N3VEM wants you (yes, you!) to help design a project!
     Many of you are probably already aware of the idea of "crowd-sourcing." For those of you that aren't familiar with it, Google defines crowd-sourcing as "the practice of obtaining information or input into a task or project by enlisting the services of a large number of people, either paid or unpaid, typically via the Internet."

 So, why am I talking about crowd-sourcing? Here's why:

Did I lose you yet?
​      I hope not, because I'm finally ready to get to the point. One of the pieces of equipment that my work revolves around comes in these boxes. Recently, we had one that went bad, and it was getting scrapped. After pulling out the proprietary bits, I was left with this box that was just too cool to get rid of. My mind was instantly racing with radio-related ideas to use this for. For some reason, as I was brainstorming, it dawned on me that this could make a fun "community" activity - with the community in question being anyone who happens to stumble on my corner of the Internet, who also has even the slightest interest in, or curiosity about, ham radio.

So, what exactly is the activity? If you haven't figured it out yet, I want us to collectively brainstorm / design / build a project around this box. The brainstorming and designing will be the community effort. The building part will be me, probably exclusively, but a couple of you live close, so I might request to bring in some help if the ideas get too wild :-)

So, with introductions out of the way, I'm going to start with ground rules, then the project constraints, and what we have to work with. Since I am the ultimate builder, and probably the sole financial resource for this project, I will proudly hold the right to change/clarify the ground rules and/or scope at any time I feel it is necessary, and will also hold final go or no-go decisions on anything that involves my personal financial input. With that being said, I will strive to stick to the crowd-sourced intent, and will try to give details and reasons if I veer from that at any point.

This will be pretty loose as far as project scopes go, but here's the current scope/constraints. This should be interesting, because we're starting with a box, and working backwards, instead of the other way around:

• The end product must be ham radio centric
• ​The end product should fit 100% within this box for storage and transportation. Things that need to be taken out of the box and "deployed" for use are okay.
• This box is a Seahorse Model SE-300. (P.S.  as far as this type of case goes, the Seahorse cases are very reasonably priced!) Inside dimensions of the bottom are approximately 9.5"x7.4"x3". Inside dimensions of the lid are approximately 9.5"x7.4"x1"
  
• The parts remaining in the box from it's previous life can either be re-used, modified, completely removed, or replaced, unless otherwise noted
  
• The box contains a 12v 6000mAh LiFePO4 battery (and charger). Preferably, this should be the power source, if the end product requires power.
• The mounting bracket that holds the battery is also the ground plane for a 900MHz antenna that was used in this box's prior life (I have no particular attachment to it, but wanted to let you know that it's there)
• The box has the following bulkhead connectors that, in the past, interfaced equipment in the box to the outside world: (2) RJ45 Jacks, (1) DB9 male, (1) USB, (1) coaxial power connector currently used to connect the battery charger
• Box "display" panel has a 2amp fuse/holder, voltage meter, power switch (switched power from the internal battery), and some holes that previously had LED's shining through them.
• The lid of the box has a panel and door, making a storage compartment in the lid.
• Drilling holes / screwing things into the box / panels is okay
• Frugality is important. This doesn't mean things have to be cheap, but any cost has to have an associated benefit (I may ask to be "sold" on ideas if they seem pricey)
• I prefer to reuse / recycle things wherever possible, but will buy parts if suitable things can't be found to re-purpose
• I have, or have access to, most tools that could conceivably be needed. I am willing to beg/borrow/ask for help for anything I would need to use that I don't have, or don't have experience with (I don't own an Oscilloscope, or Spectrum Analyzer - yet)

Here are some pictures to help stimulate all those creative juices out there!  (As a note - excuse my bad photo-editing.  I had to hide some proprietary markings.  As the project moves forward I'll paint over those if the panels get re-used.)

​Now, as a member of the "crowd" here is the first assignment. Using the form below, submit your ideas for:

1. ​The name of the project (as we learned from Amazon and Monster a name doesn't have to reflect what the thing actually is, so we might as well come up with that first - it will be easier to share what we're working on if we have something to call it!
2. A short description giving a high-level idea for a project. The key here is short - we'll get into details once a project is picked - for now, just stick to ideas like "VHF/UHF go kit", "Flux Capacitor Module", "QRP station", or "Dilithium Crystal Power Box".

After ideas have have been gathered, we'll take a vote! Feel free to discuss and/or ask questions in the comments or on social media, but the final list of things to vote on will be compiled from the submitted forms.

Lastly, be sure to share this with everyone you know! A crowd-sourced project is more fun and more exciting the larger the crowd gets!  We'll keep the suggestion pool open for about a week before I make the list and put it out for a vote!

     Thanks for the suggestions everyone!  The time for submitting ideas has closed, but you can you use the links below to see where the group is in the project, and add your input!

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     For several weeks now I've been slowly working away at a mini-project, building a sound interface to use with my iPhone and tablet for digital modes. If you're just joining me, you can go back and start with part 1, when the project looked like this:

     To find out what happened between then and now, read on, and I'll share with you how it got from what you see above, to this:

     When I last left you, I had the interface working, and had already verified that the audio was working in both directions, using one of the world famous Baofeng UV5R radios. With the basic circuit working, I was ready to start thinking about a proper enclosure, and proper cables for connecting my phone and radios.

