The Ham Radio two point zero Audio podcast rip. Thank you for downloading and listening to this podcast. So basically what I do is I take all the audio clips out of my videos and upload them to spreaker and then from there they're spread out to iTunes and SoundCloud and now Amazon Audible as well. But I want to welcome you and thank you for joining the audio section of this
series on Ham Radio. I hope you enjoy it, and I would appreciate you leaving us a comment or a review on whatever podcast service you're listening from. Thank you in seventy three. I hope you enjoy it all right man. Well, Scott, thanks for taking the time out tonight. I know you've done some updates, and I know you've told me what they are, but I but I'm gonna let you explain it because you'll say it better than
I will anyway. So yeah, So zero dot nine zero, I think was the version that I have here and the one we talked about the last time we want to stream together. So what's the new version? What? What? What are people being shipped today? Well, the board is a newer version at zero dot nine one. Okay, why I'm sticking with version numbers below one. I really don't know. Coming from the computer world. I used a library called open SSL that for fifteen years had version zero dot
nine eight. It was like they were afraid to actually declare a version one at any time. Well, okay, it was nine eight nine eight B nine eight C. So it's kind of the same way with my first venture into making these kits. So okay, still haven't still haven't got the nerve to break that one dot zero version on there. And it's the same thing with the firmware version two. But let me go over first of all, the board. Yeah, we'll just pull up a copy of pull up the
image of the board there. This is the assembled board. When you turn it on, it splashes up there and it shows you what version of firmware it got. You got in there. I'll pull that up again and it's in this case I've got zero got nine eight firmware running on a zero dot nine one board. Primary difference from in terms of the physical board from what
we had originally is it actually is stereo. Because I had some people complain that when they plug a jack in there with plug your little stereo jack in there, it only comes out one year so in this case, I actually made the jack compatible with stereo, so you can you can plug in a stereo headset and you can listen to it that way, or in the case of my my use, I just have this little speaker that I've plugged in there, which I've got to set underneath the microphone so you can hear the
chirping. And in addition to that, I've added a little volume roll off here on the side. It's a little thumb wheel. When Chris had contacted me about building a three D case, I immediately said, well, let me make sure that the thumb wheel hangs off the end of the board, so you will be able to actually use the three D case and be able
to adjust the volume control on the outside. What I actually should have done is probably moved the plugs to the sides as well, and maybe even the switch to the side so that it's a little bit easier to access, But
I wasn't thinking that far ahead. And now he was almost done with the second board layout before he approached me on that, so that the primary changes on that are the addition of the volume control and support for stereo, and the manufacturer of the little Schmidt trigger inverter that I used to generate the oscillator. They became unavailable. I had to replace it with a different supplier.
It's not a big problem except that the thresholds on him are so it actually squeals at about one killer hurts tone instead of what it used to do was about four tone. So okay, those are effectively all the changes that we had physically to the layout of the board. Okay, good and uh, whenever you want to talk about this later, we can. But people who had the original version you were handing having them send. In fact, the salty Ham is in the chat saying tell Scott and thank you for the super
chat. Buddy, Tell Scott, I haven't forgotten about sending my MCU chip back for updating life Life things cleared, so so we'll send soon. But up to the first I want to say, it was thirty boards that I sent had the original version of the firmware, which is the only way to do the upgrade was using by actually pulling the let me pull this back up again here, Yeah, actually physically removing the chip and sending it in for an update, or if you actually are a bit of a hacker and you
do any programming with microchip. This little device here called the pick kit is what I used to program it. You can attach it to headers that are right up here, and you can take the firmware and download it straight in if you're if you're that Darren. But what I did was I actually added a software update module to an area of ramming here. And if you get one of these cables, which is a serial TTL cable, let me let me share. You can buy these on Amazon. Okay, let me pull
this up really quick. No, that's me. I don't want me. I want to pull that up. This is this is them on Amazon. It's very important that the one you buy is the three point three or three v three version that's a three point three volt because this chip is raided for three volt three point three vaults. They've got a five vault version two, and you don't want to do that because it would probably damage the chip.
