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So I made this Internet-based morse code repeater and I'd love to get the feedback of any goons who have opinions. https://vail.woozle.org/ It's supposed to work like a radio works: there's no indication of who's listening, whether anybody at all is connected, no fancy stuff to display the letters being sent. It's just a $7 altoids-tin CW transciever, except on the Internet and you can use your phone. I can't copy morse code for the life of me, and it took me a full year to understand what this helpful Italian guy was trying to explain about how the Iambic input was messed up, so I really depend on the input of people who understand how things are actually supposed to work.
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Apr 27, 2021 15:01
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Oh, whoops, I posted to this thread and then immediately forgot I'd done so. Today I added "virtual" repeaters that send fortunes with various inter-letter gap spacing multipliers, hoping maybe I could use this thing to try and not suck at copying. I probably did some other stuff, too. I forget now. Vir posted:This is easier to deal with than the CW-over-IRC solution that we've used before. Is it possible to change the key bindings for the keyboard keys? What keys did you have in mind? I'll just add them on the sly. You can spin up new repeaters just like IRC channels. Just type a new name in for the repeater name, and then you can share that URL. I think I added this today. thehustler posted:Seems to be a little bug sometimes where I trigger the iambic keyer with the keyboard when it isn't selected, cruft? I bet you were holding down shift or Ctrl, which this morning were like straight and iambic keys, but I have since unbound. Let me know if it keeps happening and we can begin the debugging dance, which everybody hates. Those keys would sometimes get hit, and then you move away from the window while they're still down, and it never gets the "I let go of the key" event to stop sending. There are ways to deal with this but it's easier to just disable those keys, which hopefully works. But you don't have to select the Iambic tab to send it, you can just start wailing away on your preferred keys as soon as the page loads. That tab is mostly there for mobile devices. copen posted:W0TDF, pretty poor sending on my part though so good job hah. I really want to get the arduino controller to hook up my paddles now. The arduino thing makes it way cooler: you don't have to keep the browser window focused and you can open an editor or whatever. If you have a USB musical keyboard, you can use that too: C - straight key C# - dit D - dah You can also use a gamepad. I've tested with an XBox controller, Logitech somethingorother, Nintendo Switch Pro, and an 8bitdo tinything. I'm pretty sure nearly every USB gamepad will work. But the MIDI instrument (which the Arduino thing shows up as) is the A+ pro interface since it lets you minimize the browser if you want. thehustler posted:Weirdly it’s international morse code day apparently .-.. --- .-.. cruft fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Apr 28, 2021 |
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Apr 28, 2021 02:51
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cruft posted:You can spin up new repeaters just like IRC channels. Just type a new name in for the repeater name, and then you can share that URL. I think I added this today. The reason I mentioned this is in case someone wanted to make a Goon CW repeater.
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Apr 28, 2021 04:10
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thehustler posted:Can I post this to #AmateurRadio #HamRadio Twitter yet? Of course. Please tag me so I can follow, i PMed my Twitter username. The main complaint people seem to have is that there's nobody to talk to. I just don't know where to post the flyers to get attention. I'm an asocial computer nerd, see.
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Apr 28, 2021 13:56
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thehustler posted:I'd put it on Reddit too, I don't think you'll get swamped. The subreddits for amateur and ham radio there are popular but not THAT popular. Thanks! Maybe we'll get a few more users; but we need two people actively hoping to have a conversation  I've been listening and it sounds like there are several people connected, but nobody wants to venture talking. I expect this is similar to the actual airwaves. Speaking from personal experience, I'm not comfortable trying to talk to somebody who's clearly sending 8-12 times faster than I can copy. I decide I need more practice, resolve to practice more, other stuff happens, and I'm forever lurking on my own repeater. Like, someone just sent a CQ on General Chaos that I only understood because I've heard CQ so many times. I have no idea what came after that, and the mental hurdle of engaging that person in a conversation was just too great, so I stayed quiet. This may be why things like morsecode.me and vband have more users: they ease barriers to entry. Last night my dad suggested a toggleable thing to highlight on the dichotomous key what's being sent. I feel like that might help.
