## WB8NBS

This Blog will document projects I have
in progress or completed. You can search for my
handle on Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, or Picasa
for photos. I will link some of those here.

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## Audio Adapter for the Si5351 Signal Generator

I had just finished building a three port RF signal generator when the January 2018 QST arrived in the mail. January is the annual Do It Yourself issue and there was an intriguing article by Keith Kunde, K8KK titled “A Low Distortion Digital Audio Oscillator”. The heart of Keith’s circuit is a MAX294 filter chip, a sophisticated 8th order switched capacitor filter capable of rounding off a square wave into a pretty good sine wave. The ‘294 is fed with a square wave at the desired frequency and also a clock signal 100 times the desired frequency. Keith generates his clock with a 555 timer and then feeds a divide by 128 chip to develop the base output frequency. My new Si5351 RF generator could be a crystal controlled clock source and all I would only need the divider and filter circuits to add audio capability. The MAX294 costs about six bucks each.

Goals for the Audio Adapter were:

1. 20 to 20000 Hz capability
2. Sine or Square wave output
3. Line level output, one volt peak to peak into 600 ohms
4. Be as portable as the signal generator, meaning battery operation in an Altoids tin
5. Two channels
6. Direct frequency readout from the signal generator display

That sixth requirement means decimal dividers throughout. If I add one additional decade to the ‘294 chip’s clock divide by 100 requirement, the total division would be 1000. When the signal generator display shows 25 megahertz, the output would be 25 kilohertz. No math necessary.

The MAX294 has an uncommitted on board op amp but it is intended as a pre or post processing filter and has weak output specs. To get line level output I decided to buffer the ‘294 output with an LM358 op amp connected as a voltage follower. Later on, this proved to be the most troublesome part of the project.

Internet searching did not turn up many choices for decade frequency dividers. I decided on the 74hct390 chip which I have used before. It’s a dual decade divider, each side has a divide by two, and a divide by five stage. Cascading these gives a divide by ten with BCD output of the counter state. For this two channel build I would need a total of ten divide by ten stages, achievable with five 74hct390s. This diagram shows the basic filter wiring.

Basic MAX294 Application

The last divider stage is a divide by two so the ‘294 filter sees a symmetrical square wave. 100k and 39k resistors form a voltage divider network to get the TTL level square wave down to an amplitude the ‘294 can handle without clipping.

I decided the project was indeed viable and ordered parts from Digikey.

Software in the signal generator was tweaked to have a lower range limit of 100 Kilohertz. The Si5351 should go all the way down to 10 Khz with appropriate software support but rather than press my luck, I added two additional decade divider stages to the design. A three position switch selects a frequency tap from the chain so the frequency ranges are:

• Divide by 10**3  100 to 25,000 Hz
• Divide by 10**4  10 to 2,500 Hz
• Divide by 10**5  1 to 250 Hz

With the additional ranges, I can still read the LCD display directly but have to mentally move the decimal point. The first requirement is met. Also added is an SPDT switch to connect the op amp input to either the filter input (square wave) or the filter output (sine wave). That meets the second requirement.

Digikey parts finally in hand, I bread boarded the circuit. The dividers are on the left, the op amp is on the right.

Audio Adapter Breadboard

This is the final schematic of the filter circuits. Eagle made the drawing and I did go through the exercise of generating a PC board  just to see if there really was room for the parts.  Since the project is a one-off, I built everything on perf board, using 30 gauge wire wrapped around IC pins with my standard wire wrap tool – a ballpoint pen refill. It would have been a lot faster if I had a real PC board.

Analog Board Schematic

Analog Board

A 2000 mAh portable USB power pack was sacrificed to obtain an 18650 battery, it’s associated charger, and 5 volt up converter. That would satisfy the portability requirement. I stuffed the battery, charger board, four RCA jacks and three slide switches into an Altoids tin while waiting for Digikey.

I used Eagle to generate a schematic and proposed PC board for the higher level digital divider circuits. This board had to fit between the 18650 battery and the range switches, and I had to nip off the corners to work around the battery charger circuit. This board is mounted on #4 screws soldered to the bottom of the Altoids tin. I built the digital divider board first, it is much simpler than the analog boards.

Digital Board Schematic

Digital Divider Board

I used the analog portion of the bread board to verify the digital dividers were working properly. I found the 74hct390 chips would accept a signal as high as 90 MHz. They will be loafing at 25 MHz. This photo shows the digital board seated in the bottom of the Altoids tin. Only six wires will connect to the analog board in the tin lid, 5 volt power, ground, two divided outputs from the range switches, and two audio output leads. Audio connects to 1000 ufd  capacitors nestled on either side of the battery.

Digital Divider Board and Charger Installed

Now came extensive testing on the breadboard. Keith Kunde’s QST article discusses the level and DC offset considerations of the MAX294 filter when used with a single ended supply. I used a pair of 10k resistors to create a half supply voltage virtual ground and bypassed that rail with 22 uF capacitors.  I’m using DC coupling between the dividers, the filter chip, and the op amp so had to do some fussing with the voltage divider parameters Keith talks about to get a filter output with no clipping. My final divider has 100k resistor in series with the TTL level divider output, and a 36k resistor to virtual ground. I also found that connecting a VOM in series with the 5 volt supply to measure current seriously upset the DC balance for some reason. It appears the final circuit will draw about 25-30 milliamps from the battery. At that rate, the adapter should run 60 hours on a charge.

But the output waveform from the LM358 buffer amp was horrible! To make a long story short, Google “LM358 Crossover Distortion”.  The ‘358 has a class B push pull output stage and when the signal crosses over from one side to the other it takes a short nap. After a good bit of troubleshooting and research, the fix is simple. Add a 1000 ohm resistor from amp output to ground. This forces the output stage into a class A region and I was able to get 2 volts peak to peak out with no glitches and it will drive a 100 ohm load with no clipping or distortion.  I believe 2200 ohms to ground will also work and draw less current through the amp.

Also the ‘358 has a slow slew rate which causes the sides of the square wave to lean noticeably.   If I knew then what I know now I would have ordered an MC34072 amp which has better specs and no crossover problem, still less than a dollar.

The following photos are the analog board top, bottom and trial fit into the lid. The board is supported in the Altoids tin by the pot mounting nuts at the front and a single L shaped bent paper clip soldered to the lid at the back. I’ve also added an LED in the lid to remind me to turn the power off.

Top of Analog Board

Bottom of Analog Board

Connecting Digital Divider Board to Analog Board

I took a couple of weeks part time to wire and debug the analog circuits but I was finally satisfied and mounted the board in the Altoids tin lid. It JUST clears the battery and the inductor on the battery charger. This photo is as finally assembled. Note a small bit of blue clay on the charger inductor, that’s how I checked the clearance.

Interior of Finished Audio Adapter

These are the money shots of the fully assembled Audio Adapter.

Dual Channel Audio Adaptor

Dual Channel Audio Adaptor

But does it work?

This shot has sine wave selected on one channel and square wave selected on the other.

MAX294 Filter Out and In

A 10 KHz sine wave. As K8KK noted in QST, there is some clock noise on the wave form at 100x the output frequency.

10000 Hz Sine Wave

This is a 1 (ONE!) Hz sine wave. Notice the sweep speed setting on the right. It took some creative manipulation of room lights and the camera shutter speed to get this to show properly. You can definitely see the clock noise on this trace.  It looks a lot like the synthesized sine waves I experimented with a couple of years ago.

One Hertz Sine Wave

The next two photos show the waveform when the two channels are combined in an external resistor network. 1500 ohms from either side to a junction, then 1500 ohms to ground to load the signal.

Combined Waveform: 10000 + 10500 Hz

Combined Waveform: 1000 Hz + 1100 Hz

Finally, here is the family connected together to the resistive combining network.

Set Up for Combined Waveform Test

This was an enjoyable but sometimes frustrating project. It’s definitely the densest thing I ever built and would be much simpler if I wasn’t too cheap to order a PC board. I learned that 0603 resistors are not a good choice for hand soldering. I learned that LM358 op amps suck. It is working great now though, and even though I have two other audio oscillators, this is a welcome addition to my test equipment stable.

de WB8NBS/9

## Arduino – Si5351 Powered Signal Generator

Arduino-Si5351 Signal Generator

## Device Description

For a long time I wanted a general purpose signal generator. Now Direct Digital Synthesizer hardware is available on a single programmable chip. The Analog Devices AD9851 is used in many ham radio projects, also widely used is the Silicon Labs Si5351. Either of these can be obtained from many sources such as Adafruit, Sparkfun, or on EBay and there’s lots of information on the internet. Even Amazon has them. A few dollars gets a DDS chip that will tune continuously from audio to VHF mounted on a small breakout board. I purchased an Si5351 board from Etherkit because they offer a version with a TCXO.