So let me go back to this. But you can take that cable and you can simply plug it into the side and there's some update software that's available on my website. So you download that little executeable, tell it what serial port this is TOM one, two three or whatever, and then tell it the name of the of the hex file that you want to download, and right now on the website, there's three different versions. There's the original nine
dot where nine one. Then there's a nine five, and now there's a nine eight which has a new new feature in it, which we'll get to later. This is the file. I put a link to this also in the boxes that I ship out. It's also a QR code. You can just scan it and go right here. Up here it talks about the instructions that you get. You can actually click on that and it pulls up a PDF of all the instructions. Much of this is already part of the assembly,
plus the cable that I was talking about. Let me go back to the page. So you've got the three diversions of instructions. I've got the different versions of the original firmware that are available here. These are just hex files, so you download them and say them, and then there's the extensive instructions. Same thing that you would see there you would also see here. I'm sorry. These are the instructions on building the unit. Down here are
the instructions on how you can update the firmware. If you have one of the newer FIRMWAREES that's after version I think it was thirty five or thirty six, something like that. So you need this cable here, which is a three point three vault cable. You'll have to supply this little header that will connect to over by the knob. You can download an executable that I wrote.
When you plug in the FTDI cable, it will create a new comport, a new serial port in there tells you how to find out what the serial port is when you plug it in, and then when you want to execute the executable, you give it the name of the executable, the name of the x file that you're upgrading too, and the comport you're sending it to, and it'll take ten to fifteen minutes to actually do the update.
It's a bit on the slow side because I'm doing a lot of redundancy because I want to make sure that if there's if there's any corruption in the data, it doesn't actually try to commit that into the memory. Otherwise you I think the term would be brick the unit. And then the solution is just send it your back to me and I'll reflash it. There was a question that Tank asked while we were offline about which cable is this? Now this shows it's this cable here, which is you can buy through Amazon. What
happened here, I'm gonna show the pics. There we go. You can buy this through Amazon. As I said, it's got to be the three point three volt cable. The other option that I was talking about is this thing for hackers who have done any kind of little micro microprocessor programming with Microchip, because that's what this thing uses as a microchip. This you can buy, but this is pushing like sixty to eighty bucks, so I use it to program a whole bunch of them. I wouldn't recommend buying it just to
program the Morse Monkey once or twice. But you use this in concert with Microchip software development environment, and you can plug that directly into if you take a header and put it up here, you can plug that directly in up there. The instructions don't go into detail on how to do that, because I don't imagine there's a whole lot of software engineers or firmware engineers who who would want to be doing it this way. Don't you have a new software
feature or two? Because I was going to get to that next let's let's do it. As I'm going through this, let me pull up the picture. I'll go through the newer features that I've added compared to the original ones that had come out. First thing we do is we turn it on and it tells you the version number, in this case zero nine eight. It defaults to the settings menu. We have the same settings menu between an iambic
keyer or a straight kier. I learned from Jason last time that you had said that the the the when pushing this forward, the left key is normally the long and the right key is normally the short for I am the key? Uh no, backwards of that? Backwards? Okay? Yes, well we can at least the key that the key that I have is is back. The right key is the is the daw and the I'm yeah. The right key is the dad. Left key is that did? Okay, Well, we can set between either one and we can handle the change. I'll
get to that next. And you know a lot of people change it, especially if you're left handed. A lot of times that that that's kind of a personal preference issue. I think I'm not an expert CW guy, but I believe that's a personal preference issue. So yeah, if you can change it in the software even even more so, the better we can. But yeah, okay, great. This next option is turning the background lights on or off. But I've got so many uh lights shining on this thing,
I can turn it on. Yeah, that helps. You can see that the lights turn on to give you a background light, but they also offer you the feedback of either turning green or red for a second if you get something wrong. So let me see if it's just my desk lights here and get a little bit of lighting up that green again. Okay, well, moving on. The next setting is the words per minute, which is you have an option of eighteen, ten or five. Go back to the ten
is where it usually defaults too. When you're doing I am bickying, obviously, it really doesn't make any any difference. I'm watching the chat for a question. Oh yeah, I just I've just been that up there for everybody else. Okay, you're fine. When you're doing I AM bickying, obviously, it doesn't make any difference in terms of how long you're holding the paddle
down because it doesn't for you. But it uses the words per minute to determine how much of a gap, it needs to wait before it decides you're done keying a letter and then moves on from there. The other setting now is a side tone, which somebody was asking about when I first came out with this, and that was whether or not it plays what you key because it will play things for you that you need to write down or copy, and it always plays that tone. But this is whether or not it will
