Copasetic Flow

 Everything old is new again. OK, I just said that to sound fancy. Actually though, the Project TouCans CW histogram , (you know for measuring the consistency of your dits and dahs while sending Morse Code), uses WebUSB and Web Audio , (respectively), to implement a connection to the serial port, where it listens to a Halikey, and to generate a sidetone. That's the old part.  Here's the new part, (to me anyway). It turns out both of those web capabilities are either documented by or a result of something called Project Fugu . I stumbled across the Google Develper site while browsing, (pun totally intended), through the extensions in my Chrome browser. It turns out Chrome Apps are going away, (finally a Google technology I didn't use is disappearing), and should be replaced by, (in Google's estimation), Web Apps, (which are referenced as Progressive Web Apps by Google Gemini.)  The capabilities available are pretty cool and include Web Bluetooth and a File System...

 I got my Halikey to work on my ChromeBook again! Regular readers might remember that I chose poorly when my ChromeBook asked what I wanted to do with the Halikey, assign it to Linux or Android? The correct answer was not to choose . Both choices are wrong. After a bit, the dialog box will simply disappear if you don't answer. Then, everything works fine. The settings stored my choice in a place I couldn't find... until today... and so, no more ChromeBook HaliKey for me. Here's what made everything better. I went to the ChromeBook's settings and wound up at the Manage USB devices tab. It wasn't easy to figure out. I have yet to find a path to this screen. Here's what you can do. Select settings in your Chromebook. Click into the 'System preferences' tab. Search for usb, but do not hit enter. Notice the , 'Linux development environment' selection. Choose it from the drop down. Then, click on 'Mange USB devices in that screen. You'll land a...

 The radio is so quiet! I mentioned that I changed the configuration of Project TouCans so that my smart phone's hot spot serves as the centrial connection for TouCans and the computer(s) we use to control it.  Yesterday, at the Pony Express National Historic Trail, I only made a single POTA QSO on 20 meters with TouCans, but it was an unbelievably noise-free one: You can hear background noise in the real world—planes, waves, boats, people wandering by—from the camera. You can also hear some pretty gentle AM broadcast interference, but that's it! To give you an idea of how much things improved, listen to this QSO from before the change. The helicopter noise you hear in the video QSL below is from the Pico-W. The screehing noise also appears to have been from the Pico-W.

 When I started down the road of putting a Raspberry Pico-W in charge of the Morse code key and on/off switch on our 20 meter rock-locked, QRP CW rig, Project TouCans, last year, I came across many, many microPython code examples where the entire point was to WiFi connect your Pico-W to your home router and then access it from other devices.  KO6BTY and I however, mostly use Project TouCans while out camping for POTA/SOTA. Consequently, the 'home router' route, (pun intended), didn't seem helpful. Ultimately, I found code example for setting up a Pico-W as a network as an access point as opposed to a client. That worked. We were able to WiFi connect a laptop to Project TouCans to turn the rig on and off and send either auto-keyed or straight key CW . It did however, lock whichever device into TouCans exclusively. That wasn't too big of a problem though, because I could make POTA self-spots and check out our signal on various SDRs using my smart phone. Then, yesterday, a...

 I added a new feature to the CW metronome, namely the ability to download a png image of your histogram to share document your improvement or to share  with others. Once again I used ChatGPT to sketch up the initial code , and then went from there. I'm definitely building software I wouldn't take the time to build otherwise. You can try the new feature on the existing CW metronome page . There's a demo video below. Videos

Use any key but 'space' or 'esc' as a CW Key The app provides keyer sidetone on key down. As you key, it maintains two histograms: the one on top, (blue bars), measures the the lengths of your dits and dahs; the one on bottom, (green bars), measures the length of your pauses between dits and dahs, your pauses between letters, and your pauses between words. You can try to use the space key, but on my browser, it makes the scroll bar roll down the page. Halikey instructions are included below. Demo Video Halikey instructions To use the app with a Halikey, simply plug your halikey into your comupter, then your key into the other side of the Halikey. Then click 'Start Halikey'. You'll be presented with a dialog like the following For my computer, the Halikey turns up as 'USB Serial Port (COM3)' When I'm uncertain, I just unplug the Halikey refresh the page, note which port is missing in the new list, hook the Halikey back up to th...

