Shack organise complete

With the shack now reorganised despite lack of shelf space I can now film more YouTube videos in there rather than do them at the dining table, which I have been doing lately

My operating area is set up with 2 CBs and a 2/70 radio so I have a choice of what to operate, my 10-meter rig is in the house but my house power supply can only deliver 7 Amps 50% duty cycle, so I do plan to swap it out and relocate that power supply to the bedroom so as to be able to run the Team RoadCom-FS from it for the benefit of my wife when she does return to the UK.

My antennas are all by the door, and the coax cables are in a box under the desk next to the computer tower, the radios I am not using are on the shelves behind the desk right now until such times as I can put them on their own dedicated shelving unit which I hope to do possibly by May if all works out as to plan.

My electronics workbench is organised to some extent as well, and as I have a Heathkit valve voltmeter I'd like to get working I have a means to connect it to a mains supply temporarily, I suspect both valves will need replacing as will one electrolytic capacitor, the flex will also get replaced, this will feature on my electronics channel and I should be able to obtain the valves, and hopefully a valve tester, from a radio rally.

I have even organised the HT charging corner again, however the video editing area is still on my camping table, this should hopefully get sorted out in the next couple of months as I need the table for the National Hamfest 2020

I have yet to set up the camcorder and tripod in there for future YouTube videos, however I have filmed one showing the shack, and failing to answer the question as to why CBers call linear amplifiers 'burners', is it because they get hot and burn you? who knows.

The video is at this link and is included below.

73 de M0WNU/26CT730

organising the shack, at last

The last couple of days I've spent time organising the shack, trying to get it organised and ready for new YouTube videos and hopefully equipment pending live streams as well, today has been spent finishing decluttering the operating position and testing the shackcam which I had to disconnect at some point though I forget why I did this.

At my operating position now is my QYT KT-8900D for 2-meters and 70cm, my President Grant II for 11-meters/CB, and my TTI TCB-550 to act as a Zello to CB bridge. there is a switch screwed into the desk that split the CB feed between the shack and the bedroom left over from when my XYL was in the UK last. I do plan to reinstate that feed when I get some more coaxial cable, I may replace the radio for a Team base station radio if I can find one, as it would use the same mic and my wife liked the Team mic over the Midland one, as the radio in the shack at the time was the Midland Alan 78 Plus Multi B, the President Grant II was not used for reasons I won't explain, and the Team RoadCom FS UK was used in the bedroom, where it still remains and it still works as I have put it on a dummy load to test, as all the radios in the shack were as well.

The next stage is to remove clutter from the area where the computer is located, though this cannot be seen on the shackcam as it is just out of the field of view whereas the radios and the keyboard, mouse and monitor are in the field of view, this will allow free movement of the chair, my old desk chair as I might get a new one for the living room computer, and also I need to return the coax storage box to the underneath of the desk,

Then there is my work bench by the window, at the moment I have had to pile things onto it so I can sort them out, also there is my large collection of RadCom and Practical Wireless issues (though I am debating whether I continue to buy that and its sister publication due to how the current publisher treated Dave M0OGY when he started doing a CB column in Radio User, the sister publication to Practical Wireless), the RadCom issues will keep building up as of course I am a member of the RSGB and I don't buy Practical Wireless often.

Then comes the HT charging area and the video editing area, the desk still needs expanding over the video editing area which will allow the audio mixing desk to be countersunk into the desk keeping those cables underneath and out of the way and thus allowing me to remove the camping table, I intend to ensure the desk is finished to that extent prior to Hamfest 2020 as I'll need the camping table for it, the HT charging area just needs a general declutter and reorganise.

Hopefully I will have this sorted by the end of this week

73 de M0WNU/26CT730

ShackCam work

With my ShackCam being down for as long as it has I felt it was about time to remedy that situation, prior to my QTH move the camera was to be based around a Raspberry Pi Zero with a camera module inside the housing of a £1 dummy CCTV camera (which I still have and gutted for that reason (was just a couple of wires, battery contacts and a red LED), I plan to buy a newer Pi camera than what I have and a Zero W for this project because the Zero W has the WiFi onboard, power will be the only required cabling to the camera and the shack computer deals with the video feed from the camera.

Though I have moved QTH I plan to use the same camera housing, only this time I cannot fix it to the ceiling as I intended, this time I plan to run an overhead support from either the desk or the shelving unit for the camera, how power will get to it will remain to be seen, which has to be sourced from the mains supply to keep the camera on and ready for the shack computer to pick up the feed.

I also plan to set up a portable operations ShackCam over a 3G/4G connection with a feed back to the home server, I have written up pages to support displaying this however this requires another Raspberry Pi Camera and a 3G or 4G connection to send the data over securely back to the server at home, and a means to power it in the field, battery or solar power would suffice but a Raspberry Pi requires 5VDC and a supply rated at around 2A so I would need to make sure that at least that amount of current is available.

The original plan was to get the ShackCam on after last year's National Hamfest, this fell through for various reasons, including me shutting down the original web server used to host the page, with a new server up and running it is more likely that the ShackCam should return soon.

73 de 2E0EIJ

ShackCam progress

As you will know I am working on building a dedicated camera for the ShackCam out of a Raspberry Pi Zero, the current incarnation of the Pi Camera (I have the original Pi Camera which I am reserving for another project anyway), and a £1 dummy CCTV camera which has been gutted (with it simply being an LED, some wires, and a switch).

The initial idea for this was to use Raspbian and Motion to run the camera, sending the stream out to the programme on the shack computer that I used previously with the Dazzle and the JVC Everio camcorder, however I found a suitable operating system for the Pi that will allow me to dispense with the complicated setup procedure, motionEyeOS.

For the Raspberry Pi this has a unique feature called Fast Network Cam, with it I can stream the camera output to the shack computer over the existing WiFi network with minimal setup, naturally I will set this up before the ShackCam goes into it's final place so I can see an output while I move the camera about and see where it is best being positioned to get the best view of the shack.

I've also made some changes to the web page the image is displayed on, firstly a Copyright notice that had gone missing during a previous edit some time ago was reinstated, secondly the "about" page was linked to as the hyperlink went missing at some point in time, this is set to open a new tab, tested to work in Chrome (computer, tablet and phone versions) and Microsoft Edge (computer and phone version) though in the computer version of Edge the link to the about page is not very visible due to the blue background I chose for the page until after you open it, but I doubt many people are actually using Edge anyway so I won't bother to fix it, as I cannot test on other browsers I can't guarantee the page will work as intended, but as long as the browser can handle HTML properly you should be fine.

I was also thinking about putting on a mobile ShackCam as well for those occasions I am working portable but of course that would depend on me getting suitable 3G coverage at portable locations, the Everio would not last more than 90 minutes doing this and I'd need a machine I could run off a battery for a long time, the Raspberry Pi's energy usage makes this a suitable candidate again with a Pi Camera and the above OS if possible, worth looking at, this will be added to the ShackCam page if I go ahead with it, I may pick up a 3G or 4G compatible router for this and utilise the Pi3's onboard WiFi again if I decide to go ahead with it, though as the year is progressing I may not do any portable operating for a while.

The improved home ShackCam should be operational sometime next month after the National Hamfest.

73 de M6RSQ/26CT730

ShackCam improvements

As you are aware, I have a shack cam which currently is offline due to no video hardware being connected, until my windows were replaced this was my JVC Everio camcorder connected to a Dazzle USB capture device, this worked ok as a stop gap but a problem was ongoing with the video connection at the Dazzle end, one of the connectors was not making connection properly and was flaky.

So, what to do, reinstating the Dazzle was an idea but this device has a strange interlacing effect which sometimes was apparent whenever I got up out of my chair and moved past the camera, so instead I look at something a little bit smaller and also on the network and a dedicated device, the Raspberry Pi and the Pi camera, as well as a dummy CCTV camera, the pound shop sell small dummy CCTV cameras and at time of writing the Raspberry Pi Zero, of which I already own one, now has a camera connector on the board, this happened after I bought mine so will need to buy a second one at the same time as the camera, also the Pi Zero has very little in the way of current consumption, and adding WiFi to it would make life easier as the Pi Zero has no Ethernet at all and should still keep current draw low.

This setup should work with the software I use on my shack computer to run the feed, which is currently running at boot and not sending images as it has no video source at this time, effectively I plan to make a custom IP camera using mostly off the shelf parts rather than spending a lot of money on an off the shelf IP camera, all I need is a camera, no fancy features, and as I have a light in the shack at night I do not need a camera equipped with Infrared.

Hopefully I will get the new and improved ShackCam online very soon, this might happen after the Hamfest though but we'll see, I have kept the link up to the ShackCam page over this time but of course with it not sending imagery out the most you will see is a "no device" warning.

73 de M6RSQ/26CT730

T2LT revisited

I've been on an antenna theme recently, what with both a Slim Jim and a 2-meter dipole written about (the latter being made, the former an idea I can put to some use), and I continue with a favourite CB antenna of mine, the T2LT, the person who made the original video showing how to build this antenna, Gary 26CTX104, remade the video into a two-parter where he went into a little more detail and built another T2LT, it turns out the video was published well over a year ago and I'd not done a lot of CB at that point and was just starting out on Amateur radio, but CB is a bit of fun now and again but some good contacts can be made on 11 meters depending on the solar cycle amongst other things.

So, as you will know I already have a T2LT antenna built, and have tried it out but using only 4 watts into it (perhaps less on battery powered rigs as these radios are designed to run on 13.8V DC whereas my sealed battery is about 12 volts and a pack of AA batteries don't deliver much for long, handhelds are not counted here) though conditions were not favourable for me

So, the plan is this, get the antenna up on my fibreglass mast, inserted into a parasol base or attached to a secondary mast (no more than 1.5 meters) that will fit a parasol base (this avoids planning constraints as the antenna can be removed with relative ease), run a feeder to my "shack", plug the Grant II into it with my good SWR meter for CB in line (I have 3 CB meters and one VHF/UHF meter) and check to see how well it is tuned up, and try and make some CB QSOs (using my CT call if it is still valid which it should be), naturally I will be carrying out some other tests, I just need a volunteer to sit in the "shack" to transmit, as it's CB and anyone can use it without needing a license, for that test the CB magmount will go on my current car connected to the car adaptor of one of my handhelds, the Intek H-520 would be ideal for this as it has a large readable S-meter over the Midland Alan 42 Multi, though both have an S-meter.

So, I am keen to give this a go so Saturday will be a shopping day for some bits

73 de 26CT730

Progress with the shack

I may or may not have mentioned in my last post about rearranging the shack somewhat, as it stands the work I have done thus far is as follows

• Moved the existing Maplin PSU to the shack desk and placed above it a Unilab multi-voltage power supply that I acquired recently, the Unilab supply is unique in that is has AC and DC output and the mains cable coming out of the front, it also has a carry handle, both these power supplies are in the place where my Midland BaseCamp446 used to be, that is on top of the supplies
• removed an empty computer case to bring the top of the two in-use computers level with the desk, freeing up some space to move my soldering station and allow easy access to the power leads for the various chargers and power supplies.
• Brought in the President Grant II CB radio and connected it to power and my homebrew extension speaker (after rewiring the speaker cable), this awaits some form of antenna
• placed the chargers for the Wouxun and the two Baofeng handhelds in easy reach, the two Baofeng chargers are on top of the Grant II temporarily, the Wouxun charger is on top of the soldering station base unit.
• Nailed a hook into the wall for my Sony MDR-V150 headphones, I chose these over the Sony MDR-XD200 headphones, the MDR-V150 headphones are plugged into the front port of the shack computer
• Relocated the DVD rack that is behind the television in my living room further back to allow the shackcam to be relocated further back until it can be swapped out for a Raspberry Pi on the network, a possibility as I should have one Ethernet cable spare after an IPTV installation which is to come, thus freeing the camcorder currently in use for other things.

To do is mount the monitor to the wall, the current monitor is a Samsung SyncMaster 152v, this is a 4:3 monitor with a 100x100 VESA mount, once this is done further desk space will be made available for the shack and accommodation of new radios for other bands will be possible, a base 2-meters rig is something I am after and I plan to use one with a homebrew antenna, hopefully I can get a suitable all-mode rig at Newark in September as right now I am stuck with 2-meters FM on handies and mobile. as for CB, the Grant II is my new home rig as I plan to part ways with the Moonraker FA5000, antenna wise, for 2-meters I plan to cobble something together and for CB I may get away with my existing or a second T2LT.
I am pleased with progress so far and hope to have things finished in the next week or so, starting with the monitor as moving it to the wall is priority number one as the more desk space I can free up the better


73 de M6RSQ/26CT730

ShackCam tests, one week on

The shackcam has been running for one week and I am pleased to report that on it's current hardware (after some bodging by me to the Dazzle hardware) that is is working just fine, the website itself has been updated to include my Amateur callsign as the primary callsign, with my CT callsign being secondary as it is not really an official callsign and I've not done a lot of CB or 446 work in a while and the bulk of my transmissions have been on 2-meters since my license came through.

I plan to move all my radio operations (except /m and /p of course) back to the shack in the coming weeks, my handhelds are being charged elsewhere and Echolink is currently running on my laptop though I plan to keep it on there for the foreseeable future, but it's on my phone as well

With the shackcam working as it should be I am happy, the shack computer will be shut down at some stage to allow the monitor to be wall mounted to free up the desk space it currently occupies for such items such as radio chargers, so expect to see changes soon

73 de M6RSQ/26CT730 on CB/PMR446

ShackCam tests

I've put my shackcam back on for testing, this is in part after I discovered a fault with the FTPd running on my server (the server itself is also visible on the shackcam as it is on the shelves that seperate my living room between living area and shack), and to ensure the hardware is still up to the job until a better camera can take it's place, it appears to be but it has been erroring out periodically.

The camera will be on for the next week in order to ascertain if it is working as it should be, if it is then  I have no further work that I need to do, if not then I will need to do some further work, so I can put a proper 2/70 rig into the shack as I plan to operate on both the 2-meter and 70cm bands in the coming months,

The link for the shackcam is unchanged and is on the right hand side of this page.

73 de M6RSQ (or 26CT730 on CB/PMR446)

Another shack desk tidy up

With the imminent arrival of the President Grant 2 (this will be tomorrow all being well) the shack desk was in need of a little bit of a clear up, it wasn’t bad but there were things on there that really weren’t needed to be there as I was not using them such as tubes of solder, knife, veroboard track cutting tool, some screws, a hopeless coax stripper (I need a new one) and a roll of electrical tape, as well as my second of my two portable power leads, I decided to leave my Midland Alan 78 Plus Multi B on the desk just in case I may need it on for whatever reason.

I will be recording a “first look” video of the President Grant 2, like I mentioned in previous posts (though I didn’t mention this on the Tan Hill video, but it’s good my YouTube account is getting some use again), on-air tests will come later when I build a T2LT or get a car, whichever comes first(I of course I still cannot install my Sirio GPE 27 5/8 wave as I live in a rented flat and it isn’t a very portable antenna)

So hopefully about 7pm-ish tomorrow my President Grant 2 will be here, a review video should be on here and YouTube by about 9pm at the very latest.

 

73 de 26CT730

President Grant 2 to be ordered soon maybe? (also a shack computer update)

I may place an order for a President Grant 2 next week if my finances look good, this will allow me to operate on SSB, in particular on my DXpedition to Tan Hill, however I will see what's what.

The reason I chose the President Grant 2 is several reasons, it is the first legal rig that allows you to switch between the new modes in the UK band (this is a recent update to the firmware in the radio), the radio is fitted with a power socket on the rear that the power lead plugs in to, this is similar to my Moonraker FA5000, a rig I hardly use now.

The President Grant 2 is easy to open up to export mode, inside there's a white wire and a jumper block, simply snip the wire and move the jumper, at the loss of your warranty and and your own risk, you also would lose the UK setting but you can get this back by moving the jumper back to it's original position.

It support's President's Liberty wireless microphone, a great idea that no one really thought of in the past, means you are not tied to sitting in the shack or your /p station, you can take a wander if you like, up to 100 meters I think it is, much like a DECT phone or a bluetooth headset.

Another nice feature of the rig is a choice of two backlight colours, orange and green, which also includes a dimmer so you're not blinding youself with a bright backlight at night.

There are other features as well on the rig but I'll do a full write up when I actually get hold of one, hopefully in a couple of weeks all being well

My shack computer has had a new motherboard, RAM, and CPU ordered for it, this would help with performance with regards to SDR use, there are incompatibility issues with the hard disk, optical drive, and existing graphics card, the hard drive has had an adaptor ordered for it to allow it to continue to work, the optical drive will be rectified later as it's not important at this time, the power supply should be sufficient for the new board, the only card that will be fitted is to be the CMI8738 sound card that the machine already has and that is compatible with the board.

Performance with SDR# has been dire with the RTL-SDR operating, the FRN client does work... just, the shackcam feed isn't really reliable on the machine (it's controlled by it both hardware and software, though I intend to replace this with a network camera,, which will make it software and link), and with plans to do the Amateur radio foundation exam as well I want the machine to reliably handle the Echolink software.  Another radio software installed on the machine is Zello, this runs reasonably OK but I tend not to use it as I use it on my phone more than I do on the computer.

Programming my Wouxun KG-UVD1P has proven unreliable with this machine, upgrading the internal hardware may be sufficient to remedy this (the official software, that is practically incomprehensible, works fine, the easier KG-UV commander doesn't read the radio properly, though it could be a bug with the software rather than the computer).

I should be taking delivery of the motherboard and it's ancillaries by Wednesday at the latest, for fitting that evening, which will take out the 446 gateway for a couple of hours but this is no real issue, the RAM on the existing board, if compatible, will be used in the 446 gateway computer to hopefully try and improve things, the GPU in that machine will also be swapped out with the one in the shack computer as I feel the one currently fitted to it is wasted in it and would be useful in another installation.

So, a better shack computer and maybe, just maybe, a President Grant 2 will be sitting on my shack desk soon, but we will see :)

73 de 26CT730

26CT730 ShackCam once again operational

The ShackCam is now once again operational, however I am testing it so it may go on and off intermittently during the course of the day and it won't be shut down overnight.

The link to view it is on the right as always, and as always it is a JVC camcorder fed by a Dazzle DVC100 frame grabber, however I am looking to cobble together a WiFi network camera with better quality than the Dazzle can offer (the JVC camcorder is otherwise pretty good video wise), a network camera will also offer flexibility as if I need the camcorder for it's intended use the ShackCam doesn't need to be reinstated.

But for now it's running, I'm not in the shack at time of writing but I will be on and off through the day.

73 de 26CT730