Combined transceiver with antenna concept

[WA3LTJ]

I don't know if anyone else is following this topic, but here is a progress report.  The system is working. I did the first fully battery-powered test yesterday. The loop antenna has a new component. I installed a slider potentiometer pot to accurately locate the loop capacitor position. The Raspberry Pi now uses I2C to sample analog via a ADS1115 breakout board. That provides a 15 bit raw A/D value across the potentiometer range. The loop antenna has 3 different wire elements (0.9 ft, 3.3 ft, 5 ft diameters). I have a calibration table for each wire element. The tables can be selected from the Node-RED dashboard. A Python program automatically tunes the loop to the desired frequency using the dashboard.  

Another recent change was to use a pocket router for the Wi-Fi. It accepts my cell phone as an Internet tether. With the cell phone connected and running the pocket router off a cellphone power bank (battery), the phone stays charged and the Wi-Fi can be put anywhere between the antenna and the laptop.

 

[K3MRI]

On 4/30/2023 at 6:53 PM, WA3LTJ said:

I don't know if anyone else is following this topic, but here is a progress report.  The system is working. I did the first fully battery-powered test yesterday. The loop antenna has a new component. I installed a slider potentiometer pot to accurately locate the loop capacitor position. The Raspberry Pi now uses I2C to sample analog via a ADS1115 breakout board. That provides a 15 bit raw A/D value across the potentiometer range. The loop antenna has 3 different wire elements (0.9 ft, 3.3 ft, 5 ft diameters). I have a calibration table for each wire element. The tables can be selected from the Node-RED dashboard. A Python program automatically tunes the loop to the desired frequency using the dashboard.  

Another recent change was to use a pocket router for the Wi-Fi. It accepts my cell phone as an Internet tether. With the cell phone connected and running the pocket router off a cellphone power bank (battery), the phone stays charged and the Wi-Fi can be put anywhere between the antenna and the laptop.

Every day you impress me more. Not your goal, I know, but hey...

[WA3LTJ]

I did a POTA deployment to test the system. Like all good testing, I found a fist full of bugs. I got zero QSOs, but realized later that I was transmitting on the wrong sideband. Unlike my rig, my software did not switch sidebands when switching bands. I have some updating to do with the software. Meanwhile, I am leveraging what I have learned from the Node-RED project and am building a new manual controller for the loop antenna.