Category Archives: Projects

POTA Antenna Shootout

Posted on April 10, 2025 by robert

A friend of mine, Jim Sammons KA1ZOU and I had an article published in the May 2025 QST (pp 58-60).  Our club, Newport County Radio Club, with about 150 members, had a fair number interested in Parks on the Air … Continue reading →

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Updating MagTag WX for OpenWeatherMap API 3.0

Posted on September 9, 2024 by robert

A couple of years ago, I put an Adafruit MagTag Weather display together.  The MagTag was a fairly inexpensive CircuitPython device with an eInk display and built-in WiFi.  It used a free (at that time) service called OpenWeatherMap API Within … Continue reading →

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Finished a Goal From 6 years Ago

Posted on January 31, 2024 by robert

Way back in January 2018, I had a goal to “3D print an electronics project case”.  I had enrolled in a SolidWorks class at my local community college to learn 3D modeling.  Sadly I didn’t complete it, and it remained … Continue reading →

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Everything old is new again…

Posted on January 23, 2024 by robert

Winter always brings a desire to do projects of some sort.  In fact, throughout the rest of the year, I tend to acquire parts for small projects with the hopes of finishing them during the cold, dark, snowy New England … Continue reading →

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QRP Labs QCX-mini

Posted on March 6, 2021 by Bob Beatty

I need another radio like a submarine needs a screen door.  That said, I couldn’t resist buying a QCX-mini from QRP Labs.  This is a $55 partial kit (all SMT devices already on the board), with a $20 case, making … Continue reading →

Posted in CW, Projects, QCX-mini, QRP | 1 Comment

The smell of Fall and a new Soldering Iron

Posted on November 1, 2019 by robert

It’s hard to beat fall in New England.  Beautiful colors, amazing apples (cider, hard and soft, plus donuts!).  It means all the busy summertime activities are fading away, and being replaced with more leisurely ones.  In my case, that means … Continue reading →

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PyPortal NTP Clock – Part 2

Posted on July 1, 2019 by robert

The PyPortal does have a 4-pin JST connector on the side, which makes it easy to hook up a IC2 Breakout like the DS3231, which is about 1 PPM accurate, or 3 seconds a month.  That is a heck of … Continue reading →

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PyPortal Auto Rebooting Endless Loop

Posted on June 28, 2019 by robert

A few years back I made a NTP clock for my station.  I was always obsessed with time accuracy, and a RPi running NTP services filled the bill quite well.  That clock was always within a fraction of a second … Continue reading →

Posted in From the OM, Projects, Time | Leave a comment

Work-around for Pesky OS X Kernel Panic with Arduino

Posted on August 6, 2017 by robert

I’ve been bouncing between my Windows PC and a Macbook Pro as I am writing the code for the Feather NTP Clock.  (Gotta love BitBucket and TortoiseHG which provide me with the latest source code wherever I am). While it … Continue reading →

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Feather NTP Clock

Posted on August 5, 2017 by robert

While my obsession with accurate time continues, these days my obsession with avoiding the hassle of resetting clocks on DST/STD changeover and power failures grows. My original NTP Clock, based on the Raspberry Pi worked just fine, but it really … Continue reading →

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