MORSERINO Home Run with “Echo Test”

Posted on September 9, 2020 by Bob Beatty

In addition to my usual Technician Classes (a new set starting in a week), I’ve been spending a few hours a week teaching Morse Code to a neighbor of mine, who passed his General this June (Ryan KC1KUF).  Because of the pandemic, we’ve been doing our practice sessions via cell phone.

We started in July.  By the end end of August, we had 16 hours into it, and Ryan was copying the alphabet at 18 WPM with a 5 WPM Farnsworth rate.  Our sessions eventually alternated between me sending words to him, and Ryan sending them back to me to build his paddle skills.  In another month or two he will be ready for on-air tests.

I’m always on the lookout for interesting tools to use.  There is lots of online stuff out there (personal favorite Just Learn Morse Code), fairly good for learning to copy the code, but not usable for sending code.  Enter MORSERINO, an Arduino-based Morse Code Tutor and Keyer designed by Willi Kaml OE1WKL

I learned about the MORSERINO from friends who were using it themselves.  Lots of bells and whistles, including the ability for two MORSERINO users to make a “contact” via the Internet, or via a 433 MHz LoRa 100 mW transceiver.  But the thing that really caught my attention was the “ECHO TRAINER”.  The MORSERINO sends a word (or callsign, or random characters — your choice) at the speed you select.  You copy the word in your head, then send it back using your paddle.   Two different tones let you know if you got it right or wrong.  Even after 50 years of CW work, I find that an amazing effective tool to help exercise my paddle skills and sharpen my receiving skills.

The software is all open source which means you could easily substitute your own list of words or callsigns, and tinker with features.  You can find the open source software here, and you use the standard Arduino tools to make your own version.  Willi has been quite good about keeping the software current and bug fixes.

It isn’t cheap at about $100 including shipping from the EU, but honestly, what keyer is these days?  Mine took a couple of weeks to be produced and another 10 days or so for shipping.  It is a pseudo kit, but only thru-hole soldering is required as all the surface mount parts are already mounted on the PCB.  The kit took well under an hour to put together and worked with no issues.  My only minor nit is that the LiPo battery they built it around uses a MOLEX connector, which is quite rare in the US, rather than the vastly more common JT connectors.  That said, you can easily substitute a cable with the correct connector at build time, or even have two cables so either connector can be used.  You can order a 600 mAh LiPo from Amazon with the MOLEX connector if you want.  That said, you can always power it using the micro USB connector on the Heltec module.

Posted in CW, Education, Instruction, Training | Leave a comment

When Trees Aren’t Our Friends

Posted on August 8, 2020 by robert

A number of years ago, I wrote that hams often view trees as an enemy, preventing us from getting antennas up in the air, or interfering with satellite and VHF/UHF communication.  I suggested that we could alter our perspective and use the trees as a natural antenna support.  For the past decade I did just that, running a 450 foot circumference loop through my trees, and more recently installing a 160-meter Inverted-L

This past Tuesday Tropical Storm Isaias was winding its way into Canada via Albany, about 200 miles to our west.  We had a little wind and very little rain (being on the far eastern side of the storm).  Things changed drastically around 5:30 PM when a narrow feeder band, stretching from Isaias down to North Carolina, cut through the state.  It only lasted about 30 minutes, but it brought very strong winds to the state, knocking out power statewide to over 1/3 of the population.  There were many reports of trees down on top of houses, cars, RVs, etc.  Fortunately there were no fatalities.

In my case, at 5:45 PM, a loud snap with a resounding boom left our house vibrating.  A 150 foot tall oak tree had blown onto the rear corner of our house, splitting and dropping down two sides of our home.  The damage to the house was fairly minimal — the rear part of the roof needs to be replaced, window screens were ripped, and there is some painting to do.  Fortunately we still had power and air conditioning, plus the house appeared to be water-proof and structurally sound.  By the next morning companies had visited to bid on the work, and the tree was removed on Thursday.

An unfortunate side-effect of this was the loss of BOTH of my HF antennas, taking me off the air for the first time in a decade.  The loop was always an annoyance to my wife, who could see the wire snaking into the woods, so it will not be put back up (I will miss its low noise level and ease of tuning on all ham bands).  The loss of the Inverted-L was a real blow.  A good friend of mine, Willy W1LY, who has probably installed more antennas that anyone in the state of Rhode Island, will come by to shoot support lines into different trees later this week.  With some luck I’ll be back on the air for our weekly net on Wednesday at 3.9 MHz (7 PM local time).

