Here's some video impressions of the Wyong field day:
The numbers were clearly up this year, probably a combination of good weather, well organised parking and the success of last year.
I bought a mysterious 250W HF linear amplifier for $25, enjoyed the usual displays from the Home Brew group, Historical Radio Society and the various vendors.
Thanks to the organisers for another fine day out.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
New printer HP LaserJet P1102w works with OSX & iOS
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For $80, at Officeworks, I purchased an HP Laserjet P1102w and after some messing about it's working really well.
First, there is a firmware update that you must install via USB. Second, the wireless setup, which you need to do via a web page configuration while connected on USB is a little non-obvious - particularly the bit where you click a double arrow button move your wireless network over to the left from the scan list.
An HP employee has put a video on Youtube demonstrating this.
Once on Wifi there is a blue wireless light that should be steady.
Now the printer works great on Lion and finds it's own driver. On Leopard I had to install the driver. Best of all I can print from iOS.
As with many printers these days, a toner cartridge costs more than the printer itself.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Softrock Ensemble RXTX with DSP Radio on MacOS X
I've enjoyed the Ensemble RXTX kit build but I'm having a devil of a time with audio under Windows XP. There's not a lot of ham radio software for MacOS but there is an SDR program called "DSP Radio" from Sebastian Mrozek, who has been very helpful in getting me past some problems I ran into.
The instructions with the software are a little brief and so I wanted to capture my working configuration here for future reference.
I'm using a MacBook Air with an Edirol USB audio device for sending and receiving I/Q signals from the Ensemble RXTX. USB control is via TODO which links to DSP Radio.
Plug in the external audio device. Then run the Apple "Audio MIDI Setup" utility (in the utilities folder). Create a new Aggregate Device and add the external USB device and your built-in audio (for your headphones and microphone).
Make sure to set all the devices to the same sample rate.
Set the external USB audio device as the clock source in the popup.
Turn on the Drift Correction checkboxes (called Resample under 10.6) for the built-in microphone and built-in output.
Open the Audio devices window in DSP Radio.
Select the Aggregate Device as both Input and Output.
Open the Configuration window in DSP Radio. (If there is an existing audio configuration there, just leave it and make a new one, then go back later and delete it). Add a new audio configuration.
First make a receive (Rx) configuration. Unfortunately the name of the devices within the aggregate are simply numbered: Input 0, input 1, input 2, input 3; so you need to play around to figure out which is which. I did this by choosing inputs and whistling until I saw my trace on the waterfall - that meant I'd found the microphone.
In my case I/Q from the radio was Input 0 and Input 1 but it may come up differently for you. Play with the Output popups until you get audio through your speaker. For me it was Output 2 and Output 3. Don't worry that the heading says "Output I and Q", that's for transmit. In the receive context it's just audio out to your speaker.
Note that the audio level was very low for me and I had to increase output gain to hear radio signals.
Here's a screen shot with everything working. The second audio configuration line is for transmit.
Transmit configuration is similar. Make a new configuration. Select Tx. Choose the inputs from the microphone channels in your aggregate device. Choose the Output I & Q for the external USB outputs to the radio.
Frequency & TX control via USB
Andrew Nilsson has contributed SoftRock-USB-Controller-v1.2.zip which talks to the Ensemble RXTX and also links to DSP Radio so that changing the frequency in DSP radio updates the Ensemble.
The transmit button in DSP Radio also sets transmit in the radio. Great stuff.
First QSO using PowerSDR under Windows 7
Most of my problems have been sound related under Windows XP so I switched to a laptop running Windows 7 and had much more success. Here's my first contact with VK2HLG - thanks Dave for taking the call.
Sorry about the low receive audio on this one, I'll try to get a better recording next time.
The instructions with the software are a little brief and so I wanted to capture my working configuration here for future reference.
I'm using a MacBook Air with an Edirol USB audio device for sending and receiving I/Q signals from the Ensemble RXTX. USB control is via TODO which links to DSP Radio.
Plug in the external audio device. Then run the Apple "Audio MIDI Setup" utility (in the utilities folder). Create a new Aggregate Device and add the external USB device and your built-in audio (for your headphones and microphone).