 When hammering out CW on the amaetur radio bands, or anywhere else for that matter, it's important to be consistent. Your dahs should sound  like your dahs, your dits like your dits, and other hams should be able to tell where a word stopped and another one started. So, it occurred to me that since I was using the straight key for TouCans, I could have the JavaScript that communicates the key down and up actions to TouCans monitor and record my dah and dit lengths along with intra-character, (time between dahs and dits), intra-word, (time between letters), and word spacings. I asked ChatGPT if it could addd two histograms to measure these values to the web page I asked it to make for the web page yesterday, and voila! Right! I also asked ChatGPT to add a 'Practice Mode' button so that when I was practicing I didn't have to worry about calls being made to the Pico-W on TouCans. ChatGPT cranked out all the histogramming code quite easily. The only small snag was asking i...

 On a far less math-heavy jaunt, I finally got around to trying to figure out how fast the auto-keyer KO6BTy and I put togehter could send CW. For the moment, the keyer's record is 31 WPM without errors. I can't key that fast, so I'm going to go ahead and declare that fast enough!

  Squigily audio in our homebrew ham radio rig? Capacitors! This extends the capacitor post from last week. This week, while adjusting the Tuna Topper amplifier bias after a run-in we had with an unexpected rain shower, I put capacitors across the dit and day switches on the keyer. The dit capacitor was particularly useful because with the amplifier bias set above a certain level, the keyer chip would immediately reboot when the dit key was pushed. I'm assuming RFI transients were punching through to the little processor, befuddling it in the process. Today, the kid—Diaze—and I changed the battery from a D cell pack to a LiFePO4 battery. The extra bit of punch provided by the nicer battery meant we had to turn down the bias on the TunaTopper's onboard pot just another quarter turn or so. The resulting keying sidetone over the headphones was less than esthetically pleasing though. When Diaze sat down to key out a CQ, the buzzing and squiggly sounds were too much for her. A rec...

 Sharing everything I do with the 11, 10, and 7 year-old gang works best for me in unschooling. Of course, YMMV.  Allow me to elucidate. This morning, I decided that Forrest Cook was exactly right . The diode that was protecting the Rockmite from dying if I ever hooked up the batteries backward was also succking up 0.8 Volts that could be used to transmit a bit further. I decided to take the thing out. But first, I called the gang in to talk about it. They've worked with LEDs before; they know that if you hook them up backwards they don't conduct, and therefore don't light up.I explained that this was exactly the same, except the here diode doesn't light up ever. It does however flat out refuse to conduct if the battery is hooked up backwards, (the same thing as the LED being instralled backwards.) I then explained that not conducting when the batterey was backwards kept other bits of the circuit from dying when hooked up to a backwards battery. Finally, I talked about ...

 I hadn't realized the NAQCC has a newsletter! Also? Continuing this month's theme of glue and radio, I found out glue sticks are handy for ham radio as well. If you still haven't checked out the North American QRP CW Club, and you're into low power radio and Morse code, here's a little more enticement. They have a monthly, free newsletter ! I found the above glue stick trick there. I'm still leaning towards making an Arduino VFO rather than a purely analog VFO, but wow, choices! Update: Here's a really nice video demonstrating the construction and use of the glue stick PTO CW Practice Nets The club is also looking to add new CW practice nets : Github projects can have web pages!? https://docs.github.com/en/pages/quickstart

Yesterday, I hiked South along Sourdough Trail, near Ward, CO, to a little clearing that looked out from the Eastern slopes of the Rockies. The altitude is about 10,000 feet and the view of the foothills and plains below is striking! With the half-wave dipole antenna up between two trees, (about 11 feet high on one side and 7 feet high on the other), I began to call CQ. Before long, N8JIW called back with a QTH of Cleveland, OH and an RST report of 229! Cleveland is over 1200 miles from my little clearing! The 20m Rockmite outputs 500 milliwatts. That works out to more than 2400 miles per watt on a CW QRP QSO! The trails up around Brainard Lake and the Red Rock Trailhead are beautiful and very accessible right now! There's just a little bit of snow since we haven't really got our first big storm up here yet this year. I ran across two hearty folks that were camping overnight along the same ridge with their dog. As nice as it is right now, the wind can still come up une...