I have rather ambitious plans for this beacon. Perhaps over-ambitious. After reading Alex G7KSE's blog post about his Arduino based MSF 60kHz receiver I'm interested in interfacing one of the inexpensive MSF receiver modules to the Propeller. I could use this to display an accurate clock and also to control the start of WSPR beacons. As I'm a bit of an accurate time nut and have two radio controlled clocks in the shack (and a radio controlled watch) it is really no trouble to press a button to start the beacon at the beginning of an even minute and then keep time from there. But that isn't the point really, is it? What could be cooler than a shack clock that is also a WSPR beacon?
This microcontroller stuff is new to me and I have a lot to learn about it. One question I have is what do constructors who use Arduino boards or similar things like the Gadget Gangster do when they want to make a finished project? Do you just buy another development board to use for the next project, or are there simpler boards with just the microcontroller and its essential ancillary components which you use for the final version? I guess I'd still want the ability to update the software (firmware?) so there isn't much of the Propeller Platform board that I wouldn't be using.
4 comments:
Hello Julian,
Those LCD's cost 6 Eur here and I thought that they were cheap :)
On whether to use an Arduino or similar in a finished project, it depends. If you want something quick and reliable, but not necessairly cheap or small, an Arduino + Proto Board in one of the snap-together containers is very good. If it needs to be cheaper and you have time, you can program up a bare ATMega on a strip board. If you want it really tiny, there's a chance that you can rewrite it for the ATTiny.
Hi Julian
I'm currently experimenting with the RTC Emulator code for the propellor to start the WSPR transmissions.
I can get it to start correctly to within one second. I'll let it run for a few hours and see how accurate the clock remains.
The other fix would be either a dedicated RTC chip (Arduino shields with a ds1307 and battery are available), a gps receiver (little overkill?) or something based on the dcf time signal!
Or we could just hook up the ethernet board and start posting our received spots to the internet ;-)
73's
Like Stewart, I'm planning on taking a bare ATMega 328 IC which is around £5 to finish off the clock. Its not quite as simple as just plugging it in and burning the code although it doesn't appear to be too difficult. The Arduino platform has a few different methods from tiny almost IC only versions of the Arduino through to ones with prototyping boards attached.
With a bit of luck I'll be able to burn the code onto one IC, remove it from the development board, use that one in the project and replace it with a new IC. Similar to PIC's.
I'll look forward to the WSPR beacon. Sounds great.
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