My second SOTA activation is done. Monika (DL6SCF) and I made a short hiking trip on the Swabian Alps. On top of the Kornberg we made a stop and started the activation ... unfortunately we have to shut down operation due to a rising thunderstorm.

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Kategorie: SOTA

Since the beginning of my home automation project I made several tests to choose the right platform and right controller. I've done test with various sensor technologies etc. etc.
Most of the articels can be found in the Arduino category.

One decision was, that my webhost should be the main datastore for all data measured. With this decision, I've started to build a data collection and distribution infrastructure. The complete setup consists of two major components:

These components are detailed further down the page.

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Kategorie: IoT Internet of Things

During a business trip, I took the chance to activate a mountain in the Bavarian low mountains - Kleiner Kulm.

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Kategorie: SOTA

Currently I've done 6 QSOs with the Frog and my dipole antenna.

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Kategorie: QRP

Yesterday I've build the FROG SOUNDS 40m CW QRP transceiver.

I've ordered it as a kit from eBay Seller for about €10,- inclusive shipping to DL. The kit arrived well packed after about 15 days in my postbox.

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Kategorie: QRP

 615B(c) DL1RF

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Kategorie: hamware

I've planned to sell my ELECRAFT K2 so I placed some adds in the various HAM sources and I found a buyer willing give my K2 a new home.

Fortunately I decided to do a quick check on the K2 functions, to be sure, that the buyers receives a full functional K2.

I did the check in the late afternoon on 80m and I was shocked - strong stations can be received every 7kHz. Testing the transmitter shows a totally unstable RF signal.

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Kategorie: Transceiver

All information regardung vna/J is moved to my new site

http://vnaj.dl2sba.com

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Kategorie: vna/J

Alle Informationen bezüglich vna/J sind auf eine neue Webseite umgezogen:

http://vnaj.dl2sba.com

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Kategorie: vna/J

I've developed a small interface board for the HAMWARe controller AT-502, AT-515 and AT-651U. This interface boards supports RS232 and CI-V communications and can be directly mounted into the controller chassis.

DSCF2112 DSCF4106 DSCF4108 DSCF4109 DSCF4112

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Kategorie: hamware

I've developed firmware version supporting the AT-615U tuners from hamware.

DSCF2116

You can find further information in the (German) manual. Parts are available at cost price. Please check here.

 

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Kategorie: hamware

I've ordered the LF-converter BX-082 kit from the German HAM Radio magazine FUNKAMATEUR already some months ago and now found the time to build and test it.

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Kategorie: Transceiver

It all started with an article in the issue July 2014 of the German amateur radio magazine FUNKAMATEUR. Martin Kumm, DC3MKB published in this issue an interesting article for a smart SMD soldering station based on the well know ARDUINO UNO.

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Kategorie: Tools

Logbook

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Kategorie: Raspberry Pi

After my first experiments with 2elemtry, I decided to give MOSQUITTO a try. Mosquitto is a small MQTT message broker, which provides basically the same functionality like 2lemetry.

Here the steps, I got Mosquitto up und running on my Windows 8 machine:

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Kategorie: Arduino

In this post, I've showed, how to setup Mosquitto on an Windows 8 machine. Now let me describe, howto connect an Arduino via Ethernet to the running Mosquitto MQTT broker.

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Kategorie: Arduino

Based on the work of John, M0UKD, I've build a small sensor-keyer. I used a surplus aluminium shelf and two aluminium stand-offs as "paddles".

See the evolution of this project here.

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Kategorie: Shack

During my researches for my home automation project I also stumbled across the MQTT protocol for sensor-server-communication. A matching arduino library was found quickly here on Nick's blog. An arduino sketch was quickly copied from here and modified. Download my version from here.

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Kategorie: Arduino

I've created a new firmware for the hamware AT-515 tuner.

Please check a detailled description in this manual (currently German only)

*** The RAW-Mode for the interface is no longer supported ***

Some parts are available at cost price. Please check here.

 

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Kategorie: hamware

Ein richtig gut gemachter Film des DARC!

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Kategorie: Allgemein

The MODBUS-slave with the capacitive water level sensor is now mounted inside a die cast aluminium case.

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Kategorie: Arduino

This is the second PCB I've developed. It is an arduino-shield for my home automation project. It is also devoped using CADSoft EAGLE and was produced by PCB-Devboards in Germany.

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Kategorie: Arduino

The hardware for the MODBus master is mounted on DIN-rails inside a cheap installation box.

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Kategorie: Arduino

In the previous article regarding the capacitive water level sensor, I've presented two different electrode designs:

  • A coaxial electrode made from a rectangular aluminium tube an a  single isolated wire as "central conductor"
  • A simple twin-wire electrode made from simple speaker-wire

Here my findings regarding each electrode.

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Kategorie: Arduino

Usually the MODBUS protocoll only supports registers based on 16-bit values. If you want to transfer custom datatypes like double, float etc. via the modbus a simple trick can be used.

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Kategorie: Arduino

The electronics for my capacitive (water) level sensor is described here. In this article I will go a little bit in depth regarding the sensor reading and value compensation.

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Kategorie: Arduino

This is a MODBUS-node with a capacitive water level sensor, a DS12S80 temperature sensor and a RS485 interface to the main controller.

This is my first project based on CADSOFT Eagle free-version. I still have to learn a lot for creating 2-layer PCBs :-/

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Kategorie: Arduino

Long time ago I've started my personal home automation project. The first building blocks where some small PCBs for RS485 interfacing and temperature sensing. Later I've started outlining a controller architecture for my home automation projects.

Currently my infastructure looks like this:

OVER1

From top to bottom:

The Arduino Mega256 is the MODBUS master with connection the internet data collection server. The Seeeduino is acting as a MODBUS slave providing 4 analog and 1 digital register.

Read on about the next steps here:

 

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Kategorie: Arduino

I've bought this I2C LCD interface board NG2 from this seller on eBay.

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Kategorie: Arduino

Für den ersten nanoKeyer habe ich mir zwar das Original-Gehäuse gekauft, aber der Einfachheit halber eine simple Alu-Fronplatte genommen. So richtig schick war die auf Dauer nicht. Es wurde langsam Zeit, dass er noch eine schöne Frontplatte bekommt.

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Kategorie: Shack

2014 CW (Morse Telegraphy) was added to the German Nationwide Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage.