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Thank you in seventy three. I hope you enjoy it all right man.
Well, Scott, thanks for taking the time out tonight. I know
you've done some updates, and I know you've told me what they are,
but I but I'm gonna let you explain it because you'll say it better than
I will anyway. So yeah, So zero dot nine zero, I think
was the version that I have here and the one we talked about the last
time we want to stream together. So what's the new version? What?
What? What are people being shipped today? Well, the board is a
newer version at zero dot nine one. Okay, why I'm sticking with version
numbers below one. I really don't know. Coming from the computer world.
I used a library called open SSL that for fifteen years had version zero dot
nine eight. It was like they were afraid to actually declare a version one
at any time. Well, okay, it was nine eight nine eight B
nine eight C. So it's kind of the same way with my first venture
into making these kits. So okay, still haven't still haven't got the nerve
to break that one dot zero version on there. And it's the same thing
with the firmware version two. But let me go over first of all,
the board. Yeah, we'll just pull up a copy of pull up the
image of the board there. This is the assembled board. When you turn
it on, it splashes up there and it shows you what version of firmware
it got. You got in there. I'll pull that up again and it's
in this case I've got zero got nine eight firmware running on a zero dot
nine one board. Primary difference from in terms of the physical board from what
we had originally is it actually is stereo. Because I had some people complain
that when they plug a jack in there with plug your little stereo jack in
there, it only comes out one year so in this case, I actually
made the jack compatible with stereo, so you can you can plug in a
stereo headset and you can listen to it that way, or in the case
of my my use, I just have this little speaker that I've plugged in
there, which I've got to set underneath the microphone so you can hear the
chirping. And in addition to that, I've added a little volume roll off
here on the side. It's a little thumb wheel. When Chris had contacted
me about building a three D case, I immediately said, well, let
me make sure that the thumb wheel hangs off the end of the board,
so you will be able to actually use the three D case and be able
to adjust the volume control on the outside. What I actually should have done
is probably moved the plugs to the sides as well, and maybe even the
switch to the side so that it's a little bit easier to access, But
I wasn't thinking that far ahead. And now he was almost done with the
second board layout before he approached me on that, so that the primary changes
on that are the addition of the volume control and support for stereo, and
the manufacturer of the little Schmidt trigger inverter that I used to generate the oscillator.
They became unavailable. I had to replace it with a different supplier.
It's not a big problem except that the thresholds on him are so it actually
squeals at about one killer hurts tone instead of what it used to do was
about four tone. So okay, those are effectively all the changes that we
had physically to the layout of the board. Okay, good and uh,
whenever you want to talk about this later, we can. But people who
had the original version you were handing having them send. In fact, the
salty Ham is in the chat saying tell Scott and thank you for the super
chat. Buddy, Tell Scott, I haven't forgotten about sending my MCU chip
back for updating life Life things cleared, so so we'll send soon. But
up to the first I want to say, it was thirty boards that I
sent had the original version of the firmware, which is the only way to
do the upgrade was using by actually pulling the let me pull this back up
again here, Yeah, actually physically removing the chip and sending it in for
an update, or if you actually are a bit of a hacker and you
do any programming with microchip. This little device here called the pick kit is
what I used to program it. You can attach it to headers that are
right up here, and you can take the firmware and download it straight in
if you're if you're that Darren. But what I did was I actually added
a software update module to an area of ramming here. And if you get
one of these cables, which is a serial TTL cable, let me let
me share. You can buy these on Amazon. Okay, let me pull
this up really quick. No, that's me. I don't want me.
I want to pull that up. This is this is them on Amazon.
It's very important that the one you buy is the three point three or three
v three version that's a three point three volt because this chip is raided for
three volt three point three vaults. They've got a five vault version two,
and you don't want to do that because it would probably damage the chip.
So let me go back to this. But you can take that cable and
you can simply plug it into the side and there's some update software that's available
on my website. So you download that little executeable, tell it what serial
port this is TOM one, two three or whatever, and then tell it
the name of the of the hex file that you want to download, and
right now on the website, there's three different versions. There's the original nine
dot where nine one. Then there's a nine five, and now there's a
nine eight which has a new new feature in it, which we'll get to
later. This is the file. I put a link to this also in
the boxes that I ship out. It's also a QR code. You can
just scan it and go right here. Up here it talks about the instructions
that you get. You can actually click on that and it pulls up a
PDF of all the instructions. Much of this is already part of the assembly,
plus the cable that I was talking about. Let me go back to
the page. So you've got the three diversions of instructions. I've got the
different versions of the original firmware that are available here. These are just hex
files, so you download them and say them, and then there's the extensive
instructions. Same thing that you would see there you would also see here.
