A new CD for Christmas!
My wife, Lori, emailed me and said that her work had given them bad printable CD's. They were asked to make them into Christmas ornaments. She asked me if I had any ideas. Really? Me? Oh heck no... well...
If you look at my Facebook page you will find a video of my creation: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=2083814074365
I printed a wreath label to keep it festive. I drilled 4 holes in the CD and installed 4 LED's. On the back is a PIC12F675 programmed to flash several different patterns on the LED's. Also there is a 9V battery taped to the back. Her work loved it! I guess it was left on all week so it was running 24/7. It now needs the battery replaced but should last longer if they shut the switch off... (did I neglect to mention the nifty toggle switch sticking out the front?) That was their favorite part of the CD! Lori has named it her "MORnamant."
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Robots to Be
Just what I need... another facet of electronics. I have been looking at PICS for some time now. But I have taken the plunge and ordered parts to build a robot or two based on the PIC micro. I will be using the PIC16F690. I have downloaded and modified some HITECH C code and am awaiting some parts to arrive. I originally was going to build something similar to the BRAM using CD's. I still plan to. But as I was surfing through the Solarbotics (www.solarbotics.com) website I found their BRUTUSBOT chassis kit which is based on the Tamiya tank chassis. So, one of my robots will be a tracked robot. Too cool. I am planning on getting the basic robot up and running, adding IR and ultrasonic sensors, and installing a wireless camera. The camera will transmission will be decoded on the laptop and the images will be sent over HAM radio via SSTV. Maybe someday I'll delve into ATV as well. But that's getting ahead of things!
Working FM Satellites
Wow, working the FM satellites is a blast! It's been some time since I posted here; busy schedule with family and work. But the Satellite Antenna is finished and works well. The FT60 mounts right on the boom and it looks fairly professional if I say so myself. My first contact was near the end of April. I copied a call on AO-51 and responded. It was N9ML. I thought I was talking MILES away. Turns out I could have talked to him on our local repeater! But it was my first satellite contact and I was thrilled. I've had numerous other Satellite contacts. during this time it appears AO-51 is no longer in service. I use AO-27, and SO-50, as my main satellites. QRZ.COM logbook lists my satellite contacts. I have talked to Montana, and I believe my longest one was Ozark, MO. I do have an audio clip on my ham website: www.qsl.net/kb8m. I'll post some pictures here as well.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Improving My Satellite Communications
Just received my aluminum rod today from McMaster Carr (www.mcmaster.com) and am ready now to do final assembly of this antenna. It is a dual band 2M/70CM handheld that my FT60 will mount directly to. It is looking pretty good. It was shown in a May 2008 QST article. Here is the article link from Gatorradio.org:
http://www.gatorradio.org/Manuals/Dual_band_Yagi_Article_FT60_QST_2008_05.pdf
Anyway, I have it painted and just need to cut and install the elements and radio mount. I'll hopefully try it out in the next week. But it definitely looks promising!
http://www.gatorradio.org/Manuals/Dual_band_Yagi_Article_FT60_QST_2008_05.pdf
Anyway, I have it painted and just need to cut and install the elements and radio mount. I'll hopefully try it out in the next week. But it definitely looks promising!
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Michigan QSO Party, de KB8M
It was a fantastic evening. I was busy all day and didn't get started until about 8pm but what fun. I think I am the only station in St. Joseph County that takes part in this. It's fun being a station everyone wants, and when they hear me the pileups start. I made over 130 contacts in less than 3 hours, including one from Rhode Island. Only one more state for my WAS award!. I am definitely looking forward to next year.
Satellite Contact at Last
Well it happened. After lots of trial and error I made my first satellite contact on 2m FM. I used a 1/4 wave mag-mount antenna and ran 5w with my FT60. I programmed 5 channels so I could follow the satellite and compensate for the doppler, and finally heard the bird. Once I had decent audio I put my call out and someone came back to me. Too cool. I received qsl confirmation and found they were in Koontz Lake. So not a long DX contact, but still a contact. I am working on a new antenna so I can improve my satellite operations. Results will be posted.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Winmor and WL2K... email with NO internet!
Too cool. I just completed several email contacts using RMS Express and my ham radio in our emergency response trailer. What makes this so cool is that I didn't use the internet. I sent the messages as I would with any email program (Thunderbird, Outlook etc.) but instead of the internet I sent it via RF.
