This code generates a .wav file which emulates a fully-populated FT8 band! Usage This .wav file can then be played with rpitx on actual air (well on a dummy load) for receiver testing purposes. rm mixed.wav; sox -m *.wav mixed.wav sox mixed.wav -r 48000 sampleaudio.wav Now play sampleaudio.wav using rpitx. Testing I have tested rpitx on Raspberry Pi Zero 2W TX'ing @ 14.074 MHz. ...
For HF and amateur VHF bands our WiFi VFO works great. But we didn't have a cost-effective UHF signal source until now… Design Thanks to Ismo (OH2FTG), we recently experimented with a HopeRF CMT2119A powered board called HOPERF RF module RFM119W-433S1. Here is the CMT2119A powered board in action producing a CW (OOK) signal at ~433 MHz. The stability is pretty good and a bit surprising considering that the board uses a 20ppm 26 MHz regular quartz crystal - not bad! ...
Instead of punching islands or using commercial pads (islands) or making traditional pads myself, I simply make use of small pieces of single-sided PCBs to create the pads / islands easily for my boards. The Technique This technique has a huge advantage over the punched islands or scored and divided boards techniques as it keeps the bottom ground plane perfectly 100% intact! Also, it is almost a tool-free process to create the pads by breaking or cutting the single-sided PCBs. Single-sided prototyping boards also happen to be very reasonably priced. ...
Shipping hardware internationally is a hard, labor intensive, and overall a frustrating process - especially more so these days. Here is our plan to supply the DDX to customers: Make the hardware files free / low-cost. The users will be able to order fully assembled boards from JLCPCB or other vendors on their own. Required a small licensing fee for the software firmware part. This is how we get to keep the hobby self-sustaining! ...
I recently spotted the Tokmas CI7N170SM TO-247 part on LCSC. It seems like a pretty neat part for building non-QRP HF amplifiers! This could be a better part for our Baby QRO amplifier. Datasheet Excerpts The full datasheet is available here. Comparison In comparison, here is what a professional RF part (MRF300AN) looks like: That 272W maximum power dissipation figure is crazy good but switching characteristics are not that great (fast).
While running https://github.com/fhoedemakers/pico-infonesPlus, I found that my SNES gaming pad was not fully supported. Specifically, the UP/DOWN and LEFT/RIGHT keys were not working. Let's debug this a bit: Plug in the gaming pad on a Linux box and run the following command (hidraw5 will need to be changed as needed): $ lsusb ... Bus 001 Device 063: ID 0810:e501 Personal Communication Systems, Inc. SNES Gamepad $ sudo hexdump -C /dev/hidraw5 ... 00004a50 01 80 80 7f 7f 0f 00 00 01 80 80 7f 00 0f 00 00 |................| 00004a60 01 80 80 7f 00 0f 00 00 01 80 80 7f 00 0f 00 00 |................| * 00004a80 01 80 80 7f 7f 0f 00 00 01 80 80 7f 7f 0f 00 00 |................| This is what I see when pressing the UP key. ...
Here is the FT8 WAV test file. On an AMD64 machine: 1 second using the fast decode settings. We were able to get the MSHV's FT8 engine to work on Android, thanks to the work done by https://github.com/sannysanoff/SDRPlusPlusBrown folks. Around ~4.5 seconds to decode the same file. This is why we can't really have full-blown realtime FT8 decoder(s) on Android just yet! Idea: But we can surely use this full-blown FT8 decoder in our FT8 Decoder app which has no realtime requirements! ...
OCXO's are awesome - this is what I learned while trying to get WSPR working reliably on the 2m band. Hardware Here is all you need for reliable WSPR'ing on the 2m band: A RAW OCXO "can" works fine too! Note: This modified Si5351 board image comes from SimonsDialogs. Essentially, we modify the CLK2 output port to become an input port that accepts the OCXO's output signal. ...
Circuit: DDX-Commercial-7 Antenna: Small jumper cable attached Initial Results 10m: 36 dB on WSJT-X audio meter, on quiet and also with nearby beacon on !!! 12m: 36 dB on audio meter, on quiet and also with nearby beacon on !!! 15m: 46 dB on audio meter on quiet, 65 dB with nearby beacon on - OK 20m: 44 dB on quiet, 65 dB with beacon on - OK 40m: 40 dB on quiet, 60 dB with beacon on - OK ...
Notes to get Vivado 2025.1 running on Ubuntu 25.04 (plucky) Linux distribution. Original reference: QMTech XC7Z020 Notes Setup Install dependencies: sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get --no-install-recommends install \ bc binfmt-support bison build-essential ca-certificates curl \ debootstrap device-tree-compiler dosfstools flex fontconfig git \ libncurses-dev libssl-dev libtinfo6 parted qemu-user-static \ squashfs-tools u-boot-tools x11-utils xvfb zerofree zip Hack deps a bit: sudo ln -s /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtinfo.so.6 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtinfo.so.5 You can now go ahead and run the Vivado installer. ...