where I managed to avoid having too much over-ripe fruit and vegetables thrown at me by hecklers in my lecture, just before lunch on Saturday...
In fact, rather than hecklers, I was honoured by an enthusiastic and engaged audience, who listened to me rambling on about Arduinos and DDS modules very attentively.
The Buildathon on Saturday afternoon saw builders tackle the new Acorn II, which provides the hardware front-end of an SDR Receiver for HF. This was the first ever Buildathon at an RSGB Convention and was, in consequence, something of an experiment.
Those who signed up for the Buildathon tackled it with great enthusiasm and competence...
inspired and assisted by Steve, g0fuw, Dan, m0tgn and Lewis, g4ytn, who were the all-important mentors (without whom Buildathons don't exist) and Dennis, g6ybc, from Kanga, who was there to make sure the kit "delivered".
As well as those actually building, many people popped their heads round the door, looking at what was going on, during the course of the build.
The first receiver to be completed worked first-time...
In contrast, when I went to demonstrate my VFO to the builder of this new Acorn II, my VFO completely failed.
On return home, I re-loaded the code into the VFO system's Arduino UNO and it now works FB again (with no other changes / fixes required)...
This is interesting - it is the first time in my two and three-quarter year history of playing with Arduinos that I have ever experienced such a firmware "corruption" issue.
The Buildathon was declared a great success.
Indeed, the whole event was a pleasure to be part of, presenting as it did an opportunity to catch up with some familiar faces, to meet some new ones and to chat about matters of mutual interest. Better than the average Saturday afternoon!
...-.- de m0xpd
I found your presentation on the DDS and Arduino/Pi stuff sufficiently inspiring that I ordered an Arduino kit and book this morning for my first venture into such devices. I'm really looking forward to getting to learning about what for me will be something very new.
ReplyDeleteCareful Denis, it's easy to get yourself sucked in! It's a slippery slope once you start dabbling in Arduino, before you know it you'll home brewing rigs with fancy LCDs :-)
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