I connected my computer to my Yeasu FT100 via an interface called SignaLink USB. This interface has its own sound card and connects from my USB port to the data port on the radio. I can do RTTY, PSK31, PACKET, and now obviously send/receive email.
I first got it to work indoors on my home station using the same interface but with my Windom antenna and my IC751 radio. Then I used the FT100. Both gave excellent results. When I finally got the FT100 working I took all the radio equipment to the trailer and hooked it up last night. I could see a few signals on the monitor but could not connect. Today (Sunday) I put up my 20/40M Inverted "V" antenna, and bang... connected on the first try. Success! I sent several emails. I'd like to try to get a simpler antenna put together for the training in May, but if not, this will work well. I built it for field day 2 years ago and it has served me well.
My goal for the scenario in May is to have our team operate at its best, and #2 is to have radio email work in an emergency situation.
I connected my computer to my Yeasu FT100 via an interface called SignaLink USB. This interface has its own sound card and connects from my USB port to the data port on the radio. I can do RTTY, PSK31, PACKET, and now obviously send/receive email.
I first got it to work indoors on my home station using the same interface but with my Windom antenna and my IC751 radio. Then I used the FT100. Both gave excellent results. When I finally got the FT100 working I took all the radio equipment to the trailer and hooked it up last night. I could see a few signals on the monitor but could not connect. Today (Sunday) I put up my 20/40M Inverted "V" antenna, and bang... connected on the first try. Success! I sent several emails. I'd like to try to get a simpler antenna put together for the training in May, but if not, this will work well. I built it for field day 2 years ago and it has served me well.
My goal for the scenario in May is to have our team operate at its best, and #2 is to have radio email work in an emergency situation.
Friday, February 11, 2011
New Computer in My Hands!
Just got my new computer up and running. Sure flies! I really got lucky here!
My old laptop, an HP D9000, took ill and died. That is, it died from a voltage surge. Ok, ok, it took 120VAC into the USB port. Not good. I was able to get it to start once long enough to copy the files from the hard drive to my USB drive. Then after that, no more hard disc. I could boot with Linux on a jump drive or CD but that was it. Anyway, I use this as my system computer for my ham radio setup. Luckily I have a special insurance policy on my ham radio which also covers my computer. After getting repair estimates and sending all the pertinent information in, HRIA cut me a check to cover it, and here is my new Dell. Naturally it cost less than half what the other one cost but that isn't important. I (and more importantly my wife, Lori) am back on line. And this thing is cool. 17" screen, 4G Ram, 500G HD, running Windows 7. Awesome.
My old laptop, an HP D9000, took ill and died. That is, it died from a voltage surge. Ok, ok, it took 120VAC into the USB port. Not good. I was able to get it to start once long enough to copy the files from the hard drive to my USB drive. Then after that, no more hard disc. I could boot with Linux on a jump drive or CD but that was it. Anyway, I use this as my system computer for my ham radio setup. Luckily I have a special insurance policy on my ham radio which also covers my computer. After getting repair estimates and sending all the pertinent information in, HRIA cut me a check to cover it, and here is my new Dell. Naturally it cost less than half what the other one cost but that isn't important. I (and more importantly my wife, Lori) am back on line. And this thing is cool. 17" screen, 4G Ram, 500G HD, running Windows 7. Awesome.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
I've had an Epiphany!
I am working through John Morton's book, "The PIC Microcontroller, Your Personal Introductory Course" and so far all has been going well. A quick history is that I have always been into electronics, have a BS in Computer Science, work for an electronics company in Tech Support and their display program as well.
I did some Assembly Language programming on a VAX 11-750 in college, but stayed mostly with 'C' since then. I came across several projects that required programming a PIC micro controller with Assembly. While the code was already written and compiled, I wanted to learn it on my own. Taking code and modifying it for a project was fun. I built a rocket that will carry a transmitter and send telemetry data to me in Morse Code (CW to my Ham friends) on ham radio frequencies. I can send it slow enough that I can copy it myself, or speed it up so my computer will have to decode it. But I digress.
I was surfing through some projects on YouTube and saw an LED cube project. The source code was there as well as the hex code to program the microcontroller. I got to playing with it and wanted to learn more. Wow, basically 35 instructions and I'd have the Assembly language code down for the PIC!
Going through this book I have learned a lot. It is slick, and I even impress myself with how much I remember from college about binary, hex, etc. Even at 45 I am picking it up quickly. My end goal is to build a little robot that will follow a black line or be autonomous and avoid obstacles with sonar. I want to program this with Assembly. I have seen a lot of 'C' code but I find this a challenge. Some of the inputs will be from a sonar unit. This will be an analog signal. The inputs I have been dealing with are digital. So on to the section of the book regarding A/D conversion.