Silicon Labs makes the Si5351 in several variations. It’s intended use is as a multiple output clock generator with up to eight individually programmed frequencies. Most commonly available breakout boards though, use the A version with three outputs. Digikey has the bare chips for less than \$1. Connectors are optional, most boards are set up for SMA female jacks. The signal generator I built brings out all three outputs but I used good old RCA phono jacks. SMA connectors are wonderful but the cables to use them are pricey. My box will be used to check and align receivers so precision impedance control is less important.

AD9851 chips have a real Digital/Analog converter on board, it uses an amplitude lookup table to produce a fair sine wave. The data sheet says:

“The AD9851 uses an innovative and proprietary angle rotation algorithm that mathematically converts the 14-bit truncated value of the 32-bit phase accumulator to the 10-bit quantized amplitude that is passed to the DAC. This unique algorithm uses a much-reduced ROM look-up table and DSP to perform this function.”

which sounds suspiciously like the quarter wave sine synthesis I experimented with a few years ago. I’ll have to revise my WordPress pages about quarter wave DDS techniques to include the phrase “angle rotation algorithm”. The price for pure sine wave complexity is, the device has only a single output. In contrast, the Si5351 outputs a square wave on all it’s ports – it is intended to serve as a programmable frequency clock source but for my purposes I don’t care and the available multiple outputs are attractive.
I breadboarded the Etherkit breakout along with one of Paul Stoffregen’s Teensy-LCs I had on hand for the controller. A Teensy-LC has an ARM Cortex M0 heart clocked at 48 Mhz. An ordinary 16 Mhz Arduino would probably work in this circuit but would have trouble with sweep. I used basic software from N6QW to get started and my oscilloscope soon showed it was working. Then a series of enhancements to the N6QW sketch followed:
• expand to controlling all three outputs
• setting up frequencies using rotary encoder and LCD menus
• save and restore setup in EEPROM
• add output power change to the menus
• add  output OFF to the power menu
• add sweep capability with menu control

## The Box

A thin metal gift card box was cut up to form an enclosure for the generator. It is about a quarter inch larger than the usual Altoids tin in all three dimensions. I needed the extra volume to fit in a battery and charger removed from a cheap phone power pack. These booster packs usually contain a single 18650 cell and it just fits.

Arduino-Si5351 Signal Generator Interior

The components are, top to bottom, blue 16×2 LCD board supporting the Teensy-LC. The entire unit can be 5 volt powered either from the Teensy USB jack or from the battery charger, I added a fat diode to isolate the two sources.  Both the Teensy and the Si5351 board are using their on board voltage regulators. The LCD is five volt, but the Teensy-LC does not have 5 volt tolerant inputs. There are 2.2k resistors between the LCD data pins and the Teensy to smooth over that discrepancy, these would not be necessary if the LCD was a 3.3 volt unit. The pot below the Teensy adjusts the LCD contrast.
At left below the LCD is the Adafruit (Bourns) rotary encoder. It just clears the battery. Right of the encoder is a strip of perf board with the three output select pushbuttons mounted. The LCD, encoder and buttons are Adafruit parts.
At the top of the open box bottom is the salvaged 18650 cell. The measured drain of the whole circuit is less than 100 milliamps so the battery should last half a day at least. The gooey glob at the center is a 2.5 amp fuse. To the right of the battery is the on/off switch and isolation diode. The salvaged Lithium charge/boost circuit is the green board at bottom right. It has it’s own separate USB jack because the USB data leads are not accessible. To program the unit you have to plug into the Teensy USB jack.
Finally the blue board in the bottom is the Etherkit breakout. The actual Si5351 chip is at the left end, next to the TCXO. There are three RCA output jacks mounted in the left side of the box, the fourth jack next to the handle is for syncing the scope when sweeping.

## Operation

On power up the unit reads saved frequency settings from EEPROM. The display then shows frequency, current port selected, and the output power setting.

Click one of the three buttons to change the port selected to display on the LCD.

Rotating the encoder knob will change the frequency digit under the flashing cursor. Press click the encoder knob to change the digit under the cursor, you can set the cursor to change digits from 1 Hz to 10 MHz.

Hold one of the port select buttons down and turn the encoder knob to change output power for that port. The chip has choices of 8 milliamps, 6 mA, 4 mA, 2 mA, and OFF. Silicon Labs’ spec for driver impedance is 50-85 ohms.