Make sure to set all the devices to the same sample rate.
Set the external USB audio device as the clock source in the popup.
Turn on the Drift Correction checkboxes (called Resample under 10.6) for the built-in microphone and built-in output.
Open the Audio devices window in DSP Radio.
Select the Aggregate Device as both Input and Output.
Open the Configuration window in DSP Radio. (If there is an existing audio configuration there, just leave it and make a new one, then go back later and delete it). Add a new audio configuration.
First make a receive (Rx) configuration. Unfortunately the name of the devices within the aggregate are simply numbered: Input 0, input 1, input 2, input 3; so you need to play around to figure out which is which. I did this by choosing inputs and whistling until I saw my trace on the waterfall - that meant I'd found the microphone.
In my case I/Q from the radio was Input 0 and Input 1 but it may come up differently for you. Play with the Output popups until you get audio through your speaker. For me it was Output 2 and Output 3. Don't worry that the heading says "Output I and Q", that's for transmit. In the receive context it's just audio out to your speaker.
Note that the audio level was very low for me and I had to increase output gain to hear radio signals.
Here's a screen shot with everything working. The second audio configuration line is for transmit.
Transmit configuration is similar. Make a new configuration. Select Tx. Choose the inputs from the microphone channels in your aggregate device. Choose the Output I & Q for the external USB outputs to the radio.
Frequency & TX control via USB
Andrew Nilsson has contributed SoftRock-USB-Controller-v1.2.zip which talks to the Ensemble RXTX and also links to DSP Radio so that changing the frequency in DSP radio updates the Ensemble.
The transmit button in DSP Radio also sets transmit in the radio. Great stuff.
First QSO using PowerSDR under Windows 7
Most of my problems have been sound related under Windows XP so I switched to a laptop running Windows 7 and had much more success. Here's my first contact with VK2HLG - thanks Dave for taking the call.
Sorry about the low receive audio on this one, I'll try to get a better recording next time.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Finished and boxed Ensemble RXTX SDR
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I'm pleased to report that the build of the Ensemble RXTX kit is complete and I've hacked it into a box.
While there is a purpose built box available, I found something off the shelf that is the perfect width although deeper than really required.
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Maybe I could fit rechargeable batteries in there?
I built to cover 20, 30 and 40m and reception is working really well. There is lots of software around but my favourite at the moment is PowerSDR IQ. Note that you need to set the audio jumpers to straight through for this software as it has no reverse I/Q setting.
So far I haven't got transmitting going, partially due to the mystery, to me, of how to control it over USB. As you can see I'm fitting a hardware transmit switch for cases where the software doesn't support TX control over USB.
If I inject a tone into the audio input socket and enable transmit in the test utility I can see that it puts out just under 1W, but for some reason the Transmit button in Rocky 3.7 is dim for me:
Update: Duh, OK, figured this out. Rocky only transmits in CW mode.
I would like to thanks WB5RVZ for the fantastic build notes. These really helped me through the process and covered great detail where it is needed.
A few of the transformers were pretty tight by the time I put the bifilar and secondary windings in them but otherwise all went pretty smoothly. I didn't solder any surface mount devices in backwards on this occasion!
My kit was short 1 10K resister - no big deal (or most likely I've put one in the wrong place...). As the construction notes say: Even Leonardo DaVinci would have used an ohmmeter on these had he had one! Those reds and browns are really close.
Useful links
- Giant page of stuff about Softrock, SDR and Ss570 (too much really)
- Source and download of the AVR USB and Si570 control software, "usbavrsi570"
- Build notes by WB5RVZ
- Software that supports the board:
- Winrad
- HDSDR (nee WinradHD)
- Rocky
- PowerSDR-sr40
- PSDR_IQ
- USB AVR Si570 controller
- Tips on connecting sound to SDRs
- DSP Radio, by DL2SDR, software for OS X
- Andrew Nilsson, VK6JBL's controller software for OS X
I see that KC7IGT has had a QSO, he has a video here:
So I should be able to get this going!