Tall oak fell, splitting along the back (seen here) and side yard, taking down both HF antennas.

Posted in Antennas, Weather | 1 Comment

Solar Cycle 25 Prediction

Posted on July 20, 2020 by Bob Beatty

Not all predictions are accurate, of course, but I bet the folks at NASA and the Solar Observatory have a good handle on things.  This was one of their predictions from early last year, based on some new observations of the past 4 solar cycles:

Ouch!  Not very encouraging.  Of course there are always nay-say’ers, including some calling for the largest solar cycle in decades.  But I seriously doubt that.  In any event the board that decides these things issued their official forecast at the end of 2019.  Here is what NASA forecasts for Cycle 25:

Not quite as low, in fact pretty much comparable to Cycle 24.  And there is no doubt that Cycle 25 has begun already.  Two more years from now and times should be MUCH better.

Posted in Solar Cycles | Leave a comment

K2 Energy LiFePO4 going strong 9+ years later

Posted on July 20, 2020 by Bob Beatty

The first LiFePO4 battery I acquired was produced by k2battery.com back in 2011.  It was a drop-in replacement for the standard size 7 AH SLA battery, model K2B12V10EB.  It has served me well, all these years, being the primary battery I use with my KX3 on extended trips.

I noticed that I had not recharged it for 16 months.  That gave me a good opportunity to measure how much energy I put into it to bring it to full charge.  The answer was 0.21 AH.  So in 16 months it had lost 0.21/9.6 AH, or 2.2% of its full capacity.  Granted it was sitting inside my house, not exposed to thermal extremes, but that’s amazingly low self-discharge for all those months just sitting on a shelf. (One of the MANY reasons I prefer LiFePO4 battery technology.)

In a few more months, when the battery hits a full decade, I will redo the full capacity tests that I ran all those years ago.  I’d bet that it remains > 90% of its nameplate capacity.

Posted in Battery, LiFePO4 | Leave a comment

Renaming Audio In/Out in Win 10

Posted on July 7, 2020 by Bob Beatty

As I slowly change from older generation radios to newer ones, many of them come with a USB interface for Rig Control as well as modulation In and Out.  The trouble is that the vendors don’t do a good job of identifying which audio device is which (Kudos to FlexRadio which does, by the way — thumbs down to Icom, Kenwood, and Yaesu who do not).

For example,

  • K3s Modulation Output “Speakers USB Audio CODEC”
  • K3s Modulation Input “Microphone USB Audio CODEC”
  • FTDX101MP Modulation Output “LINE USB AUDIO CODEC”
  • FTDX101MP Modulation Input “Microphone USB AUDIO CODEC”

Those names are not very descriptive and leads to confusion when picking an audio device for WSJT-X, FLDIGI, etc.  You CAN rename the devices, after they are installed, using the Windows 10 Control Panel/Hardware and Sound/Sound.  For the Modulation Output, pick the “Recording” tab.  For Modulation Input, pick the “Playback” tab.

As an example, suppose I want to rename the “LINE USB AUDIO CODEC” on my FTDX-101MP to identify itself as “FTDX USB AUDIO CODEC”, I chose the Recording Tab (it is the radio Modulation Output, so that feeds the Windows 10 “Recording” inputs), the scroll down until I find the “LINE USB AUDIO CODEC”. Highlight that device, then click Properties, then overwrite the “LINE” name and change it to FDTX101, and press OK. (Pick a new Icon if you like).

 

 

Posted in FTDX-101MP, Gear, Sound, Win10 | Leave a comment

Another Field Day Completed

Posted on June 28, 2020 by robert

Field Day 2020 is now in the log.  As so many others did, I operated from home, class 1E, aggregating my score with Newport County Radio Club. Good thing I spent a bunch of time on my bonus points, because I only managed to work 80 stations in four hours running QRP on CW and FT8.  I was expecting to work several hundred, so I fell far short of my goal.

I’m making excuses, of course, but this Field Day was vastly different.  Usually a 1D or 1E stations is a rarity, with almost everyone in the field with clubs.  This year, the bands were saturated with them.  Many were obviously running amplifiers and no doubt had access to fine antenna arrays.  That meant the more modest stations had an almost impossible task to maintain a RUN frequency, not that I ever expected to do that as I was running 5 watts to an inverted-L.  The other difference was the skill levels shown on-air were not up to par, with folks often rambling, failing to give proper exchanges, etc.

Still it was a joy to be back on CW again, and I enjoyed those contacts far more than the ones I made with FT8.  The 20 minutes spent copying the ARRL Field Day Bulletin on CW as probably a wash.  It was worth 100 points as a bonus but those 20 minutes likely could have produced a few more points making CW contacts.