If any of the above settings are changed, the software waits ten seconds, then copies the current settings into EEPROM. In the event the unit gets confused, it can be restored to last saved settings by cycling the power switch. Also it can be returned to default settings by holding down all three port select buttons, while powering up.

Arduino-Si5351 Signal Generator Frequency/Power Setting

## Sweep Function

Sweep is accessed from a separate menu. Press down the encoder knob for more than two seconds (a long press) and release to enter sweep parameters for the currently selected port.  A short click of the encoder knob will advance the menu through the sweep choices, currently +/-  0, 1000, 5000, 15000, 50000, or 150000 Hz. The unit sweeps from frequency minus that amount to frequency plus that amount so the total width of sweep is twice the setting. Sweeping is done by reprogramming frequencies in 20 steps between the limits.

A second long press of the encoder knob will return to the frequency menu. The letters “sw” appear on the LCD to indicate that that port is set up to sweep. All three ports can be set up but only the port currently selected in the display will be sweeping at any given time.

A pulse is available at a phono jack on top of the box to trigger an oscilloscope at start of each sweep iteration.

Sweep parameters are not currently saved in EEPROM.

Arduino-Si5351 Signal Generator Sweep Setup Screen

## The Software

I am using the Si5351 library from Etherkit. I added a function to completely disable the output drivers to save battery when a port is set to “OFF” so I will include the library in the zip file.
Most of the sketch, implementing multiple port and the menus, was straight forward. The one thing that gave me fits was the quadrature nature of the rotary encoder. This is a mechanical switch and it glitches. Not a problem if you are say, setting an analog output from 0 to 1023, you probably wouldn’t notice but if you need to change a digit by exactly one, glitches are intolerable.  Conventional debouncing a switch usually just waits a certain amount of milliseconds after a transition is detected, read again and proceed. There are debounce libraries for doing this. I had no luck. I finally found an post by Oleg Mazurov about treating the quadrature pulses as a Gray code. It helped a lot and I posted about my findings in the Adafruit Feather forum.
The Adafruit rotary encoder outputs four state transitions on each of it’s 24 rotary detent positions. To get one increment per detent, I tried skipping four state reads with a software counter but it was still glitching if the knob was inadvertently touched. What finally worked was changing the Gray code decode table to disallow all but one positive change and one negative change. The allowed changes remaining are in the middle of the detent so glitches near the resting position are unlikely.
Sweep is accomplished by reprogramming a port frequency on the fly. Tests indicate this is slow and the 20 step sweep takes about 65 milliseconds which limits the sweep rate to about 15 per second. I found a very good way to time something is to write a 1 to some output pin at the beginning, then write a 0 at the end. It’s easy to see exactly how much time the intervening code took by measuring the pulse on an oscilloscope. The send_frequency function takes 3.5 milliseconds. Looking at the Si5351 library, the set_freq code is long and complex. It might be possible to speed this up by using the set_freq_manual call but I’m not smart enough to do that. Porting this code to a 16 Mhz Arduino might make the sweep unusably slow.

## Addendum April 4, 2018: Amplitude Modulation Experiment

I thought I might try generating an AM modulated signal by summing three generator outputs.  A 1.1 MHz signal modulated  at 1 KHz would have a 1.100 MHz carrier, a 1.101 MHz upper sideband at half the carrier amplitude, and a 1.099 MHz sideband at half the carrier amplitude. I breadboarded a resistive combiner as follows:

Resistive Combiner

The Si5351 was set to equal drive power on all three outputs.  I examined the output on the oscilloscope, channel 1 connected to AM Out, channel 2 to Audio Out with sync taken from Channel 2. The result is not encouraging. It does output an amplitude modulated signal but the waveforms are bizarre. I see a blocky square wave changing at a 1000 Hz rate but there is some phase problem I can’t control.  This is the best I could capture:

AM Modulated Signal

Connecting an audio amp and speaker does show a 1 KHz tone if the phases happen to line up just right. I found that setting any one of the generators to be one Hz off frequency results in a rolling pattern with about a one per second beat note in the speaker.

This method of faking Amplitude Modulation is certainly not precise or controllable. Setting one of the outputs off frequency by a few Hz does give a useful warbling tone in an AM receiver.

