PCF8574 Lives!

Well after spending a couple hours beating on it, turns out I had done the address jumpers backwards on the board.  So solder the dip switch as normal with "On" at the top, then flip it over to address it.  Here's a quick and dirty addressing table:

PCF8574AT:

A2	A1	A0	Address
0	0	0	56 (38h)
0	0	1	57 (39h)
0	1	0	58 (3Ah)
0	1	1	59 (3Bh)
1	0	0	60 (3Ch)
1	0	1	61 (3Dh)
1	1	0	62 (3Eh)
1	1	1	63 (3Fh)

The soldering is a bit messy as I had removed several components (including the PCF8574) while troubleshooting the addressing problem.  However here are the pics of MoboControl and the board connected to a fan.

Messily soldered board...

...and we have lift off!

I2C PCF8574 Board and Parts are in!

Just got back from some fishing... and had a nice surprise waiting for me. Both the boards I had ordered and my ULN2803s I had ordered from Hong Kong arrived.  Since my wife badly wants to go to a game tomorrow, she's cooking dinner so I can play. :)

Top of the board

Bottom of the board

SR63ng Board Built

Finished buttoning together my SR63ng board from George, who did a great job designing the board and assembling the kit.  Also was able to hit quite a few beacons today on WSPR with it, so it's working great!

SR63ng Top

SR63ng Bottom

SMD Reflow soldering and other updates

Been working on a little project the last few days that I hope will be done this week so I can post some pics.  I modified an Infrawave oven to a computer controlled reflow controller so I can start doing SMT parts using solder paste in the oven.  With any luck this won't be a total disaster :)  Hope to post some pics in a couple days when it's done, and maybe even do my first reflow! 

Also got some other good news, got my 2nd motherboard 4.3 kit from Art today, as well as confirmation of my shipping SoftRock 6.3NG board from George.  Will be having some fun soon with these!

Oops... Rookie mistake!

Ok, so I try to be the first to admit when I make a mistake... and here's a good one.  I've been having weird issues on transmit with my Softrock/Mobo where if I transmit towards the center frequency with digital modes, all is well.  However if I transmit in either direction, audio is off it seemed.  I decided to play with WSPR tonight, and could decode stations fine, but no one could hear me and I only was heard once or twice a few weeks ago on 30m.  Perplexed I start fiddling with my other rig to see where my output was, as it's a nice straight line it's easy to see what's happening, and noticed it was a lot lower than it should be.  Tried three or four times, reset my Mobo settings, tried PowerSDR 1.12 and 1.9... even reloaded the Delta44 drivers.  Mind you to complicate matters, around the same time I got my new SR 6.3 board and the MoBo kit, I rebuilt my ham PC, so I had quite a few variables here for troubleshooting before someone goes "Ah! The issue is pretty obvious!!!"

Finally the light went off when I was trying to see if it was the LCD offset for PowerSDR and the Mobo that was screwing it up.  I was off in the exact opposite direction than where I wanted to be.  Turns out when I put the Mobo and SoftRock into the case, I had used polarized connectors (good), however when I put them in, the connector was loose, so the pins came out of the plug (bad).  As you can probably guess by now, I had the L/R reversed which is why if I was off center at all, I would get no where as my digital mode audio was reversed.  Like magic, everything seems to work correctly now that they are lined up... OOPS!

On a side note, I ordered one of George's SR6.3 NG boards, can't wait to get it!  Also ordered the SI570 chip a couple weeks ago that came in.  I hope to blog about my assembly experiences here with what I find.

PowerSDR seems to be working!

For some reason I couldn't hit any beacons in JT65, however I realized for some reason my sound card was outputting strangely to PowerSDR when I monitored it from a 2nd PC.  THe JT65A transmission was duplicated all over the waterfall.  I dropped the output to mono and it fixed it, weird.  Though mono breaks PSK31.  Good news is I finally hit some beacons for the first time for JT65A and PSK31.  Starting to feel better that this is working correctly after some of the issues I've gone thru.  I also like the new PowerSDR 1.19.3.15 from SV1EIA which seems to be pretty stable on my system.

PSK31 and JT65 monitors

VE3ODZ-1 (FN03ha) Heard KB1MTS(FN42) on 3576.50 KHz -10dB at 01:47:00Z using JT65A

N9DSJ-2 (En52ti) Heard KB1MTS(FN42) on 3576.50 KHz -14dB at 01:47:00Z using JT65A

New PowerSDR

Finally have transmit working!