Sadly, I was only able to work my club station, NE1RI, on 6-meter FT8.  Never heard them on any other band.  Usually a dominant force in the top 5 or 10 nationally, I know they were struggling to maintain a RUN frequency as well.

Posted in Field Day | Leave a comment

Six Meters Amazing

Posted on June 14, 2020 by Bob Beatty

I’m not really a 6m person, in fact I don’t have a decent antenna, but I have to admit things are hopping.  I’m seeing Spain, Canary Islands to the East, and California to the West. Decoding 24-30 stations each 15 second interval.

 

Posted in 6-Meters, FT8 | Leave a comment

Updating AMBE Server Firmware

Posted on June 10, 2020 by robert

The latest version of the AMBE 3000 Server is located here:  http://ambeboard.zumradio.com/firmware/

That zip file contains the “zumambev1.3.bin” firmware as well as the program used to upload to the ESP32 chip on the board.

  • Open Device Manger and observe what COM port shows up when the AMBE Server is plugged into the a USB port
  • Copy the zumambev1.3.bin firmware and the esptool.exe programming tool to your user space (C:\Users\????? <==Whatever it is)
  • Open a CMD window
  • Type esptool.exe –chip esp32 –port COM3 –baud 921000 write_flash 0 zumambev1.3.bin    (whatever the COM port should be, 3 in my case)
  • Wait for it to finish, about 30 seconds in my case

This is the output you will see in the command window:

C:\Users\Bob>esptool.exe –chip esp32 –port COM3 –baud 921000 write_flash 0 zumambev1.3.bin
esptool.py v2.1
Connecting….
Chip is ESP32D0WDQ6 (revision (unknown 0xa))
Uploading stub…
Running stub…
Stub running…
Changing baud rate to 921000
Changed.
Configuring flash size…
Auto-detected Flash size: 4MB
Compressed 4194304 bytes to 1176415…
Wrote 4194304 bytes (1176415 compressed) at 0x00000000 in 18.3 seconds (effective 1833.9 kbit/s)…
Hash of data verified.

Leaving…
Hard resetting…

Posted in AMBE3000 | Leave a comment

Buster running on MacBook

Posted on June 9, 2020 by robert

One of the programs that can use the AMBE Server is “Buster” which is a Mac OS program.  It appears to support only DSTAR, but it is working well on my Mac.  I did have to shut the program down after configuring it to use my AMBE3000 server, but after that it seems to be working.

You use the + button to add reflectors in, the – button to remove them.  Highlight a reflector and use the paperclip icon to connect. And disconnect using the last icon (somewhat touchy to use because that happens to be the corner that enlarges or shrinks the window.

Posted in AMBE3000, Buster, D-Star | 2 Comments

Zum AMBE3000 Server

Posted on June 9, 2020 by Bob Beatty

As I was configuring my BlueDV to work with my ancient DV 3000K USB AMBE3000 device, I notice some comments about using an “AMBE Server” which caused me to do some digging.  The early devices like my DV 3000K were tied to one computer (whichever one had the USB port.  Traditional hotspots, like the Zum ZUMSPOT, required you to have at least one digital radio (and likely more if you want to have maximum flexability).  On the other hand, the Zum AMBE Server is an Internet of Things device — the AMBE3000 chip is presented as a port connection on your local internet, with the chip itself residing in a box that connects either via WiFi or Ethernet.  That means the CODEC is not tied to a particular machine — BINGO

I ordered mine from HRO, who had them in stock in California along with a small case.  It arrived in about 10 days and sat in my garage for another week waiting for the COVID bugs to die off.  I finally brought it inside and tried it out today.

The board is about 2″ square and fits nicely into a optional case

Things did not go so well when powering up, but only due to my own error (I had mistyped a character for my WiFi password).

Because of my error, I didn’t find the device.  Even when I fixed the password error, I had no way of knowing the IP address it had grabbed via DHCP.  It was time to break out a small I2C OLED display and hook it up.  Good news was that worked!  (Bad news is the case isn’t designed for it), but at least now I know the MAC address of the WiFi device and will soon find the MAC address of the Ethernet port.  (It identifies itself as “expressif” on WiFi along with several other devices in my home).

Bottom line is I would highly recommend planning on at least temporarily attaching a OLED display

Yep, and the HRO stock has out of date firmware (latest version is 1.3).

Posted in D-Star, DMR, FUSION | 4 Comments