Left Coast Political Scene

The following statement contains Religion, a Mystery, a Failure and a Proclamation of Frustration which best sums up the current state of the MHST project. Oh my God, the MSHT stopped working and I have no clue as to why and have not been able to isolate the root cause. After yesterday's euphoria of having the rig launch it does no more. The software boots up properly with no error messages and the settings in QUISK have not changed. I see a spectrum on the monitor but no signals. The Pi Pico is generating quadrature LO signals. I even swapped in a different RADIG board -- nothing changed and that was after swapping in new ADE-1's on the original board. I was able to test the 2nd Board using the original lash up with a non QUISK controlled LO, and it works FB.  So, possibilities -- corrupted software, a bad sound card (a second sound card shows the same issue). Maybe there is a problem with the Pi Pico board, and I have in hand a 2nd Pi Pico so we can test that possibility. But...

With a huge Tip of the Cap to KI3P, Oliver, from the Vienna Wireless Society who wrote the software to have the Si5351 talk to QUISK and interface with a SDR Radio!  Needless to say, I was inspired by the work of the Vienna Wireless Societies Maker Program. Thank you, guys, for making something very possible. We now have the frequency of the MHST being controlled by QUISK. This is HUGE!!!!!!!!! Pi Pico Controller Proof of Life Right now, it's just working on Receive and the code needs some work for transmitting. Once I get that fixed, I will be happy to share my work. HUGE caution here, you need more than a passing skill at software installation and the ability to troubleshoot. I have only been successful getting this to work on Windows 10 but the Linux R Pi5 has not worked for me. VWS Shows up on the Windows 10 List Serial Port com21 The Windows / Linux Problem. Despite the very same process the VWS SDR does not show up on the same list when using the Raspberry Pi Linux form....

 For the last couple of weeks, we have been having earthquakes here in SoCal and two of them were 10 miles from my QTH and thusly I have more than just a casual interest. So, an Internet search turned up this Seismograph and yesterday a key part was delivered by Amazon. Yes, it is not a lab quality device but likely would indeed register a 4.1 Quake (that is what we had). It does involve an Arduino so in my wheelhouse and is a one and done type project. If anything, a great party curiosity or just plain time killer to build and killing time spent watching the screen.  The project uses a simple 4 wire OLED for a display. But what would be cool is a 3.5-inch Color TFT and it could be programmed so that anything greater than some set value to flash on the screen "Run, Duck and Cover". All sorts of possibilities. Them that know can make it go. Temperature check -- this might be a great time to pick up a slightly used Tesla EV. It is all over the internet that these vehicles are b...

We are now moving to the arcane part of the project, the software to run the MSHT. Software is elusive and its installation is made even more difficult if like me, you type with only two fingers! The QUISK software was developed by Jim Ahlstrom N2ADR, and it has been around for some time. It can be configured via a menu selection to operate with some very popular radios like the Hermes Lite 2 and if you own an old Soft Rock V6.3 it will do that as well.  It comes in several varieties and can be installed on both Linux and Windows based machines. Installation on L inux machines is a bit more involved than on a Windows 10 machine. We are at a junction in that the Linux approach has been beset with some issues with trying to use a Pi Pico to control the frequency via QUISK. After loading QUISK on a big box Windows 10 64Bit machine the Pi Pico seems to respond better.  So, I may have to initially use a Windows 10 Machine to get the prototype working and then try to port that ove...

The heart of the I/Q SDR is to provide Quadrature LO signals to the ADE-1's. For the initial development work I was able to springboard off of the work of W9RAN and wrote code to provide the two Quadrature signals from a Si5351 using the Seed Xiao RP2040 as the controller. The Seed Xiao is half the size of the Arduino Nano, and its clock speed is 8X faster with 2MB of program memory. For testing and development this works well. But this is unsuitable for the final configuration as it is not under direct control of the QUISK software. The ultimate final configuration is to have a Raspberry Pi Pico interface with the QUISK software so there is direct control. That is currently in work and maybe the long pole in the tent. If you would like a copy of the Quadrature Seed Xiao Sketch, drop me an email to my QRZ.com address. Them that know can make it go. 73's Pete N6QW

  Starting at the 12 O'clock position we have the Band Pass Filter and the Orange wire at the top connects to one of the amplifier steering relays. On receive this leaf actually is connected to the output side of one of the steerable relays. On transmit the orange wire is now connected to the input side of the steerable RF amp. As we move around the clock the splitter is connected to the BPF. This splitter consists of 8 Bifilar wound turns on a FT-37-43 core. The end of one winding connects to the start of the 2nd winding which in combination connects to the band pass filter and the two free ends are connected so that one lead goes to the input of one ADE-1 and the other end to the 2nd ADE-1 input. These two windings are bridged with a 100 Ohm resistor. Why you ask the resistor well that is a good question whose answer likely involves elements like providing a constant load and balancing signal levels. At the five o'clock position is our sideband inversion relay which is not ne...