actually play what you're tapping on your keyer. And then we have this new one which you mentioned for straight king or the iambic daw, which is long whether it's going to use the tip or the ring on the plug, and you can set it to either be the tip or the ring, and depending on how you then have the plug wired up, that gives you the ability to reverse which side of the keyer is going to be the long and which
side is going to be the short for I am a king. And then also we have the ability to save the settings, so if you hit save, it will save the settings if it detects any changes. In this case, I didn't actually change anything, so it didn't save them. This way, when you turn the power off and turn the power back on, you don't have to go through all those settings and restore it back to the way it was. So that's also a new feature. And we go back into
the root menu. We've got practice mode, Dictate mode, Echo mode, copy mode, which are existing ones in the new Coke mode. So we'll go through these again really quick. Practice mode just lets you randomly key things and it will tell you what it thinks you keyed. Can you hear that? Did you hear the byes? Okayes? I heard three dits and let me hit well those are DAWs actually, Oh okay, okay, three to
three dits? Yeah, okay, now that I hear the difference, yes, okay, and then uh an n or yeah, and then an A and then and if it doesn't know what it is, it gives you a little last risk, which is I told Frank, takes up less face on the screen than printing out WTF. Okay, all right. Also I didn't know that. It Also it also will handle numbers just fine, So when you're done, just press the button their leaves. The next option is dictate.
In this case it will give you a letter. Now I'm not the worst code expert, but I do have a nice little cheat sheet that I use here. So it's asking me for a K, which is simply a long short long, and it tells you whether or not you got to correct. Then it's asking for a W and tells you whether or not you got to correct. When you're done, press that and it tells you how many you got right and how many you got wrong. Gotcha, and then press
it again and you're back to the root menu again. The next one is echo. In this case, it's going to play something, not tell you what it is, and your job is simply to repeat it. So it will play it, and it tells you whether or not it's correct or whether it's wrong. It will also if you don't do anything at all, it will wait ten seconds and then play it again so you can keep listening. Given me all numbers first, right, Oh there's an age or hi.
Sorry. When you're done it again, we'll give you a score of how many you got correct and how many you got wrong. The next one is the one copy. This one, you don't use the key er. Get out a uh some kind of trusty little note pad, uh like like this little thing I got from the Hampton when I was there, and a piece of paper, and it will play back an entire two by three call sign. Okay, And the idea is for you to listen to it, write it down, and it will replay it every ten seconds again like like the
echo does. Now I'm not I'm not writing it down, but when you're done, press the key or and it will show. It will tell you tell you what random two by three call sign it generated. Now it always starts with a W and a two by three. Al we has a number in the middle, but other than that, they're all going to be random. So you can press the keer and it will generate another random one.
The tones you're hearing kind of fade off that zoom squelching everything. So the actual kit, you can when you're typing on it or when it's when it's typing to you, sounds very good. It's it's very clear and crisp. Also, one of the reasons that I put the volume control on there is when people started using the little earbuds, it's very loud in there, okay, And the original instructions recommended that you buy some headphones or earbuds that have
a volume control on them. So when you're done playing with the copy, just practicing listening to call signs. You can just press the button eggs it out. The new one is the Coke method. Now this is uh. This is kind of like copy or even worse. This is where you have to also use the little USB to serial port. You need a terminal program. This window is putty. It's a terminal program. If I take the plug and plug it in here, it enter. I get a little menu
there, which is just a silly little menu. It says I can't read. It says Option number one is nothing, Option number two is even less. Option number three is paying no attention. If you hit like a number nine, it will give you some kind of message of the day, goofy little thing. Going back to the Coke option, let me turn that off really fast. In this case, what it will do is it will play two characters for you, and then again it will repeat them every ten seconds,
and your mission is to type them in. If I put three an I in year, it tells me incorrect, it was a three and an A. So anyway, that's the Coke method. Now in this case, it's going to play two symbols and it's going to essentially score you in a percentage. It keeps track of the last ten attempts that you made, and when you reach eighty percent, it will add another character to it, so
suddenly you'll be doing three characters in a row. And then when you get eighty percent eight in a row or eight out of the last ten, it will update it again to four characters in a row. I wish I could get this to play better. Sounds pretty good right now. An F and then a four. Hey I got one correct, I got one out of
the past ten, and then it moves on to another one. So when you're done, just press the button in it leaves and at that point this terminal menu goes back to whatever goofy little thing you wanted to put there. So that is the new feature. You want to close this? Yeah, let me exit that out. You turn that off. That's the newest feature that I've added, and then we're back to the settings again. So in a circle, we've got now five different options. We've got the practice mode,
We've got the dictate mode where it tells you what to do. You've got the echo mode where you don't really know what you're typing, you're just needing to imitate what you hear coming in you've got the copy mode where you've got two by three symbols like when your guys, when you guys are working your photos or whatever field work you're doing, trying to listen to people who are who are calling in. And then the new version is the cope methods.