Well after working with Alex and a couple other's (thanks for the help!), I finally got the calibrate and transmit working with the Motherboard.  I was  seeing 8.6v on the adjust line input on the LM317 adjustable regulator.  After doing a lot of trouleshooting, I found that due to all the adjustments I was making with the heatsink, one of the pins had broken and was making poor contact.  Once I resoldered the pin, all the problems went away.  My next challenge is to get it mounted into a case :)

Hopefully make my first contacts this weekend...

Watch out for P20 and K1!

Just a heads up for those putting the boards together... I hope this will save someone else's sanity :-)  Make sure there are jumpers on both P20, and K1 (pin 1 and pin 2.)  P20 enables the 12v side to enable receive and transmit.  K1 controls transmit, so if pin 1 and pin 2 are open (not jumpered), it will instantly get stuck in transmit.  After a couple of hours of frustration, I remembered this the hard way...

PowerSWR Annotated

I attached some temporary jumpers now for testing, they will be replaced later when I have my SMA connectors to make cables.

Note on the drawing below, P1 and P2 are both single windings meaning only one pass thru of a wire larger than 30 gauge.  S1 and S2 are 13 windings of 30 gauge wire.  Also be careful with the pins for the header as pin 1 and pin 3 are reversed on the motherboard versus the Power SWR board.  When in doubt, look for ground with a meter, and work from there when figuring out pin numbers.

Minifilter Set A annotated

160m

80m

40m

20m

17/15m

12/10m

Annotated Toroid locations

I hope these help, they are from my notes so I believe they are correct, if anyone spots any mistakes, please let me know and I can update them:

 

T2 (top)

T3 (top)

T4 (top)

T5 (top)

Toroid orientations from a previos post (top)

Motherboard with SI570 calibrated

Nice to see everything is where it is supposed to be... 

PowerSDR calibrated against WWV

Filter example

Attached is an example of one of my filters, in this case it's the 160m.  Really no importance to colors other than to show what ones I ended up using with minifilter set A.

Filters added and first receive test

I will have to take some better photos of the filters (sorry for the awful pic), but it's working :-)  Now that receive is running, next challenge is to get transmit working.

Bench testing

Nice to see some stations on the waterfall

Time for testing and filters

Well connected it back to the SoftRock, and so far no flames, and the test looks good below.  Can't wait to get the replacement U4 so I can see the voltage. Time to start making a filter or two to test receive before moving on to the last bit for transmit.

Toroids and last Capacitor added (T2, T3, T4, T5, FB1, C28)

My most hated part of any radio project... the toroids.  Glad these are out of the way :-)  I'd recommend placing C28 after the toroids to make sure you leave enough room.

Toroids T2, T3, T4, T5 and FB1, and the Capacitor C28

T2, T3, T4, T5, FB1, C28

Headers added

Most of the headers and connectors are now added.  Make sure to put a jumper or put in a jumper wire across T1.

Filter and misc headers (top)

Modifed SoftRock 6.3 RXTX Board

In order to connect the motherboard, some minor changes need to be done to an existing SoftRock board.  The SW1 block needs to be removed if added, with a 4 pin female 2.54mm header added (included in the kit), and it's the middle row of pins.  You also need to jumper JP1 to 3.3v, one symptom of this missing is the I2C bus will not work correctly.  Lastly add the included 2 pin female 2.54mm header o the PITT-I and GND pins.  The U6 PIC socket can remain, but the PIC needs to be removed.  I will probably end up building up a dedicated SoftRock as a spare for the Motherboard as many of components around U6 are not necessary.

Modified SoftRock 6.3 RXTX board

Close up of 3.3V jumper that needs to be added

Transistors and headers added (Q1, Q2, Q5)

I am probably going to replace several of the headers with KK molex as I like how they pair so you don't need to worry about plugging in backwards.  I'm not sure which ones yet I am replacing, but will probably be most of them as I go thru.  They are not stock with the kit.  I've also removed SW1 as it's not necessary unless I want to change I2C addressing.

Note: I've replaced P32 as there is an included header so it can go direct to the SoftRock board without needing a jumper wire.  The bottom image is what it should look like.

Transistor Q5 and some headers added for testing (top)

Transistors Q1 and Q2 and headers added for connecting to the SoftRock board  (bottom)

Q1, Q2, Q5

Off to bed...Disaster averted!

Well after spending a few hours debugging, looks like U4 in the Google Files group had a PDF with the chip backwards  As a result it was a bit cooked by the time I found it.  After thinking the whole I2C bus was bad, I realized I missed a jumper on the SoftRock 6.3 RXTX board.  I now have the temperature sensor functioning correctly as well as I2C querying of the SI570 :)  I'll update tomorrow with latest pics and info of the board and the modified SoftRock 6.3 RXTX board.  Definitely a fun project, and can't wait to get receive working!