Weblog Ben’s HobbyCorner

Going well with the DRM-stuff. Here a real DRM-transmitter. 29 Mhz. 2 Watt. On the first picture the transmitter and on the second picture the DREAM-software with the testtransmission.

Still busy with the ENC28J60-tutorial. But also working with some nice other equipment. This is a DRM Digital Radio Mondiale module. Made by www.pa0kn.nl who lives around the corner. Connect this PCB to a PC or laptop (soundcard), connect power and a small antenna and you can receive AM, FM, Short Wave, Long Wave, CW, Single Side Band, AMSS, Weathercharts and read the newspaper. Check for info: http://www.drm.org/ On the PC we use Dream. Dream is a software implementation of a Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) receiver. With Dream, DRM broadcasts can be received with a modified analog receiver (SW, MW, LW) and a PC with a sound card.

Got the chance to work with a few ActiveX add/on packs from www.iocomp.com Great to get some visuals on data. Great stuff. This is a picture of the Scope I made with some data from a table. In the other pictures lots of LCD’s, LED, Sliders, Valves, seven segment displays, gauges etc. etc. The helpfile on almost every item is nice, but it took me quite a while to get the scope running.

Theo Kleijn and I have won the second price in the www.mcselec.com ZL8 and ZL10 contest. We have made a single button menu. The source-code will be published soon!!
With only a single button a full menu with all it’s option can be chosen. First all main-items will appear like a marquee, and when at the right moment the button is pushed, all sub-items will appear. We have used this single button menu in our Drake DDS program and in this program there are even more options. To fill in 8 user defined frequencies, to add a Caller-ID etc. etc.
And thinking about more possiblities of this program, even just a LCD or Graphic display can act as a button so you don’t need any extra hardware.