{hacking,music,electronics,radio}

Here are the toots from my Mastodon account. If you’re into ham radio and technology this is a great inclusive server with an awesome mascot called Alex.

It's Alex! A soft brown mastodon holding a handheld radio in their right hand and carrying a blue bag over their shoulder

Alex, the mastodon.radio mascot

Posted status:

Mar 8, 2019

Hoping to catch the SpaceX Dragon splashdown: https://www.spacex.com/webcast should be in a bit!

Splish!

The Dragon 2 capsule landing in the Atlantic Ocean. There are four parachutes at the top of the image, the sea near the bottom, and the dragon capsule landing in the sea. There are two small boats heading towards the capsule.

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Posted status:

Mar 8, 2019

Great to see that 2W0KPF (@Powyssafety) managed to get his exam venue sorted. Looks like his plans for a mid-wales foundation course are coming along nicely.

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Posted status:

Mar 7, 2019 #amateurradio  #hamradio 

WSJT-X 2.0.1 to macOS was re-released due to some speed and stability issues:

https://sourceforge.net/p/wsjt/mailman/message/36605323/

#hamradio #amateurradio

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Posted status:

Mar 3, 2019 #ft8  #amateurradio  #hamradio 

Just had a first play on 2m FT8 with my new FT818ND. Max distance so far is 138 km, not bad with 5 watts.

Of course now I want to replace my 2m feedline with something better than RG58 and check everything’s watertight.

#hamradio #amateurradio #ft8

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Posted status:

Mar 3, 2019

Just caught some of the SpaceX/NASA Dragon docking webcast. Totally mind blowing (albeit slow) action and a successful dock! In a couple of hours they should be able to open the door and go in.

A view of the Dragon capsule from the ISS. The capture is a round white object in top right, and a small indistinct second of the ISS in in the bottom left. The capsule has a bulge on top, which is the open nose cone, and several small apertures in a ring, which are part of the docking system.

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Posted status:

Mar 2, 2019

Just my shiny new µArt ( https://www.crowdsupply.com/pylo/muart) to flash some custom firmware on a couple of cheap Sonoff wifi switches ( https://www.banggood.com/DIY-Wi-Fi-Wireless-Switch-For-Smart-Home-With-ABS-Shell-p-1019971.html). They now work with Alexa without some dodgy third party cloud service.

It’s funny that the USB UART I used cost considerably more than the devices!

A small circuit board taped to a bench. On the left are two crocodile clips attached to two small wires which go under the board. These provide external power. Coming out of the centre of the board is a ribbon cable. This goes to the UART. The board is rectangular with a relay on the bottom right corner and small screw terminals at each end.

Of course these switches don’t have any sort of earth passthrough, so I guess I’ll need to add something if I want to use them with almost anything useful.

Also, the firmware I used was Tasmota ( https://github.com/arendst/Sonoff-Tasmota/) which supports other cool things like MQTT as well as Belkin emulation.

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Posted status:

Mar 1, 2019 #amateurradio  #hamradio 

WSJT-X 2.0.1 dropped earlier in the week: https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/wsjtx.html

The release notes list bug fixes rather than shiny new things: https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/Release_Notes.txt

#hamradio #amateurradio

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Posted status:

Feb 27, 2019

Absolute genius: https://medium.com/skills-matter/the-horrors-lurking-in-your-legacy-codebase-616d7d631f35

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Posted status:

Feb 25, 2019

Didn’t manage to do everything I wanted to this weekend, but I did manage to build my £3 crystal tester, and this SOTABEAMS end fed tuner, plus wire it up ready for a test a tune on 40m.

I also managed to make up some test resistors to calibrate my cheap SARK 100 antenna analyser clone.

Actually I’m pretty happy with that list of stuff!🤔

A cheap eBay crystal analyser. This is a small PCB with a row of five seven-segment displays, a PIC chip and a few other components.

This shows a cable winder with some green antenna wire, some black feeder (a thin coax) and a small capsule of plastic pipe. The pipe contains a small tuned circuit.

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Posted status:

Feb 22, 2019

Enjoyed watching this eevblog video on making a DIY EMC probe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xy3Hm1_ZqI

I definitely don’t need one, but it’s cool nonetheless!

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