## Files

A zip archive is available including sketch source, the Si5351 library, and a schematic
Jan 4, 2018 V1.1 including the sweep function
Jan 5, 2018 V1.11 Sweep bug would not change freq while in sweep mode. Cleaned up schematic.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hk7nc063ipjisr7/SignalGenV1.11.zip?dl=0

## Arduino Iambic Keyer – 2017

Last spring I started doing what I call “Morse Walking”. Going out with headphones on, beeping morse code. I’m doing this hoping I will get good enough at morse to actually use it on the air without making a fool of myself. I previously made two battery operated Arduino based keyers here and here that can generate random morse characters. But they are awkward, the 2015 version requires an external battery and the 2016 model won’t fit in my pocket. Obviously I needed another project.

Arduino Feather keyer

I decided to use an Adafruit Feather, it has an Atmel 32u4 processer, built in USB interface, a charger/converter for a 3 volt lithium battery, and plenty of pins brought out. The idea was to cut down the previous keyer software to fit the 32u4 equipped with only the hardware I needed for battery powered practice. Like many of my projects, putting it all into a small box proved to be difficult. Not many parts in the schematic but that Altoids tin is only 2 1/4″ x 1 1/2″ and about 1/2″ deep.

Arduino Feather Iambic Keyer

Note the unusual wiring at the headphone jack. Ring is grounded while tip carries the signal. Sleeve is not connected. This puts the two headphone elements in series and presents a higher impedance to the output circuit. The ring normal contact can then signal power enable to the Feather when the phones are plugged in.

I sawed about a quarter inch off the breadboard end of the Feather to make it fit, along with two phone jacks, in an Altoids Small tin. I wired up the Feather along with a quadrature rotary encoder which I thought would be cool to use as a volume control. Porting the previous keyer sketch to the 32u4 proved more difficult than I expected. The encoder required major changes to the keyer code as volume control is now in software and requires manipulation of the sine wave synthesizer tables. I got that part mostly working but set the project aside in May.

So now it’s November and I’ve picked up the little keyer again. The software has been revamped and now has these features:

1. Characters to be sent are buffered in an asynchronous circular queue so memory buttons or keyboard characters can be “typed ahead”.
2. USB serial terminal is supported as a keyboard for sending or function programming.
3. Paddle generated morse is interpreted and printed as ASCII letters on the serial terminal.
4. Four programmable memories available with 251 character capacity each.
5. Memories programmable from serial terminal or from the paddles.
6. Random code practice modes, letters, letters and numbers, letters numbers and punctuation.
7. Adjustable character spacing in code practice mode (Farnsworthiness).
8. Morse character speed settable 10 to 45 WPM.
9. Sidetone frequency settable 100 to 1200 Hz.
10. Synthesized sine wave sidetone with leading and trailing edge envelope shaping.
11. Memories and operating parameters stored in EEPROM and easily reset to defaults.
12. Stand alone operation from LiPo battery.

I went for an hour walk today with the keyer in my shirt pocket and it performed flawlessly so I consider it done.

This is a photo of the unit with battery removed.

Arduino Feather keyer battery removed

I had to move the JST connector to the side to get clearance, the battery would not fit under the rotary encoder. There are four memory buttons, plus the back switch on the encoder used for Function. I’m using my usual analog read routine to debounce the button switches. Metal cap switches from Adafruit, work much better than the 6mm plastic buttons I used in previous versions.

You can see here the battery just fits.

Arduino Feather keyer with battery

I spent quite a bit of time working on the waveform generation setup. The encoder routine generates a number 0-64 which is used to scale the synthesizer waveform. Four 16 byte amplitude tables must be regenerated in RAM each time the volume is changed. Initially the sine waves were horribly distorted so I made a spread sheet helped to see what was happening. I was able to work out code that produced a good stepped morse element.  There is very little audible clicking now at beginning or end of the morse elements.

This photo is a dit at about 25 WPM.

Arduino Feather keyer waveform

The software, detailed operating instructions, schematic, and spreadsheets can be downloaded from Dropbox.
Any future revisions will appear here

#### Version 1.2 12/6/2017 Was running out of memory, rearranged startup and moved stuff to PROGMEMhttps://www.dropbox.com/s/hqx54u6ha8uu6xn/MemoryKeyerFeather_V1.2.zip

Jim Harvey – wb8nbs@gmail.com

## Motivation

In more than one episode of “The Woodwright’s Shop” Roy uses a gauge he calls an “Octoganizer”.  See this recent show at about 23 minutes in. He can mark a piece of square stock with the layout lines needed to plane off the four corners, creating an octagon. The tool has a pair of locating posts that straddle the work piece, and two scratch pins to mark the face.