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Microsoft Office Mac 2011 too buggy on Lion
She runs Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 on Lion. We have the latest updates of both but her day to day experience is very poor.
The documents she works on are large, hundreds of pages, with track changes enabled and showing lots of history.
Every day, every few hours, Word hangs in some way. Sometimes it shows a black window or a blank dialog box. Mostly we can't quit the program nicely - we must force quit to get out of it.
Word does recover the file without losing too much but it can be distressing for her when deadlines are approaching.
Microsoft do acknowledge quite a few "known issues" but no crashes in Word (only Excel).
This morning, just before heading out the door, we were unable to copy a PowerPoint presentation to a USB key. I know from past experience that Office holds files open even though the window is closed for some reason (no idea if this is still the case but it used to be). We tried to quit all the Office apps, they did appear to exit but when we tried a restart it was prevented by Word.
This software has been around for a long time. People rely on it. I'm embarrassed on behalf of the industry that a user can have such a bad experience every day. LibreOffice is looking very tempting again.
Bad shareholder communications from Westfield
A few Westfield shares means that I get notifications such as the one shown here that just came in.
I noticed that it took rather a long time for my email client to download the email and the "hero" image of "Westfield Sydney City - Feb 12" rendered progressively.
It turns out that the image they embedded in the email, from an email & SMS marketing service called Vision6, is a 6MB image which measures 3495 x 2713 pixels!
It's a lovely image but really, this is abuse of my inbox. Please don't do that.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Ensemble RXTX Software Defined Radio transceiver
On the bench at the moment is the Ensemble RXTX SDR. I've built a Softrock receiver in the past but never tried transmitting so this should be fun. I'm building it to cover 20m, 30m and 40m which seems a pretty useful range.
It's a bit hard to order a Softrock, the site often says "check back soon". I happened to be reading the reddit amateur radio site when someone noticed stock so I got in.
There's still a bit to go but I'm now up to the point where I can try the receiver.
(That photo is from before I was ready to try the receiver). The hairy thing for me with these kits is the soldering of tiny surface mount components but I find that I'm getting better (although probably using too much solder) and also the components seem very robust.
Not too bad eh? (Believe me, it's really tiny).
This model has an Atmel processor which does USB so that the computer can control the frequency and transmit line.
My build has not been all smooth sailing. On receive it was super deaf - turned out I'd wound the wrong T5 and it was attenuating the receiver so much that it made almost no difference when the antenna was connected such that I thought something was unconnected.
There's not many stations on but here's a video of a little reception that sounds pretty good, until my WSPR station transmits and blots everything!
Here's a bit more reception:
The Kodak Zi8 does a pretty good job on these clips I think.
It's a bit hard to order a Softrock, the site often says "check back soon". I happened to be reading the reddit amateur radio site when someone noticed stock so I got in.
There's still a bit to go but I'm now up to the point where I can try the receiver.
(That photo is from before I was ready to try the receiver). The hairy thing for me with these kits is the soldering of tiny surface mount components but I find that I'm getting better (although probably using too much solder) and also the components seem very robust.
Not too bad eh? (Believe me, it's really tiny).
This model has an Atmel processor which does USB so that the computer can control the frequency and transmit line.
My build has not been all smooth sailing. On receive it was super deaf - turned out I'd wound the wrong T5 and it was attenuating the receiver so much that it made almost no difference when the antenna was connected such that I thought something was unconnected.
There's not many stations on but here's a video of a little reception that sounds pretty good, until my WSPR station transmits and blots everything!
Here's a bit more reception:
The Kodak Zi8 does a pretty good job on these clips I think.
Playing SACD .dff rips on MacOS
Since doing some research on audio quality this week for a RN breakfast panel responding to Neil Young's comments I've been hunting for ways to experience the best quality audio I can get out of my Mac.
I don't have a SACD player but I found some rips in the form of .dff files that contain 1 bit encoded streams at 2.8 MHz. To play these on a Mac you can AudioGate from KORG. It's free but they either want you to have some of their hardware or alternatively use your Twitter account to tweet a little marketing. This seems like a fair deal to me.
