12,000 miles on 0.2 watt!! Yet another WSPR beacon
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- čas přidán 6. 10. 2021
- Yet another homebrew WSPR beacon. This one is for one band, anywhere from 137kHz to 144MHz. It is fully self-contained and automatic, as it gets time synchronisation from a Ublox GPS. It can be built in a few hours on a breadboard, it's so simple!
Script: github.com/prt459/WSPR_GPS_Be...
Blog article: vk3hn.wordpress.com/2021/10/0... - Věda a technologie
Thank you.
I learned on the LowFER band in the USA just what low power, (7 mW EIRP,) low frequency, (1750 meters,) and low data rates, (1 bit per second,) can do for long range communications. I was blanketing about 1/3 of the USA with my signal, essentially in groundwave. Putting the attributes of low data rates and low power together with skip conditions on HF is every bit (bad pun) as impressive. Your simple, low power transmitter shows what can easily be done with little expense. I hope this video convinces others to get into building their own rigs for such tasks, because ham radio is all about learning. Well done.
Thanks John. MW and LW are remarkable bands. We hams have 472khz, 630m, and 137khz, 2200m. I've never transmitted on LW but have listened to a VK3 who was a regular, and he used to say 630m was better than 80m and 160m for reliability. WSPR attains it's remarkable range because of the slow data rate and digital decoding in SDRs. 20m band has improved since this video was made and Au to US and EU propagation on very low power WSPR occurs routinely now. It will never cease to amaze me what radio and the ionosphere can do. 73 Paul VK3HN.
Fascinating though it is, this is not an unusual result for WSPR.
Happens every day, Cycle 25 is at its peak!
Hi Paul,
excellent constraction,demands many tests and patience...thanks for share again..Dinos..73
Glad you enjoyed it Dinos. 73!
...Watching your videos and reading posts on wordpress make me think to become radio amateur(of coarse, here in Romania)...but this project is outstanding. The distance and the power on Tx make me thrill... Gorgeous. Time sincro could be done also via NTP servers, from time to time and after, internal clock could be maintained by Ardu. I've done that on my NixieClock, with ESP8266(actually NodeMCU).
Hi Dan, thaks for commenting. That is really helpful feedback, I am trying to make videos and posts with a broader appeal. if they make you want to do your own projects, then I am very happy! Yes there are other ways of time synchronisation, including using a RTC breakout and updating it via internet time servers, as the timing sensitivites of WSPR are relatively low. ESP8266 and NodeMCU look interesting, have been meaning to experiment. i hope you think about amateur radio, it is an amazing hobby!
Hi Paul,
A fine effort (12,000mls on 800mW)
Congratulations!
I'm in MEL too, a retired Comms Engineer ( a long-lapsed Ham (VK7ZOO) from 50 years ago).
I have long thought about using a different technique for ultra=low transmissin on the 20m band.
I calculate that it could outperform Whisper by a big margin
The 1mW transmitter is trivially simple.
The receiver is not!
I've got a most of the components to build the receiver, but never got around to doing it !
You have sparked my enthusiasm to give it a try.
I will eventually need the cooperation of licenced Hams to trial it.
Are you interested?
Hi John,
Thanks for your comment. I'm not into ultra low power transmission, or digital modes in general (apart from building this WSPR beacon, which had all the digital encoding code baked into Jason NT7S's JTEncode library). But I do suggest you check out the current crop of digital modes, FT8 and the like, so see how your idea compares with what the community is currently working with.
This could be a great time to get your license back! You could do it easily. There's a lot happening in the world of amateur digital communications right now.
73 Paul VK3HN.
Wow... Its very cool...
Thank you! Cheers!
Great project! 🔥🔥🔥
Thanks Alex. Wondering what is on your bench at the moment...
@@Paul_VK3HN Several videos will be published soon ;)
@@R2AUK Good for you, keep us guessing 😉
@@Paul_VK3HN Hi Paul. I finally published the video ;)
@@R2AUK An outstanding hand made QRP CW transceiver Alex, using the best circuit templates, blocks and ideas from the world of homemade analogue ham radio. All credit to you. I've commented further on the video. Enjoy your fine rig, good DX and many QRP CW contacts to you.
Very appearing box!
How you cut this square hole for LCD display!
Hi Yury, I didn't the perspex case is a product. I searced for it, but it appears to have disappered.
You make it all look so easy Paul.
Does the GPS lock the frequency or is it just used for clock timing accuracy?
Again an excellent presentation, thanks for sharing.
72 Mark G0NMY
Gday Mark, nothing that sophisticated, so the si5351 is free running, you need to do its calibration. The code simply detects NMEA strings and picks off the timstamp substring, the checks this to initate Tx. 72!
Hi Paul, just read your article in SPRAT and watched this video. I'm inspired to have a go at building it, just one question is there a schematic for connecting the LCD, I'm not sure if you used I2C or a parallel connection method? Many thanks for sharing this project.
Hi Steven, thanks for your comment. I left off the LCD details for brevity but should have added a line to answer your question. All of my Nano and LCD VFO controllers are wired as per VU2ESE's Raduino. The simple answer is to trace out the LCD connections from this rig's VFO/controller:
vk3hn.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/ssdrap203-page3.pdf
If you do, please confirm that it worked for you, as I havent gone back to this assembly to verify it myslef.
You can always verify LCD connections by looking at the LiquidCrystal() constructor at line 101, which takes as arguments the digital lines of the LCD control and data lines...
LiquidCrystal lcd(8,9,10,11,12,13);
Look at the library's header file for the function signature which will confirm what each argument is. Make sure the argument value refers to a Nano digital IO (D8 to D13) and not the pin number on the MCU or the breakout! Then, look up the datasheet for the 16x2 LCD to make sure you've got the other end correct. Good luck and let me know how you go. 73 Paul VK3HN.
Actually, I added the LCD connection details into the header comment block in the repo source file for future reference.
@@Paul_VK3HN Thanks Paul, got all the info I need now.
The link to your blog post is broken.
Sorry about that, should work now.