I'm sorry. These are the instructions on building the unit. Down here are
the instructions on how you can update the firmware. If you have one of
the newer FIRMWAREES that's after version I think it was thirty five or thirty six,
something like that. So you need this cable here, which is a
three point three vault cable. You'll have to supply this little header that will
connect to over by the knob. You can download an executable that I wrote.
When you plug in the FTDI cable, it will create a new comport,
a new serial port in there tells you how to find out what the
serial port is when you plug it in, and then when you want to
execute the executable, you give it the name of the executable, the name
of the x file that you're upgrading too, and the comport you're sending it
to, and it'll take ten to fifteen minutes to actually do the update.
It's a bit on the slow side because I'm doing a lot of redundancy because
I want to make sure that if there's if there's any corruption in the data,
it doesn't actually try to commit that into the memory. Otherwise you I
think the term would be brick the unit. And then the solution is just
send it your back to me and I'll reflash it. There was a question
that Tank asked while we were offline about which cable is this? Now this
shows it's this cable here, which is you can buy through Amazon. What
happened here, I'm gonna show the pics. There we go. You can
buy this through Amazon. As I said, it's got to be the three
point three volt cable. The other option that I was talking about is this
thing for hackers who have done any kind of little micro microprocessor programming with Microchip,
because that's what this thing uses as a microchip. This you can buy,
but this is pushing like sixty to eighty bucks, so I use it
to program a whole bunch of them. I wouldn't recommend buying it just to
program the Morse Monkey once or twice. But you use this in concert with
Microchip software development environment, and you can plug that directly into if you take
a header and put it up here, you can plug that directly in up
there. The instructions don't go into detail on how to do that, because
I don't imagine there's a whole lot of software engineers or firmware engineers who who
would want to be doing it this way. Don't you have a new software
feature or two? Because I was going to get to that next let's let's
do it. As I'm going through this, let me pull up the picture.
I'll go through the newer features that I've added compared to the original ones
that had come out. First thing we do is we turn it on and
it tells you the version number, in this case zero nine eight. It
defaults to the settings menu. We have the same settings menu between an iambic
keyer or a straight kier. I learned from Jason last time that you had
said that the the the when pushing this forward, the left key is normally
the long and the right key is normally the short for I am the key?
Uh no, backwards of that? Backwards? Okay? Yes, well
we can at least the key that the key that I have is is back.
The right key is the is the daw and the I'm yeah. The
right key is the dad. Left key is that did? Okay, Well,
we can set between either one and we can handle the change. I'll
get to that next. And you know a lot of people change it,
especially if you're left handed. A lot of times that that that's kind of
a personal preference issue. I think I'm not an expert CW guy, but
I believe that's a personal preference issue. So yeah, if you can change
it in the software even even more so, the better we can. But
yeah, okay, great. This next option is turning the background lights on
or off. But I've got so many uh lights shining on this thing,
I can turn it on. Yeah, that helps. You can see that
the lights turn on to give you a background light, but they also offer
you the feedback of either turning green or red for a second if you get
something wrong. So let me see if it's just my desk lights here and
get a little bit of lighting up that green again. Okay, well,
moving on. The next setting is the words per minute, which is you
have an option of eighteen, ten or five. Go back to the ten
is where it usually defaults too. When you're doing I am bickying, obviously,
it really doesn't make any any difference. I'm watching the chat for a
question. Oh yeah, I just I've just been that up there for everybody
else. Okay, you're fine. When you're doing I AM bickying, obviously,
it doesn't make any difference in terms of how long you're holding the paddle
down because it doesn't for you. But it uses the words per minute to
determine how much of a gap, it needs to wait before it decides you're
done keying a letter and then moves on from there. The other setting now
is a side tone, which somebody was asking about when I first came out
with this, and that was whether or not it plays what you key because
it will play things for you that you need to write down or copy,
and it always plays that tone. But this is whether or not it will
actually play what you're tapping on your keyer. And then we have this new
one which you mentioned for straight king or the iambic daw, which is long
whether it's going to use the tip or the ring on the plug, and
you can set it to either be the tip or the ring, and depending
on how you then have the plug wired up, that gives you the ability
to reverse which side of the keyer is going to be the long and which
side is going to be the short for I am a king. And then
also we have the ability to save the settings, so if you hit save,
it will save the settings if it detects any changes. In this case,
I didn't actually change anything, so it didn't save them. This way,
when you turn the power off and turn the power back on, you
don't have to go through all those settings and restore it back to the way
it was. So that's also a new feature. And we go back into
the root menu. We've got practice mode, Dictate mode, Echo mode,
copy mode, which are existing ones in the new Coke mode. So we'll
go through these again really quick. Practice mode just lets you randomly key things
and it will tell you what it thinks you keyed. Can you hear that?