These screen shots from the Woodwright’s 3613 episode show the antique Octagonizer and also Roy marking a stool leg blank. He made a point that the tool can follow a tapered leg blank.

Bottom side of the Octagonizer

Using the Octagonizer

Searching the internet reveals this is a common tool in the boat building business called a “Spar Gauge”. I don’t know what “Spar” is on a boat.  I thought it was something Texans carried in the back of their pickup. Many internet pages discuss methods of making this tool, here is one that uses a graphical method to locate the marking pins.

I decided to explore the concept and make one. Or two. Or three. It turns out one size doesn’t fit all.

## The Method

So exactly where do you drill for the scratch pins?

This is the necessary derivation:
In the following W = Width of stock, F = Width of a full facet, X = Width of an angled facet (to be removed).

Square stock layout

The full width W contains one full sized facet and two angled facets
$W = F + 2 * X$

Angled facets measure full width times the cosine of 45 degrees, which is $\frac{1}{\sqrt 2}$
$W = F + 2 * (F * \frac{1}{\sqrt 2})$
$W = F * (1 + \frac{2}{\sqrt 2})$
$W = F * (1 + \sqrt 2)$

Rearrange the last to solve for the full facet width:
$F = \frac {W}{1 + \sqrt 2}$
Plugging in the numbers and calculating gives:
$F = W * 0.4142$

But we really need to know X, the width of the angled facet, so we can mark the stock by measuring from an edge.
$X = F cos 45$
$X = \frac {W}{1 + \sqrt 2} * \frac {1}{\sqrt 2}$
$X = W * \frac {1}{\sqrt 2 + 2}$
Running that through my calculator gives:
$X = W * 0.2929$

So 0.2929 is the Magic Number!

Just to verify:
$0.2929 + 0.4142 + 0.2929 = 1$
Yes!

## Implementation

Locating posts on either side of the tool are a source of error because of their thickness. If the tool has to be skewed to a really steep angle, like using a four inch long Octagonizer to mark a half inch stick, the marks will be too close to the edge. In this exaggerated example with posts an inch in diameter, the scratch pins miss the thin board completely.

Error caused by post diameter

If the locating posts were infinitely thin this would not happen and the tool could always lay out an accurate octagon. Therefore we need to keep posts as small a diameter as practical and avoid steep skew angles. I’m going to use six penny nails for posts and eventually make several Octagonizers to accommodate projects of different widths. Practically though, for many uses octagon shapes don’t have to be perfect.

The Octagonizer I made doubles up on a 4 1/2″ piece of Osage Orange. The wide side will mark stock up to 3 3/4″ wide. I let the wide side scratch pins stick out on the side opposite the points, these form the locating posts for marking narrower stock up to 1 3/8″.

Dual Octagonizer front

Dual Octagonizer wide side

Dual Octagonizer narrow side

This photo shows the wide side marking a piece of 2 inch stock. I’ve enhanced the scratch marks with pencil for the photo.

Marking a blank with the Octagonizer wide side

I had a piece of Poplar about 1 1/4″ square, I marked it out with the Octagonizer’s narrow side. Here it is clamped corner to corner in the vise.

Planing a 1 1/4″ Poplar square into an octagon

The Poplar works down quickly. I left one facet uncut just to show how it works.

The first try, three facets planed

While working through the arithmetic to locate the six holes in this double sided tool, I had to carefully account for the radius of the nails. Six penny nails measured 0.116″ in diameter, not accounting for this would throw the accuracy off a lot. I sharpened the points before assembly by chucking the cut off nails in a battery powered drill, then gently spinning them against a grinding wheel. The points were tempered by heating them red hot, quenching in water, then cooking in a toaster oven for 20 minutes at 425 degrees. I used a machinists vise to press the nails through pre-drilled holes in the Osage Orange.

## Usage

In many cases you can set a marking gauge to Width times the Magic 0.2929, and just mark all eight lines with that.  If I had to make only one octagon I would use a marking gauge. If I had to make more than four, I might make an Octagonizer. A marking gauge will not encounter the error discussed in the previous section and you can lay out an octagon on a piece of stock any length, any width. It would not work though on tapered stock.

I plan to Octagonize a treated 4×4 for a porch support post.

