Skip to main content

Project TouCans

 Hello, and welcome to the Project TouCans intro page!


Latest Outings







Update!

Project TouCans is now completely wireless! There's no feedline. At. All. There are also no lines for the keyer controls or the power supply. Everything Project TouCans needs it takes with it up into the antenna. Here's a recent photograph of the rig.

Project TouCans is the integration of a RockMite with a Tuna Topper amplifier. Both circuit boards are housed in a Dole pineapple can while the tuna can the Tuna Topper ships in is used for a lid and antenna mount. Hence, Project TouCans, ('cause there's two cans... get it... hehehehe.) Also, the rig is housed in the antenna, so it's a flying rig, so, once again, Project TouCans! The rig completely assembled delivers a QRP maximum 5 Watts directly into the antenna.

KO6BTY explains:


TouCans Innards
Photo of the Rockmite seated just below the tuna topper amplifier
TouCans without a Top
Photo of the Rockmite and Tuna Topper amplifier housed in a Dole pineapple can
Rockmite Keyer Port
Photo of RJ-45 breakout board mounted below the Rockmite. The board brings in the dih, dah, keyer programming signals, as well as the rigs 15 V power supply
Tuna Topper RF Out
Photo of the interior of the dipole antenna mount.
Exterior view of antenna mount
Photo of the dipole feedpint
Project TouCans in flight with the keyer in the foreground
Photo of Project TouCans nestled into it's dipole.

As you can see, originally TouCans was powered by D cells, but before long KO6BTY and I figured out that we could use a USB-C power brick.

Here's a list of the entries in this blog about Project TouCans.

Comments

Post a Comment

Please leave your comments on this topic:

Popular posts from this blog

How Many Files Can You Add to a GPT Project? An Interview with GPT-5 on Limits, Context Engineering Tips, and Chats

 Setting the scene: I’m tinkering with Project TouCans, knee-deep in radio logs, SQLite dumps, and Cesium code. Naturally, I’m wondering if shoving all this into one GPT Project is a recipe for brilliance… or for disaster. So I turn to Vril — you know, after Brainy from the Legion of Super-Heroes , because what else do you call your AI sidekick who always has the answers? Time to ask him straight up. [ As an aside, yes, GPT-5 has decided to sometimes call me Vail. I'm not sure why to be honest. Also, I asked Vril, er GPT-5, to write up our interview for me. Apparently, me asking it to 'Bro' up a few stories, just for fun, has convinced Vril that I use 'Like,' more than I actually might. ] Me (Vail): So Vril, how many files can I throw into a GPT Project before it just starts choking? Like, is there some magic number where the context window taps out and everything falls apart? GPT-5 (Vril): Great question. There’s no single hard file limit. What matters is ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Alcubierre Warp Drive Tophat Function and Open Science with Sage

I transferred yesterday's Mathematica file with the Alcubierre warp drive[2] line element and space curvature calculations to the  +Sage Mathematical Software System  today, (the files been  added to the public repository [3]).  If you haven't used Sage before, it's a Python based software package that's similar in functionality to Mathematica.  Oh, and it' free.  I also worked a little more on understanding the theory, but frankly, I made far more progress with the software than the theory.  What follows will be a little more of the Alcubierre theory, plus, a cool Sage interactive demo of one of the Alcubierre functions[1], as well as a bit about my first experience with using Sage. Theory The theory is fun, but it's moving slowly.  Here's the chalk board from this morning's discussion Alcubierre setup the derivation using something called the 3+1 formalism which means we consider space to be flat, (in this case), slices that are labelled ...
2 comments
Read more

When Codex CLI Met Port 9 (Debugging WinError 10061 in a Whisper Pipeline)

When Port 9 Ate My Transcript When Port 9 Ate My Transcript A small debugging story about proxies, Codex CLI, and why localhost isn’t always your friend. CopaseticFlow field notes WinError 10061 Codex CLI + Whisper Environment gremlins There’s a particular kind of bug that feels like someone's been messing with your network stack again. You run a script from cmd.exe . It works. You run the exact same script from Codex CLI. It stops with: [WinError 10061] No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it FFmpeg happily splits the audio. The Whisper API call dies immediately. No 401. No timeout. Just an instant refusal. Translation: that’s not an API error. That’s a socket being rejected. ...
Post a Comment
Read more