I have read this numerous times and have been extremely lost. I looked at example code from other sources but to no avail. This morning it hit me as I looked over it one more time... HEX code AND Binary.... HMMM!!!
Here is what I feel has been my greatest epiphany this week:
The example in the book talks about taking advantage of the full 10-bit precision of the A/D converter which is spread over ADRESH and ADRESL. The example was input from a temperature sensor. 36deg C was 0.36V, which when divided by 5V gives 0.072. This gets multiplied by 1024 to get the 10-bit value for the cold threshold and is written d'74'. This is written in binary as 0001001010000000. Now in writing this, bits 0:1 of the A/D result are in ADRESL bits 6:7, and 2:9 of the A/D result are in ADRESH. I understand this. But then he went on to say, "Thus, the upper byte is (0x12) and the lower byte is (0x80)."
This was the first time this notation was used in the book, and actually even doing a Google search didn't explain a lot until I got into some information regarding hexadecimal. BINGO.
The binary number 0001001010000000 can be written as 0001 0010 1000 0000. SO... the upper byte (ADRESH) would be (0001 which is 1 in hex)(0010 which is 2 in hex) giving 0x12. The same for the lower byte 0x80... 1000 is 8 and 0000 is 0 giving 0x80.
EUREKA! A/D programming is slowly becoming a reality! Results will be used to control speed/direction of the wheel motors on my little robot. Sweet!
I love the feeling when a plan comes together. Bear with me as I move along thru this book on my journey through microcontroller assembly language! I'll definitely post the robot pics here.
I did some Assembly Language programming on a VAX 11-750 in college, but stayed mostly with 'C' since then. I came across several projects that required programming a PIC micro controller with Assembly. While the code was already written and compiled, I wanted to learn it on my own. Taking code and modifying it for a project was fun. I built a rocket that will carry a transmitter and send telemetry data to me in Morse Code (CW to my Ham friends) on ham radio frequencies. I can send it slow enough that I can copy it myself, or speed it up so my computer will have to decode it. But I digress.
I was surfing through some projects on YouTube and saw an LED cube project. The source code was there as well as the hex code to program the microcontroller. I got to playing with it and wanted to learn more. Wow, basically 35 instructions and I'd have the Assembly language code down for the PIC!
Going through this book I have learned a lot. It is slick, and I even impress myself with how much I remember from college about binary, hex, etc. Even at 45 I am picking it up quickly. My end goal is to build a little robot that will follow a black line or be autonomous and avoid obstacles with sonar. I want to program this with Assembly. I have seen a lot of 'C' code but I find this a challenge. Some of the inputs will be from a sonar unit. This will be an analog signal. The inputs I have been dealing with are digital. So on to the section of the book regarding A/D conversion.
I have read this numerous times and have been extremely lost. I looked at example code from other sources but to no avail. This morning it hit me as I looked over it one more time... HEX code AND Binary.... HMMM!!!
Here is what I feel has been my greatest epiphany this week:
The example in the book talks about taking advantage of the full 10-bit precision of the A/D converter which is spread over ADRESH and ADRESL. The example was input from a temperature sensor. 36deg C was 0.36V, which when divided by 5V gives 0.072. This gets multiplied by 1024 to get the 10-bit value for the cold threshold and is written d'74'. This is written in binary as 0001001010000000. Now in writing this, bits 0:1 of the A/D result are in ADRESL bits 6:7, and 2:9 of the A/D result are in ADRESH. I understand this. But then he went on to say, "Thus, the upper byte is (0x12) and the lower byte is (0x80)."
This was the first time this notation was used in the book, and actually even doing a Google search didn't explain a lot until I got into some information regarding hexadecimal. BINGO.
The binary number 0001001010000000 can be written as 0001 0010 1000 0000. SO... the upper byte (ADRESH) would be (0001 which is 1 in hex)(0010 which is 2 in hex) giving 0x12. The same for the lower byte 0x80... 1000 is 8 and 0000 is 0 giving 0x80.
EUREKA! A/D programming is slowly becoming a reality! Results will be used to control speed/direction of the wheel motors on my little robot. Sweet!
I love the feeling when a plan comes together. Bear with me as I move along thru this book on my journey through microcontroller assembly language! I'll definitely post the robot pics here.
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