Friday, February 3, 2017

Homebrew Android based keyer

Every year the QRP group Arizona ScQRPions host a field day contest called FYBO (Freeze Your Butt Off). The premise is like any other radio contest except it takes place out doors in the cold, and your score multiplier is based on the lowest temperature at your operating position.
This will be my first CW contest that I'll participate in. I only use a straight key, and for sure don't want to send CQ FYBO DE AB9LM for the duration of the contest.

Rather than programming a micro controller with my message, I decided to use an already existing device that can hold any number of messages, has a thermometer, browser, and clock: My Android device.

From the App store, I downloaded Androidomatic Keyer to handle the generation of code. To actually key my radio, I built an LM567 tone decoder circuit "hard coded" for 1khz. I've been sitting on a package of 10 of these things and haven't yet come up with a use for them. This seemed like a great application.

I followed the schematic from http://www.m0tgn.com/2015/07/cw-decoder-electronics.html
to get me in the general ball park. Getting the frequency set was a real pain using a trimmer, so I opted to use a 4.7k resistor instead. Using the formula 1/(4.7k X .22uF) put me pretty close to 1khz.

There is a bit of a sweet spot for setting the frequency and the volume level, but once found, it doesn't miss a beat.
I even plugged the input to the audio out of my TS-830 and it kept up fine with the speed demons on 14.015

The video below is a demonstration of the interface at work.
Using this circuit, I may see if I can make a CW decoder for the pizero.

Hopefully the propagation Gods smile on me tomorrow, or at least hope my CW isn't too rusty.

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