     The "other" end was something that I debated over. Because I wanted to use this with a couple different types of radios I knew I wanted some type of modular plug so that I could make up at least 2 different cables - one for my HT and one for my Yeasu 857d.

     My first thought was to use an RJ12 jack. These jacks are the same size as the traditional RJ11 jacks used for old-school telephones (does anyone still use house phones?). The main difference is that RJ12 jacks and plugs use all 6 connection points, instead of just the middle 4. When it came time to acquire the part however, this isn't what I ended up getting.  I was clicking around a bunch of different sites, trying to decide where to place my order, and in my late-night clicking stupor I ended up ordering an RJ45 jack instead - as it turns out I'm glad I did!

     The order with my RJ45 jack came first, so I wired it up to the "radio" side of the circuit on my breadboard. To make things tidy, and easy for me to follow I looked up the standard pin numbering for RJ45 plugs. Since I would also be making a cable to connect to the data port on my rig (which uses the standard mini-din 6 format) I also looked up the standard pin numbers for the mini-din format. This way I was able to make the connections on my circuit so that when I was ready to make cables, pin 1 for the radio would equate to pin 1 on my interface, pin 2 to pin 2, up through pin 6.
     As some of you may have noticed, I draw pictures in a notebook when I work on things - doing this helps to cement the concepts of whatever I'm working on into my head. With that thought, here are my notes from working out the pins, and a picture of the jack wired to the breadboard when I was playing around with it:

     At this point I was still waiting for a couple of parts from another vendor.  In the interest of working with what I had on hand, I next made up a cable for my Baofeng HT. The actual wires in the HT plug I was using were too small to fit directly in the RJ45 plug (remember those TINY enamel coated wires I talked about?!) Since they were too small I spliced them together with solder and heat-shrink onto a short section of Cat5e cable. I then put a large piece of heat shrink over the entire group of individually spliced wires, and then put the RJ45 plug onto the other end of that, being careful to make sure my wires lined up with the pin-out I referenced above.

     With the new cable made up, and me still waiting on some of the other little parts to arrive, I decided to do another "test" to make sure I didn't accidentally undo any of my previous work, and to make sure that my new modular jack was wired correctly. For this test I put the temporary circuit into a temporary enclosure (aka, a cardboard box) and took it along on a family drive to our closest state park (Susquehanock - I'll probably be doing a WWFF activation here soon.) I successfully sent out a couple packets via APRS so I know the cables and jack were wired up correctly!

     Now, at this point the most observant among you might be saying, "Hey, I see a switch in the circuit on your breadboard in some of those pictures...you never mentioned a switch!" To you I say, "good catch!"

     Something I realized while I was working on this is that on the "radio" side of the circuit the mini-din connectors only have 1 ground connection that is shared for all of the other connections, while the Baofeng or Kenwood style HT plugs need separate grounds for transmit and receive audio. This is because on these radios, connecting the two grounds together is what activates the PTT. The switch gives me a way to use the same devices for both radio types. With the switch wired between the 2 grounds, leaving the switch in the open position lets it work with HT radios (using VOX), and putting the switch in the closed position makes it work with standard mini-din data ports (also using VOX.) With all these little discoveries, I'm finally ready to share my "final" schematic for this circuit....

Behold! The AnnaLink schematic as it appears in my notebook:

     Next, it was time to finally put this in an enclosure. I made a trip to the local Radio Shack (stuff is on clearance since they're apparently closing another round of stores and filing bankruptcy-again...) and picked up the smallest project box I thought I could fit everything in. At this point I also picked up 2 different potentiometers because I wanted something I could mount in the box, and put knobs on. I ended up getting audio taper potentiometers instead of linear, because the rate at which they change the level (logarithmic) is supposed to feel more natural for audio applications.

     Once I had these in hand, I also decided at that point that I would just mount everything in the box and do point to point wiring, because the number of components is small, and I could rely on the potentiometers to be the physical strength, and simply attach the smaller components directly to them. The pictures below show my markup method for making the holes, and the final product:

     For those of you who were patient enough to hang in there through all of this, here's some proof that it all worked! A contact with N8LU using 5 watts from my 857d, and the PSKer app on my iPhone. This app has mixed reviews, and I'll share my own full review at some point, but as far as I can tell it's the only iPhone app that will both send and receive PSK31 using the phone as an audio modem, so despite its shortfalls, it's the best (only?) one out there for iPhones (there are more options if you're an Android person.)

     With that, this looong post is finally over! Thanks for sticking around, and feel free to ask me questions or leave comments - especially if you plan on building your own!

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I had the day off work today, but with the hectic life in a house where the kids are 5 and 1, I didn't get to do much Radio. We did run some errands, so I got to spin the dial a little bit from the mobile, but there's not much to talk about on that front today.

For me, the exciting radio activities for the day were in between other tasks, and after everyone went to bed. Earlier today, while my YL was picking up our daughter from school, I had the chance to add a couple more pieces to the sound card interface I've been playing with. I'll write more about that in another post because I made a couple fun little tweaks to it. Later on, after everyone went to bed, I finally put a cord on my new paddles: