TeensyMaestro

KD0RC

Hi David, So far, so good. You have the display properly wired to the Teensy board.

This screen comes up when the TeensyMaestro does not connect to the radio. It allows you to use it as a stand-alone keyer.

Check that the little ethernet cable connectors are completely seated on the ethernet jack and Teensy boards, and that the ethernet cable is properly connected.

If that is not it, show me a picture of the whole setup, including the Teensy board and cabling. Maybe I will be able to spot something.

If it is not something obvious, then I will show you how to get the diagnostics from the USB connection.

ct1drb

Hi there,

I think now is much better:

Best 73 es tks all.

CT1DRB/OK8RB

David Quental

KD0RC

Excellent! You will have a fully functioning TeensyMaestro soon!

ct1drb

Hello all,

well, I am very happy with the TeensyMaestro.

Now it will be a question to join the needed material.

Best 73 es tks.

CT1DRB/OK8RB

David Quental

Lasse SM5GLC

I have been busy redrawing schematic and PCB for the carrier board. Need to do a another look over before I can release it... Bascially it is just a bunch of sockets, connectors, capacitors, and pull-up resistors. Will do a short write up for the prospective builder once I have built one and checked it out.

KD0RC

Thanks for all you have done with this Lasse! This project has been needing a PC board for a long time...

Lasse SM5GLC

This is how it looks tonight... will try to spot any errors tomorrow :) I am pretty sure there will be a few more changes.

and bottom

Most of the SMD are really optional :)

And yes by just looking at these pics, I have noticed some layout improvements that I will do tomorrow.

KD0RC

Wow, very impressive!

What are the two components on the bottom that have the blue circles?

WX7Y

Excellent Work Lasse, The Board layouts look really good.

you are a very talented person and I think your amazing for sharing your great work.

Can't wait till the Board design is ready for prime time, I was going to start my Teensy Maestro point to point wiring project but I'm going to wait for the boards are ready.

Lasse SM5GLC

The componets are filtering inductors, and together with the capacitors should reduce any noise to or from the board "PSU". I use a switched regulator that has the same pinning as the old 7805, but with an efficiency of 85-90%. This a re-use from another project, so it's likey overkill here. But as we discussed earlier, all that can be leaved out if on decides to go for USB-power only.

Not sure if I'm brave enough to order the PCB partly populated, will have to look at lead times.

/Lasse SM5GLC

Lasse SM5GLC

Received the PCB today, and spent the evening soldering. Not too bad, realized I have not really thought how the connectors should be rotated. No biggie, as one can change how to stuff the wires in the connector. Running out of time tonight so the 9 small encoders will have to wait until tomorrow. But VFO and buttons, and touch screen works. Have to start think about the enclosure....

/Lasse SM5GLC

ct1drb

Hello Lasse et all,

very nice and clean PCB indeed, to me is almost perfect because I will have to deal with SMDs, I do not have tools to it grrrr and they are a lot.

Otherwise it is a very cool project.

Best 73 all tks for information Lasse

CT1DRB/OK8RB

David Quental

PS: nexts day I will have encoders and will get more material, later on I will my enclosure.

WX7Y

Wow Lasse, Looking great I am very impressed with your handywork and can't wait to get my project started.

Good time to check out a air SMD soldering station so I can get up to date.

Can't wait for your finished project and the finished boards layout are done.

73

Bret

WX7Y

KD0RC

Wow, that looks really great Lasse!

What are these parts?

This is excellent progress, and I am sure others will really appreciate having a nice set of boards to solder to.

Lasse SM5GLC

The hexagon shaped things is just ferrite chokes... The small black square is a pin compatible uA7805 replacement, but a switcher and has 85-90% efficiency, so no heat is devloped. Both these are redundant if powered by USB. I had these at hand from other projekts :)

As for soldering, this is really big components, i.e. 0805 :D I use a simple jewellers loupe 3x a fine tip solder pen and plenty of light. Not as neat as done with stencile, paste and hot air, but fast and cheap. Those who intend to order boards from China, they offer to populate the board with the SMD-parts for peanuts, it will take bit longer. I might give it a try with my next design.

I hope to have it all up and running tomorrow evening, and then start to do a small write-up for those who want to use the layout.

/Lasse SM5GLC

KD0RC

Ah, OK that makes sense. Well 805 sized SMD parts are pretty easy to solder with a fine-tipped iron and small gauge solder. I recently hand-soldered an SDR transceiver with 805 parts and had no problems. If you can get all those capacitors pre-populated, all the better!

Thanks for all you have done Lasse, the project is much better for it. I look forward to seeing your write-up. When you are ready, send me whatever you would like to have posted on my GitHub page for the TeensyMaestro.

Lasse SM5GLC

Finally got some time to continue testing. Looking good, now need to box it up. Noticed a few glitches, but this may be due to my radio running old f/w. Anyway, I consider this a success so far! Will try to patch together a description and bundle with design files for Les to put on Github, rather sooner than later :)

/Lasse

KD0RC

Looking good Lasse! Can we see a picture of the front panel?

Software version in the radio should not make much difference. What kinds of glitches are you seeing?

Lasse SM5GLC

I'll pass on glitches at the moment, need to look into it further. One thing though, the red dot indicating transmitter active, does not show when transmitting from memory. And I cannot abort transmission with keyboard ESC.

Still a nice addition to the station :) And will be even nicer with a proper box.

/Lasse

Lasse SM5GLC

Not sure if this is the final version of front panel. Beeing right-handed itmay be better ergonmy to move screen and buttons to the left and have all encoders to the right (except for speed control), not have the hand obstruct the display. But I need more time to get used to the Teensy first.

Also relocate the connectors on the pcb to reverse side could give a cleaner wire routing and better access to to the Teensy. Might try that, as I still have jst one more blank PCB :)

73

Lasse SM5GLC

KD0RC

Looks good Lasse! I am glad to see it all come together so nicely.

To try alternate panel layouts, I recommend using a piece of cardboard. I went through about four different layouts before landing on the current one. The final cardboard layout provided a drilling template for my actual panel. Much easier and cheaper to cut cardboard than aluminum or steel.

Here is an early attempt before I decided to add a touch-screen.

Good catch on the transmit light when transmitting the Teensy memories. I will look into that.

The keyboard has no connection to the Teensy (there is no connection to the computer, other than for diagnostic messages), so the only way to abort a message is to tap a paddle or straight key plugged into the TeensyMaestro. At one time I tried to abort messages by pressing any of the buttons, but it had bad side effects, so I abandoned it. The SK and paddles are interrupt-driven, so they can be made to stop the message instantaneously without worrying where the program is executing. I will think about this some more as it is good practice to be able to stop a message from the box itself.

An exception to this rule is if you select FLEX as the CW Message Source (CW Menu, item 1). If you have CWX open and it has focus, then the ESC button will stop the message, just as if you pressed a function key. The SK or paddles will stop the message either way.

I got your message about the VFO B encoder running backwards. I'm sure this is true, and it is my fault. When I built the original prototype (which is now my final product...), I just wired as I went and didn't think about any other TeensyMaestros ever being built. I adjusted the code to run the correct direction for the random way I wired the encoders. Now we are stuck with that, so any encoders that run backwards just need a wire swap to fix. Before you put yours into a box, test all encoders to be sure they run the right direction. It is much easier to correct them now than once they are buried in an enclosure.

KD0RC

Hi Lasse, Here is an updated version (1.040 Beta 1) that fixes the transmit indicator when using the message 1 - 12 buttons. Please let me know if you have any issues with it.

TeensyMaestroPlusKeyerV001.040B1.ino.zip

Changelog:

*****************************V 1.040 * **************************
  Fixed bug where the red transmit indicator did not work properly when sending CW messages (Thanks Lasse, SM5GLC for finding this).
  Fixed Adafruit STMPE610 library to clear up conflict with the TSC2007 library (TS_Point ==> TS_Point610).
  Recompiled with Adafruit library updates to HX8357, STMPE610, TSC2007 and many others.

Apparently, Adafruit released a bunch of library changes recently and this caused a conflict between the obsolete STMPE610 and the new TSC2007 touch screen control libraries. Since STMPE610 won't be updated further, I just changed the conflicting name there. When I put the new 1.040 code up to GitHub, I will include that one-off lib change. Note that the STMPE610 board will continue to work in the TeensyMaestro, so if you have one on hand, it is safe to use in this project. There is no functional difference in the operation of the TM between the 610 and 2007 boards.

I won't put the new code on GitHub until I have used it for a while, but in the meantime, all TeensyMaestro builders should feel free to use this beta version. Please post here if you encounter any TeensyMaestro bad behavior.