Did you hear the byes? Okayes? I heard three dits and let
me hit well those are DAWs actually, Oh okay, okay, three to
three dits? Yeah, okay, now that I hear the difference, yes,
okay, and then uh an n or yeah, and then an A
and then and if it doesn't know what it is, it gives you a
little last risk, which is I told Frank, takes up less face on
the screen than printing out WTF. Okay, all right. Also I didn't
know that. It Also it also will handle numbers just fine, So when
you're done, just press the button their leaves. The next option is dictate.
In this case it will give you a letter. Now I'm not the
worst code expert, but I do have a nice little cheat sheet that I
use here. So it's asking me for a K, which is simply a
long short long, and it tells you whether or not you got to correct.
Then it's asking for a W and tells you whether or not you got
to correct. When you're done, press that and it tells you how many
you got right and how many you got wrong. Gotcha, and then press
it again and you're back to the root menu again. The next one is
echo. In this case, it's going to play something, not tell you
what it is, and your job is simply to repeat it. So it
will play it, and it tells you whether or not it's correct or whether
it's wrong. It will also if you don't do anything at all, it
will wait ten seconds and then play it again so you can keep listening.
Given me all numbers first, right, Oh there's an age or hi.
Sorry. When you're done it again, we'll give you a score of how
many you got correct and how many you got wrong. The next one is
the one copy. This one, you don't use the key er. Get
out a uh some kind of trusty little note pad, uh like like this
little thing I got from the Hampton when I was there, and a piece
of paper, and it will play back an entire two by three call sign.
Okay, And the idea is for you to listen to it, write
it down, and it will replay it every ten seconds again like like the
echo does. Now I'm not I'm not writing it down, but when you're
done, press the key or and it will show. It will tell you
tell you what random two by three call sign it generated. Now it always
starts with a W and a two by three. Al we has a number
in the middle, but other than that, they're all going to be random.
So you can press the keer and it will generate another random one.
The tones you're hearing kind of fade off that zoom squelching everything. So the
actual kit, you can when you're typing on it or when it's when it's
typing to you, sounds very good. It's it's very clear and crisp.
Also, one of the reasons that I put the volume control on there is
when people started using the little earbuds, it's very loud in there, okay,
And the original instructions recommended that you buy some headphones or earbuds that have
a volume control on them. So when you're done playing with the copy,
just practicing listening to call signs. You can just press the button eggs it
out. The new one is the Coke method. Now this is uh.
This is kind of like copy or even worse. This is where you have
to also use the little USB to serial port. You need a terminal program.
This window is putty. It's a terminal program. If I take the
plug and plug it in here, it enter. I get a little menu
there, which is just a silly little menu. It says I can't read.
It says Option number one is nothing, Option number two is even less.
Option number three is paying no attention. If you hit like a number
nine, it will give you some kind of message of the day, goofy
little thing. Going back to the Coke option, let me turn that off
really fast. In this case, what it will do is it will play
two characters for you, and then again it will repeat them every ten seconds,
and your mission is to type them in. If I put three an
I in year, it tells me incorrect, it was a three and an
A. So anyway, that's the Coke method. Now in this case,
it's going to play two symbols and it's going to essentially score you in a
percentage. It keeps track of the last ten attempts that you made, and
when you reach eighty percent, it will add another character to it, so
suddenly you'll be doing three characters in a row. And then when you get
eighty percent eight in a row or eight out of the last ten, it
will update it again to four characters in a row. I wish I could
get this to play better. Sounds pretty good right now. An F and
then a four. Hey I got one correct, I got one out of
the past ten, and then it moves on to another one. So when
you're done, just press the button in it leaves and at that point this
terminal menu goes back to whatever goofy little thing you wanted to put there.
