teensy 3.6 to give lots of processing grunt.

Jack suggests that he and Al were going to put an SWR meter on the JackAl board, but have backed away from it for this iteration. The main reason was because of the board size. The nano-acres it would take on the board would raise the PCB cost above the 100x100mm size to do it right for the possible power levels that might be involved. That doesn’t mean you can’t add one…

The good news: Right now, there are about a dozen “empty” pins available on the board for experimenting.  They are currently using less that 15% of the 1MB of flash memory and less than 10% of the 256K of SRAM.   That includes code space for some features that we’ve coded for (e.g., a RTC) but have not implemented yet (e.g, adding a button battery to power the Teeny’s RTC in sleep mode).

The Teensy is a 3.3V device, so we have an onboard regulators for 5V and 3.3V. Al and Jack think this will up the “fun level” for hackers considerably…at least that’s our intention.

The bad news: They got caught in some kind of Chinese holiday and other “delays” to get the PCB. Al ordered the board since he did all the work on the EE design. It seems our Beta PCB order got pushed to the back of the line.

When Jack wrote to them and pointed out that he was disappointed with their service, especially after ordering more than 1000 boards from them last year, the order suddenly went from “In line” to “shipped” in under 24 hours. They received the board this week and discovered errors on the board (2 from the design team, 1 from the manufacturer of the board).  The Beta board will have some “hairs” on it.

Jack and Al will be demoing JackAl at FDIM, but not all of the features will be implemented. The order for the new board will be sent this week.  We’ll immediately send it to our Beta testers and then make it available via an announcement on the BITX20 list.

Al and Jack look forward to seeing uBITx constructors at FDIM!

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Jack W8TEE has let the cat out of the bag

In an earlier news item on ubitx.net, we speculated about projects under development by various teams.   We speculated that Jack W8TEE was up to something that involved a touch screen display and a processor upgrade.  Well the cat is now out of the bag.  The photo below was post by Jack on the BITX20 list.  This is the display panel of the JackAl board that the team will release shortly.

Al (AC8GY) and Jack picked the Teensy 3.6 because of its horsepower, good FFT library, and audio processing board. Al’s doing an info piece on JackAl which should answer most questions about it in an effort not to chew up the BITX20 group’s bandwidth.

There was no “target date” originally for announcement of the project. However, when Jack was asked to speak at FDIM, the project team thought it would be “kinda cool to show it off” at the Homebrew Show-and-tell on Friday night (8-10PM), so the target became real.

Al and Jack are starting to look like slugs who haven’t seen daylight in about six months.  JackAl should be a fun board for a lot of people because its heart is the Teensy 3.6 which has lots of resources associated with it. Currently, we are using less than 10% of both flash and SRAM.

Jack says, “I hope to see a bunch of you at FDIM …”

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Guide to Arduino Coding

The best book around for learning how to program your Raduino was written by one of the BITX20 regular contributors Jack Purdum W8TEE.   It is entitled “Beginning C for Arduino”  and can be found on Amazon.

Jack says, “Make sure you get the 2nd edition…it’s a better book and has a chapter on C++ so you can “understand” most library code.”
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Arduino IDE Naming Issue Fix

Yvon NU6I  says: “What bugs me with the Arduino is the lack of proper naming convention. Whatever software I download from the web or github, once it is loaded in the IDE, be it Arduino or UCIDE it always shows as uBitx_20. Looking in the output window doesn’t show the project/file path. Easy to be confused.”

Ron Pfeiffer W2CTX replied with the solution: “In the Arduino IDE, just select  Sketch –> Show Sketch Folder“.  This assumes you gave the folder a sensible name …

Jack, W8TEE says “You can also set the default using File –> Preferences from the menu bar. I usually just create a directory for each project, placed in an appropriate subdirectory.”

One more annoyance solved!

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