Lasse SM5GLC

Great support Len,

Thanks. Will test as soon as I can find some time :) Likely during the weekend.

Cheers

Lasse

Lasse SM5GLC

Len,

the new 1.040B1 do work as intended! Great work.

Not sure if this is OK (reading about the feature available with SSDR 3.xx, I' at 2.4.10) but I do not have A nor B on the display and no indication on which slice is active. But touching the empty area will indeed make the slice active as seen on SSDR.

Now next nagging would be pulse slipping. Understand it may be a problem, but it seems pulses from VFO encoders do slip a lot, played with the settings lowered from default 20 to 5 and things looked promising until I started to "spin" the knob a bit faster. Would overclocking the Teensy improve this? As I assume it is due to interrupt routine not beeing fast enough... One way could be sensing the rate of pulses and increase the step size accordingly. The Flexcontrol seems to handle this pretty good.

Cheers

Lasse

KD0RC

Hi Lasse, the Teensy is clocked at 600 MHz. I originally built this using an Arduino Due clocked at 84 MHz. The Due was more than fast enough to keep up with the encoders, so I don't think overclocking the Teensy will have any effect other than shortening its life.

I have not noticed dropped pulses, but it is certainly possible. I wonder if it is the network that is dropping them.

I took a half-hearted attempt at encoder acceleration and didn't have any success.

Here is something to try. With one slice open, go to the Misc Menu and select VFO Tracking On. Set slice A to a step of 100 Hz and slice B to 500 Hz. Now the slice A VFO will tune at a 100 Hz rate and the B VFO will tune at a 500 Hz rate. This only works if you are using one VFO.

Lasse SM5GLC

Hi Len,

not sure what that test would prove, but did try and yes the VFO did track as expected.

The issue I see is that it seems to be a sweet spot, i.e. number of pulses from the encoder that gives the fastest stepping, if i rotate the encoder faster, the Teensy seems to start dropping and hence tuning slower. I did look at the pulses with my scope and they do look pretty normal, so nothing there. Traffic over ethernet should not be an issue, I see 75 kbps while tuning and 45 kbps when steady upstream, should be plent of headroom even if 10Mbit interface. This on my GB-switch just for radio.

To summarize, if I tune s-l-o-w I get like 4 kHz per revolution with 10 Hz step size, and if I turn the knob fast it drops to somthing like 240 Hz per revolution, given that I set the VFO rate parameter in the ini-file to 5 (was default 20).

73

Lasse SM5GLC

KD0RC

Hi Lasse, it wasn't a test, it is an alternate way to get multiple tuning rates at the same time. When I am on CW, I set VFO A to 10 Hz and VFO B to 100 Hz. When I am on SSB, I set them to 100 Hz and 500 Hz.

That being said, I don't normally spin the VFO looking for stations. If I want to move quickly up or down, I use the mouse in SmartSDR.

During contests when the band is crowded, I set up as above and tune with the VFO knobs. This lets me keep focus on the logging program and gives me two tuning rates, one on each VFO knob.

I suppose there may be a limit to the rate at which the radio can take commands. Another possibility is overrunning the command buffer in the TeensyMaestro. That is part of the library, not the code that I authored. I will take a look to see if I can see anything there.

Lasse SM5GLC

Hi Len,

Ok, understand now :)

A pity if there is a limitation with-in the s/w as an heritage to a slower processor.

Anyway, I'll try to do a write up on the PCB and send it to you.

73

Lasse SM5GLC

KD0RC

HI Lasse, the Teensy is over 7 times faster than the Arduino Due in clock speed alone. Other factors give it even more advantage in processing speed (over 24 times faster executing the CoreMark benchmark). The slowest available Arduino would be more than fast enough to keep up with the encoders, so there is no issue with the software running in the Teensy.

I look forward to your write-up! I will post it and any gerbers, etc that you want to my GitHub site.

Lasse SM5GLC

Hi Len,

yes I have seen the numbers on the PJRC page, along with the info on overclocking to 816 MHz with-out external cooling :) I introduced a colleague to the Teensy, as he had been using ESP32 for smaller projects, but having TCP/IP rather than WiFi and higher speed really made him happy. And of course I had to do a few PCB's for him too... So it was quite a simple port to do the TeensyMaestro.

73

Lasse SM5GLC