Copasetic Flow

 Using my camera as a camera and my computer as a computer just works better. The video files from POTA and SOTA outings on the new camera weigh in on the order of GBs of data. That makes for some pretty great videos, but also for slowish transfer speeds, especially from the camera's USB port out to the desktop computer at home. The camera, a Panasonic Lumic DC G100D was clocking 15 MB/s downloading data to the computer. Switching to a Thunderbolt USB-C cable moved things to 16 MB/s. When I tried to move video files from the computer back into the camera's SD card, that data rate was even slower at aout 5 MB/s. Fortunately, 12 year-old Mota, (internet alias), got a GameBoy knockoff for his sib for Christmas. The little gadgete uses a micro-SD card, and so yesterday Tawnse asked if we could get an SD reader so we could  move games on and off the machine. I ordered one. This morning, when I tried to use the SD port on said reader to move files from the camera's SD card, they...

 Project TouCans has been flying with its power source onboard for several months. It occurred to me I've never documented the power system in its entirety. The Battery The foundation of the power system is an Imuto potable laptop charger Using this charger as a power supply for TouCans has two advantages. First, it fits in a Progresso soup can, so it fits the form factor of the rig that's more often than not flying suspended in its own dipole antenna. Second, it has two USB-C ports. One is attached directly to a USB-C power deliver breakout board that then feeds the the latching relay that serves as the on/off switch for the rig's radio and amplifier. The other USB-C port sports a short USB-C thunderbolt cable protrudes from the can and allows the battery to be charged without opening TouCan's case. Choosing the Voltage So, we have a supply that provide up to 100 Watts. But at what voltage? That's what this gadget , an Adafruit HUSB238, determines. It's jumper...

 Soon, I'll get the bandwidth to document Project TouCans entire power supply system. For now, suffice it to say that, like the rest of TouCans, it is non-standard. One of the non-standard issues we run into is that while there's a USB-C cable accessible outside TouCans for charging the internal batter pack, the battery pack's charging indicator is hidden inside of TouCans in its optional batter pack housed in an empty can of Progresso tomato soup. Consequently, we've occasionally not charged the batteries because the USB-C connection was unhappy. Enter the MakerHawk multimeter. The meter acts as a USB-C female to female adapter, which frankly we needed. It also ships with a USB-C female-to-female barrel, I'm not sure why yet. We haven't used it. When we plug the radio in to charge, we plug the charger into one side of the meter and the internal battery pack's charging cable to the other. When the cables are plugged in correctly, (sometimes we have to flip t...

 I finally landed at a quiet tape vs. noise  configuration for TouCans on Saturday afternoon. Here’s how. In the picture above, the wires circled in green include the + and - power wire, (white and red respectively), and the keyer wire, (also red.) When I taped the bundle of wires including the single turn coil shown in the white wire to the side of the can, the noise from the power supply went away. I was left with only noise from the radio, (the kind I want), and a gentle hum from the power supply because it had switched into buck converter mode to step its voltage up to the required 15V! The helicoptering from the Pico-W was also almost gone. In other parts of the project, the Pico-W has started burning through pairs of AA batteries rather quickly.

 This has happened once before. I hooked up the USB-C charger to the Imuto power brick which is now basically inside Project TouCans, left it over night to charge, and nothing. I woke up to the resounding 60 cycle hum that is the Imuto's internal buck converter stepping up the available voltage of the unit. Project TouCans Dry Docked and Charing—I hope. As with most engineering mistakes, there's a a way around ever having this happen again, and as with most engineering mistakes, that way involves process. Interestingly, there are two processes to avoid the not-charging Imuto conundrum. The first way is more interesting, yet less effective: Unplug  the keyer power input, making sure to leave the TouCans power input plugged in. You'll know this worked because you'll still hear the hum over the headphones. Now, plug the charger into the keyer power output from the Imuto. (This particular power brick is nice this way, you can charge it while it's being used. TouCans int...

 I've been plunking through our household chargers and power supplies with a few USB-C breakout boards I purchased at Adafruit. As I mentioned previously , it's not immediately obvious which power supplies will do what, and thankfully the Adafruit boards in combination with my power supplies—so far—down-step their voltage if they don't think they can provide enough current. Today, I moved a step towards making this whole process more deterministic when I found a link to the USB power distribution (USB PD) standard on Wikipedia. The tables there at the time of this writing show: I still need to build a table of what portable chargers I can acquire, but this is a good start to—I hope—a really nice backpack or Project ThreeCans supply.

 Project TouCans can be powered by USB-C! I've been wanting to try this since I learned that there are boards that can be connected to USB-C power supplies that can request different voltages and currents and—if successful—then power a ham radio at that voltage. Today, Project TouCans made it's first ever USB-C powered QSOs! I used a board I purchased at Adafruit. The easiest way to select a voltage and/or current is to solder bridge jumpers and/or scalpel the default jumpers. Beware though, if your input power supply can't handle either your voltage or current request, you'll wind up at the next lowest voltage down the scale that the supply  can support. So, for example, when I broke the default current jumper to ask for 3 Amperes, I went from a happy 15 V supply down to a a 5 V supply, because my laptop charger will not/cannot support 3 amps at 15 volts. I wasn't sure the green board RockMite that makes up half of Project TouCans could support a 15 V supply becau...