The software is written in some kind of cross platform library so it looks pretty weird on the Mac but it works and sounds good. Oddly it claims to be clipping pretty frequently but maybe the track is normalised to use the full dynamic range.
I'm outputting to an Edirol at the highest bit samples and rate I can do.
The software will convert to formats including FLAC:
but as I mentioned they force you to tweet some marketing. Haven't seen this before.
Interesting....
I don't have a SACD player but I found some rips in the form of .dff files that contain 1 bit encoded streams at 2.8 MHz. To play these on a Mac you can AudioGate from KORG. It's free but they either want you to have some of their hardware or alternatively use your Twitter account to tweet a little marketing. This seems like a fair deal to me.
The software is written in some kind of cross platform library so it looks pretty weird on the Mac but it works and sounds good. Oddly it claims to be clipping pretty frequently but maybe the track is normalised to use the full dynamic range.
I'm outputting to an Edirol at the highest bit samples and rate I can do.
The software will convert to formats including FLAC:
but as I mentioned they force you to tweet some marketing. Haven't seen this before.
Interesting....
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
HF Loop by Ross 5Z4/VK1UN - T51/VK1UN
In calls via Viber he described an HF loop built from heliax and hose clamps that he's been building and I asked him to send me some photos.
He writes:
"I've been corresponding with Myles VK6ZRY a lot as he has been using a magloop for quite some time now, another notable maploop users on WSPR is Peter DL6NL who has used a loop now for about 2-3 years, maybe earlier (let me check my email). yes, I have email re his loop going back to March 2009, indeed he sent me a photo of it suspended in the horizontal mode over a table inside. Peter typically runs about 200mW on various bands.
I really would like to have a mag loop running on 160m so that I can use WSPR on 160m without having to put up 150m of wire, which is not practical in Mogadishu but a 3m diameter loop supported on plastic water pipe, would be.
Also the magloop is very narrow in bandwidth and also very sharp in the plane of the loop, one can null out noise sources very easily.
"I'm beaming to….." takes on a whole new meaning with a magloop, indeed it is bi-directional and, if supported close to the ground, the direction of best radiation is up at, perhaps, 45 degrees from the horizon. Loop currents at resonance are quite high -30 amps in a 3m diam loop on 160m and the voltage at the capacitor can be 5 KV or so and that's why I was seeking a decent vacuum variable, both high voltage and high current. This means I can run up to 75W on a 3m loop with a 4KV capacitor as 100W would mean 5.048KV at the capacitor, still I do not expect to use 75W WSPR too often. 50W, yes! Mind you, a quick calculation for one of three magloop calculating programs shows that even 75W would be 4.372KV at the capacitor!
There are a few programs that will calculate loop performance and needed capacitance as well as voltage current and a number of other parameters from circumference, diameter of element, frequency and power, these are very useful modelling programs that will calculate for circulator, octagonal and square configurations. Loopcalc, RJELoop and magloop4 are three that I use.
The main issue in Mogadishu will be salt corrosion on the copper tube and capacitor, so I am using plastic coated Heliax which gives slightly different readings from the programs, I guess due to the dielectric effect on the plastic covering, of course that will provide corrosion protection, I have just bought a plastic lunch box/refrigerator box to put the vacuum variable and ends of the loop in to protect from the salt air. The antenna will only be about 300m from the water's edge and in the evenings there is a nice sea-breeze, cooling down everything but bringing lots of salt to corrode!
I have a Flex-1500 but unfortunately the Atom N570 powered netbook has just not got enough oomph to successfully run WSPR, PowerSDR, USB transfer AND decode the spots. Even just running the netbook and an analogue transceiver I do not get anywhere near the number of spots I get if I use the MacBook and the OS X compiled WSPR. To successfully run PowerSDR, WSPR, get USB working properly AND decode, I would probably need a quad core or even a Core i7 and 2-4GB of ram. I just wish PowerSDR was also written for OS X".
Great work Ross! That's a very nice vacuum variable capacitor you have there. I like the fire extinguisher close by.
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