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Apr 28, 2021 15:29
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thehustler posted:I keep calling CQ randomly to see if folk reply. I had one person reply this morning with nothing useful so that was probably off Twitter. The new "Fortunes" repeaters are local only. Once a fortune is done rattling off, you'll have up to a minute of empty time to play around.
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Apr 28, 2021 15:42
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thehustler posted:60 mins of morse with copen on Vail has done more for my CW skills in that hour than I thought possible. Thanks, cruft. 
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May 1, 2021 23:07
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Crusader posted:without a radio for the moment but trying to decode swradiogram over websdr has been fun The potato moon is probably in a prophecy somewhere. Best be careful around toadstools and metallic chairs for the next week.
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May 4, 2021 01:02
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copen posted:
Sweet! Looks great, and really helps drive home the "this is not difficult to set up" message. Can I put your photo in the README? I'm pretty sure my latest code will work on VBand too, with no modifications. It'll also work on BandLab, if you want to record some music with only three notes 
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May 6, 2021 00:33
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thehustler posted:Finally got that data-mode board fabbed and they're outstandingly cool. I picked red for the first time and it's come out great. Soldered and worked first time (it is very simple, of course). That's really nice looking. Tell me about the board fab process, because I am just about ready for this with the electronic bagpipes I've been designing. What did you use to lay the board out?
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May 21, 2021 16:02
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thehustler posted:I made a PowerPoint for my local club which I may present when we get back up and running after Covid: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7jgzzqsf5ahdn62/Moving%20to%20PCB%20Construction.pptx?dl=0 Dang, you just happened to have a presentation put together answering my exact question! I installed Kicad, kicked the tires for 30 minutes, and decided I was too dumb to figure it out. But I'll give it another shot!
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May 21, 2021 16:11
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Jonny 290 posted:I'll put good money on the 'reverse polarity protection diode' fritzing out. See if you can track that down and inspect, i bet it's failed closed-in-both-directions. I did a stupid "how many volts is too many" thing with my Yaesu, and it make smoke come out, and replacing the fuse was not enough. It wound up being the zener diode, which I replaced, and now everything works great again. During the diagnosis and repair, I learned that the only reason the zener diode was put on the board was so it would destroy itself if an idiot like me were to provide too much voltage. The zener diode is a special little bugger, which fails closed. So you get one rated for like 18 volts, and then when some jackass puts 19 volts into your thing rated at 10-15 volts, the zener diode fails, suddenly there's a short circuit, and the fuse blows. It's pretty clever!
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May 28, 2021 22:20
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Jonny 290 posted:hahah, yeah. That's traditionally called a crowbar circuit (because if the voltage rises too high, a 50 amp Astron lets a zener diode 'drop a crowbar on the terminals') but outsourcing the VERY IMPORTANT 'fuse before the crowbar' part is pretty novel. I guess if you leave the fuse out and short the zener diode, you have a "somebody else's problem" circuit. Maybe a "lol I hope you have a switching power supply" circuit?
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May 28, 2021 22:33
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thehustler posted:I think D2 and D6 in the schematic may be the diodes I need to look at. I think I have identified where they are on the PCBs so now it’s just a case of disassembling the boards :-/ I'm pretty sure you need to take the diodes out in order to test them. I had to, anyway. And just get the replacement part, don't jury rig your protecting circuit.
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May 29, 2021 00:47
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thehustler posted:Update: this is too small, I’m bailing before I break it more. How much are F6/F7s worth for parts? This is your chance to learn SMD soldering! Go get a gikfun kit on Amazon and some flux and maybe a new tip, and go nuts! My bad diode wound up being a big ol through hole component. But now I know how to do surface mount work, and I'm really glad I do.
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May 29, 2021 14:41
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Sniep posted:well what ARE the mfj products that are plain looney? Seems the message was toned down on the web site: https://mailchi.mp/67ff28081dd0/pep-le-pew
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Jun 29, 2021 21:19
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Vir posted:In other Elmer Fudd news, I'm now "elmering" a new ham, and that is fun. I certainly hope you're using the accent.
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Jun 30, 2021 15:12
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Just got my monthly hosting bill for Vail: Turns out running a repeater for one of the lowest bandwidth communication media ever devised is pretty cheap.