So that is the new feature. You want to close this? Yeah,
let me exit that out. You turn that off. That's the newest feature
that I've added, and then we're back to the settings again. So in
a circle, we've got now five different options. We've got the practice mode,
We've got the dictate mode where it tells you what to do. You've
got the echo mode where you don't really know what you're typing, you're just
needing to imitate what you hear coming in you've got the copy mode where you've
got two by three symbols like when your guys, when you guys are working
your photos or whatever field work you're doing, trying to listen to people who
are who are calling in. And then the new version is the cope methods.
I would like to know folks who have the previous version that might want
the newer version. What is your suggestion for that? Do they need to
buy another version or are you doing upgrades or how is that working? Well?
There's the chip will work and most of the other parts will still work
on the newer version. There's a few additional parts because it handles stereo and
that's got the volume control. So I could ship out replacement boards in a
handful of the additional parts that are used. If you feel you're really good
at desoldering and wanted to move over to the new board, that would be
substantially less cost than that than the entire new board. But the new board
that gives you stereo, and it gives you the volume control. The existing
chip with the new features you can use with an old board because the same
plugs are there on the side and on the top. Let me pull this
back up here. The same plugs are available on the side and on the
top, and they function the exact same way that they that they do on
the new boards as they do on the old. Okay, I like the
fact that it gets you to eighty percent and then adds another character. That's
it. That's a neat way to learn, I think. Yeah, Frank
was explaining that to me, so I thought I hadn't heard of that one
before. So I did a little research, looked into it. I'm getting
these lights out of my face down. Yeah, looked into it, and
I thought this wouldn't be This wouldn't be too bad, it wouldn't be too
hard to do, and it's a an accepted practice for learning Morse code.
So Bradley asked where do we order the new version? And my response to
him was the only the only one available right now is a new version.
You can't get the old version anymore here. Yeah, it's it's the same
price. It's a few extra parts, and I put a lot of time
into the software enhancement some things, but just keeping the same price on it.
Scott wants other Scotty Scott, could a future update allow for a more
minutia option for words per minute instead of the current three options it could.
What I did was I used the expected math and the the actual standard words
per minute says you have a seventy millisecond for a short and three times that
or two hundred and ten milliseconds for a long, and then I think it's
five times that for inter character spacing. So that's what it's playback is using.
And when you're using the iambic keer, it's playing back at that rate,
and it's using that that gap for the for the computation between the the
inter inter character spacing. If you're using straight king, it tries to use
that pretty much that same timing. I have to get out the math again
that I was using for that, because it actually for the five words per
minute, it's actually pretty generous. It's something on the order of a quarter
second for a short and half a second for a long, and then the
fifteen and the eighteen words. I'm sorry, the ten and the eighteen words
permitted still used the seventy and the two hundred and ten milliseconds anyway, most
people, from what I understand, are using the iambic key or anyway,
so I hadn't hadn't had any requests to get any more precision in the words
permitted setting. Hold on here, let me show you this if I can
find it. Yeah, there we go. Okay. In transition, this
is the PDF that you can download from the website. It's got all the
assembly instructions that shows you all the parts, and there's a I did ship
out on one or two recently that may have the typo in it. Right
here, I had R six listed twice. Actually are five in R six,
so I know I have to fix on that. But in addition to
that, now it also shows you where on the board the parts are,
so it makes it a lot easier when you're going through it. Well,
these are all the ten K resistors that I need to put in, and
then these are all the one microferred capacitors that I need to put in.
So the instructions get very specific about where to put all the parts and how
to put them in. Also, I had some problems. This is the
larger screw. I had some problems with the original one in that the screws
that I used for the LCD were very small, and I used the same
size screws for the battery case. Well, I needed a bigger screw for
the battery case, but the bigger screws wouldn't fit in the lcdast. So
now the new kids actually have two different size screws. So that's a lot
of fun packing up those not losing these little itty bitty nylons proved all right,
guys, thanks for joining tonight. Sorry about the technical issues. Be
watching and check out the links. So we're going to put the links to
everything we talked about tonight in the description, so if you're watching on Team
Replay, go look at that. So seventy three all