Copasetic Flow

 The TouCans keyer works much better than it ever has in the past, (apologies if you were on the receiving end of a key down lockup), and it's all due to connections I made while unschooling with the 14, 12, and 10 year old gang of kids here. This story stars when they were 9, 7, and 5 years-old, so strap in :) I've probably written about this before, but here's the rough chain of connections The, then, five year old, known as Tawnse here, and I attend a design exhibit at SFMOMA where She and I find a Foldscope , a simple origami-inspired microscope that's pretty fun, and pretty cheap Tawnse develops an interest in microscopy The gang and I join the San Francisco Microscopy Society The Society is working on archiving their old documents. Daize, (aka K06BTY), and I are working on a book about Mike Gladych where we've accumulated a lot of documents. We attend their archivist committee meeting. I read the list of committee members, and there's a name I recognize, S...

 It turns out MicroPython for the Raspberry Pi Pico-W doesn't support threads. Ask me how I know. :) I'm adding a straight key to Projec TouCans for SKCC straight key month . Getting the straight key to work on its own was pretty straightforward by tweaking and incorporating code that ChatGPT provided. The next step, after proving the key worked at all, was to get it to play nicely on the Pico-W with the autokeyer code that's already there. The auto-keyer is accessed over WiFi, (TouCans used to be used solely while embedded in a dipole antenna several feet of f the ground.) I asked ChatGPT to write some code for me that would enable me to easily switch back and forth between the straight key and the auto-keyer. The auto-keyer blocks while waiting on a socket access call, that's kind of a problem if you're not using the auto-keyer. ChatGPT's solution was to place the straight ke code and the auto-keyer codes in separate threads. It sounded good, but like I said,...

 We finally got all of the relays to work at once! We've been using a HFD2 003 M L2 D latching relay as the on/off switch for Project TouCans. I should say, we've been trying to. The most recent issue was that our keying relay was rated for 12 Volts nominal coil voltage due to a previous design decision that went away in favor of 3 Volts. A Digikey order later and some kinda messy soldering and we had the 3 Volt relay in. I left the 12 Volt relay in place because on occasion in the past, we've had to run the keying line through a second relay as a passthrough (literally using the 'normally closed' portion of the relay) to make the entire system happy enough to key the rig. That wasn't the case this time as it turned out, but it was also easier to just leave the relay in there because it's superglued dead bug style to the circuit board. The latching relay along the shorter wires to the Rockmite/Tuna Topper II pair are delivering plenty of current. The rig was...

 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!