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Jul 1, 2021 21:09
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LimaBiker posted:I can either get on air with 5ish watts on 80, 40 and 30m - or via Telegram or something. Oh, buddy, do I have something fun for you!
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Jul 26, 2021 23:34
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Achmed Jones posted:PSA: .radio domains are 25 euros a year if you're registering your callsign. There are a few other ways to get the ~90% discount, but this is the one I care about anybody wanna buy me vail.radio? e: don't anyone actually do this, please.
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Jul 29, 2021 22:14
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Jonny 290 posted:Welcome! Always glad to have another. good choice on the 705, it's a very cool rig. I'm building an electronic bagpipe that uses FM Synthesis! Does that count?
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Aug 3, 2021 02:30
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When I first started my current job, I and another guy were put out into some barracks until they could get office space set up for us. We didn't have much to do. He spent the entire time taking practice tests, over and over, for weeks. He got to where he could recognize questions based on the shape of the text or diagram features, and could pick the right answer, also based on shape. One of his goals in this exercise was to never read anything, and he never did. He got his license the next week.
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Aug 5, 2021 16:47
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Motronic posted:bad with computers old men who can't figure out how to parse the radioid.net csv into whatever their programming software needs. This is 100% the demographic most likely to reuse passwords, but it sounds like the site admin is assigning immutable passwords on account creation... that's honestly not a bad idea for said demographic. It's also the demographic that's most susceptible to scammers, though.
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Aug 15, 2021 05:11
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horse_ebookmarklet posted:maybe i can bring this to market This is a really strange design for an antenna.
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Sep 30, 2021 01:27
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Just renewed my license and boy howdy is CORES a byzantine maze.
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Oct 16, 2021 21:22
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yoloer420 posted:I don't have my licence yet (exam on November 8th) so I've just been listening. A bunch of guys on a local 2M repeater were taking about getting RF burns from home made antennas. Is this really a thing? How can this be avoided? I thought this was part of the technician exam. Yes, RF emissions can heat up the meat you are made of. There are distances you need to keep from various frequencies at various power levels. They're published in a table. When I was studying for my license, i remembered this as "don't stick the antenna up your nose while transmitting".
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Oct 21, 2021 13:19
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yummycheese posted:lol good ol’ hams I guess. The easiest way is dont touch the exposed metal wire portion of antenna.  It didn't even occur to me people might be touching bare metal on a transmitting antenna. Holy crap.
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Oct 21, 2021 13:42
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I made these christmas tree lights using WS2811 strand lights. They just flash pretty colors, but my dad suggested one should flash out morse code holiday messages, so I implemented that. It got me to thinking maybe some ham operators would appreciate a controller program that flashes THE ENTIRE TREE in morse code. Like, it'll pick a random light and start flashing out a message in one of the colors. This would all happen asynchronously, so there'd be like 30 lights flashing out different messages at any given time, all independent of each other. The overall effect would be twinkling, but people who are HUGE NERDS would be able to focus on a single bulb and get a little message out of it. It'd also be pretty easy to make a menorah do this, by flickering between bright and not-as-bright. I could even have it connect to wifi to get the current date and light the appropriate number of candles automatically. Before I launch into all this work, is there anyone at all ITT who'd be interested in such a thing? cruft fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Dec 10, 2021 |
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Dec 10, 2021 16:53
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Jonny 290 posted:Fortunately we have this humdinger of a radio noise source that you will see for several hours every day. Real bright, follows a well-defined path, and if it's daylight out it's guaranteed to be there! If you're talking about my uncle Floyd, he stopped nude sunbathing every day after the 4th melanoma excision.
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Dec 10, 2021 22:38
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The Vail app (Internet Morse Code) I posted about a while back has been getting steady updates. Yesterday I released version 2 of the hardware adapter, to make it even easier to program and set up. Some video walkthroughs:
Vail is a free service run by yours truly, available at https://vail.woozle.org/. We now have our own (tiny) Discord, run by one of the users. If you're interested in learning Morse Code, and want the real experience of transmitting over radio waves / wires / light -- that is, you don't want the computer to decode/encode stuff on your behalf -- Vail might be for you!
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Apr 21, 2022 16:31
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