I would like to know folks who have the previous version that might want the newer version. What is your suggestion for that? Do they need to buy another version or are you doing upgrades or how is that working? Well? There's the chip will work and most of the other parts will still work on the newer version. There's a few additional parts because it handles stereo and that's got the volume control. So I could ship out replacement boards in a
handful of the additional parts that are used. If you feel you're really good at desoldering and wanted to move over to the new board, that would be substantially less cost than that than the entire new board. But the new board that gives you stereo, and it gives you the volume control. The existing chip with the new features you can use with an old board because the same plugs are there on the side and on the top. Let me pull this
back up here. The same plugs are available on the side and on the top, and they function the exact same way that they that they do on the new boards as they do on the old. Okay, I like the fact that it gets you to eighty percent and then adds another character. That's it. That's a neat way to learn, I think. Yeah, Frank was explaining that to me, so I thought I hadn't heard of that one before. So I did a little research, looked into it. I'm getting
these lights out of my face down. Yeah, looked into it, and I thought this wouldn't be This wouldn't be too bad, it wouldn't be too hard to do, and it's a an accepted practice for learning Morse code. So Bradley asked where do we order the new version? And my response to him was the only the only one available right now is a new version. You can't get the old version anymore here. Yeah, it's it's the same
price. It's a few extra parts, and I put a lot of time into the software enhancement some things, but just keeping the same price on it. Scott wants other Scotty Scott, could a future update allow for a more minutia option for words per minute instead of the current three options it could.
What I did was I used the expected math and the the actual standard words per minute says you have a seventy millisecond for a short and three times that or two hundred and ten milliseconds for a long, and then I think it's five times that for inter character spacing. So that's what it's playback is using. And when you're using the iambic keer, it's playing back at that rate, and it's using that that gap for the for the computation between the the
inter inter character spacing. If you're using straight king, it tries to use that pretty much that same timing. I have to get out the math again that I was using for that, because it actually for the five words per minute, it's actually pretty generous. It's something on the order of a quarter second for a short and half a second for a long, and then the
fifteen and the eighteen words. I'm sorry, the ten and the eighteen words permitted still used the seventy and the two hundred and ten milliseconds anyway, most people, from what I understand, are using the iambic key or anyway, so I hadn't hadn't had any requests to get any more precision in the words permitted setting. Hold on here, let me show you this if I can find it. Yeah, there we go. Okay. In transition, this
is the PDF that you can download from the website. It's got all the assembly instructions that shows you all the parts, and there's a I did ship out on one or two recently that may have the typo in it. Right here, I had R six listed twice. Actually are five in R six, so I know I have to fix on that. But in addition to that, now it also shows you where on the board the parts are,
so it makes it a lot easier when you're going through it. Well, these are all the ten K resistors that I need to put in, and then these are all the one microferred capacitors that I need to put in. So the instructions get very specific about where to put all the parts and how to put them in. Also, I had some problems. This is the larger screw. I had some problems with the original one in that the screws that I used for the LCD were very small, and I used the same
size screws for the battery case. Well, I needed a bigger screw for the battery case, but the bigger screws wouldn't fit in the lcdast. So now the new kids actually have two different size screws. So that's a lot of fun packing up those not losing these little itty bitty nylons proved all right, guys, thanks for joining tonight. Sorry about the technical issues. Be
watching and check out the links. So we're going to put the links to everything we talked about tonight in the description, so if you're watching on Team Replay, go look at that. So seventy three all