Copasetic Flow

 For me at least, there's no embed button on the share tab for YouTube shorts. I figured out how to get the videos in anyway. Step 1: Start with an embed iframe from any of your videos that aren't shorts. For example: <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/idZ80-7WR4w?si=CFqyqDeqzq24OLVh" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe> Then, grab the web link to your short from the sharing tab that you can access For example: https://youtube.com/shorts/5D1Bue0KSss?si=3MnCtoyuuxqOJbdh Copy the portion of the link that follows 'shorts/'. In the above example, you'd copy: 5D1Bue0KSss?si=3MnCtoyuuxqOJbdh Paste it into your usual iframe over the portion o the link that follows 'embed/' like so: <iframe width="560" height=...

Project TouCans has a logo!!!! A banner!!!??? A mascot!!!???!!! I don't know! But, it's cool!!! The gang and I played aroudn with Dall-E this afternoon via ChatGPT4. We started by asking for something that looked like a cross between github's octocat and a TouCan. Then, we started describing the radio, and we wound up with the above. And I like it! It's been a busy week. I was out of town, so I didn't get to get on the air as much as I would have liked. The radio is working great though!  Most of the innovation this week came in the form of the Pico-W keyer software. We can now change the keying speed with special commands sent in in the form of 'F' for a 0.005 second faster dah, or 'S' sent in for a 0.005 second longer dit. All other timings at the moment are based on the dit. Work continues on the straight key via WiFi project. The biggest technical issue at this point is figuring out how to create a Python sidetone that is cross-platform capable. ...

 Here's a thing that happens. The 1 Mii Bluetooth 5.3 Transmitter/Reciver shuts off its power automatically when it either doesn't hear audio for five minutes, or when it's not paired to a pair of headphones for five minutes. These are pretty common things when you're out on a POTA camping trip as the gang and I frequently are.  (Yes, I do see them. No, I haven't had time to figure out what they are this time :) ) One of my favorite things to do is wake at about 3 in the morning to see what weird things the F2 layer is doing. I can actually hear far away signals when there's not a whole city's worth, (I love you San Francicsco, but geesh), of noise. That's how we wound up talking to three stations in Europe on our last POTA above Mountainair while it was snowing outside! But! If the power goes off on the Bluetooth transmitter now that Project TouCans is completely wireless, then I have to bring the whole rig down to reset it. There's an answer thoug...

 TouCans continues to fly on its own! We need to work through the bluetooth transmitter turning itself off to save power. We also need to work through strategies to extend battery life with the Pico-W. At the moment, I'm looking into the MicroPython machine.lightsleep method. It looks like I can suspend operation of the Pico-W for a set amount of time after which it will automatically wake back up. This might be particularly handy for camping expeditions where I could essentially snooze the rig while I snooze.  Work continues on the straight key via WiFi for the rig. Yesterday I hauled the rig around with me all over Lands End hoping for a chance to set up a POTA. It didn't happen, but I did find out that the rig travels well. No issues at all when I reinstalled it in the backyard. As far as kinda cool pictures of the rig for the week, I managed to capture it framed between an almost full moon and Orion It appears that the local aviary life think that TouCans was more than ...

TouCans has always had an issue of accumulating charge... somewhere. This manifests itself as the Rockmite's keyer chip rebooting the first time the key is closed after a long delay (on the order of minutes usually.) The downside of all this is what happens next. The keyer (even though it's in straight key mode) is unresponsive until the Rockmite is power cycled. Here's the thing though. TouCans' power source is in the air now. It's in the antenna with the rest of the rig. It's up there: Consequently, cycling power has become a bit of an issue. Not to worry though. KO6BTY and I added two additional relays this morning, (we're eventually going to also be able to toggle the RockMite's programming line to be back to  working on two frequencies.) We changed the keyer code just a bit to interpret a capital 'P' as a command to reboot the Rockmite. The command fires GPIO-17 on the Pico-W. That pin is used as the control line on the first addit...

 Project TouCans is still on the air! I made a QSO with W2AZZ last night, and the rig was spotted in Europe again last night. The rig has a bit of an issue in that the Pico-W drains its two AA batteries over the course of less that 12 hours. For POTA outings of a few hours, this won't really be an issue. For our POTA camping outings, this is a bit more of a problem. We're going to look into ways to have the Pico-W got into a semi-sleep mode via firmware. The plans I'm thinking of right now would entail the keyer turning off its WiFi and then checking back in say every two minutes for 30 seconds. Seems like kind of a reasonable tradeoff. I mean, I've had tube rigs that needed that long to warm up :)