Roy showed using the Octagonizer to lay out a tapered stool leg but laying out a short tapered octagon like a chisel handle, can also be done by marking both ends of a tapered blank, then using a straight edge to connect the dots. This is also a good method if you don’t want to see evidence of scratch marks.

## Viewing Methods

A few weeks ago I started thinking about what to do with materials I have on hand for the August 21 Solar Eclipse. This area of Illinois (just West of Chicago) will see about an 88 percent occlusion, per this calculator, starts at 11:53, peaks at 1:19PM and ends at 2:42. Weather permitting of course – what are the odds?  This post is written six days before the event. I will update if the viewing is successful.

Pinhole projection seemed like a good traditional method, but Google research indicated the image would only be about 3/4″ diameter. One of the pinhole discussions also talked about using one side of binoculars to focus the Sun’s image. I do own a medium quality 7×30 pair with zoom so decided to try them. This is one of the first images obtained.

Close up of projected sun image

I was very pleased with this, if you look just below center slightly to the left, there is a genuine sunspot clearly visible. The image is about 3 inches across at minimum zoom.

Now to make a two hour viewing interval practical I explored mounting the binoculars to a good camera tripod. This tripod has the pan and tilt head on a tall crank up rod and a mechanism to tilt that rod at it’s base up to 90 degrees (parallel to the ground). Long ago I owned a telescope with an equatorial mount and I thought maybe laying the central rod down at the proper angle would enable that function.

The advantage of an equatorial mount is you can track a star, or the Sun, by adjusting only one of the two axes of the telescope mount. Having to manhandle both the azimuth (pan) and elevation (tilt) to track is a real PITA. You don’t realize how fast the Sun moves across the sky until you magnify it 7 times. The sky moves 360degrees/24hours = 15 degrees every hour. The way the mount works is, you align the primary axis of the scope, in this case the tiltable rod, with the earth’s rotational axis. Then the stars rotating around the earth’s axis also rotate around the telescope’s axis and you can keep the scope pointed at the same spot in the sky by adjusting only the azimuth. Ideally with a powered clock mechanism.

Of course it’s you that’s moving, not the Sun but the result is the same. Thank you,

First, my binoculars had to be firmly attached to the tripod. The dozen or so rubber bands I used for initial testing just didn’t work out. I drilled a block of hard wood to fit the round central spine of the binoculars. All binoculars I have seen are made like this, it is part of the mechanism that allows the two eyepieces to separate or close to match your eye spacing. Then I sawed through the drilled block and installed a couple of screws to clamp the block on the spine. Then I drilled and tapped a 1/4-20 hole in the bottom of the block to mate with the tripod screw.

You need a large shade so the projected image is in shadow. This was easily made from cardboard.

Binocular clamped to tripod

This photo shows the tripod tilt mechanism with the riser set to equatorial position.

Tripod extended in equatorial position

I made a box to further keep out stray light. It’s about ten inches square, painted flat black with a sheet of white paper at the bottom. The string you see in the photo above helps align the shadow box axis with the binoculars. I mounted the cardboard box on a 1×6 with a hinge and a sliding prop arrangement so the box can easily be tilted to align with the projected image.  The box must be moved and realigned every now and then as the Sun moves across the sky.

Sun image projected into shadow box

If I was observing stars at night, I could align the scope by looking at the north star. But during the day the procedure for equatorial alignment is:

1. Align the riser rod exactly North by positioning the whole tripod.
2. Raise the central rod to the exact latitude of the location. About 42 degrees here.
3. Uncover one side of the binoculars
4. Hold a sheet of paper below the eyepiece and move the tripod pan and tilt until you see the Sun image. Try to center the image in the binocular field by exploring the edges.
5. Remove temporary paper, set and align the shadow box with the projected image. Stretching the string back to the box will show you the axis.
6. Tighten the tripod tilt but leave pan axis loosen enough to move with the Sun.

Here is the assembled Helioscope. You can see the projected image in the bottom of the box.

Binoculars with shade projecting sun image

So far my only expenses are a spray can of flat black paint and new batteries for the camera.

## Camera Modification:

Hand holding a camera on the image is awkward. I decided to mount a camera directly on the box so it would always see the same image field. To enable this and not block the projecting beam, I bumped out one side of the box 2 1/2 inches. Hot glue is wonderful stuff. It took some fussing with a tapered shim to get the camera pointed at the image correctly.

Camera mounted inside box

It’s very hard to read this Canon A530 screen in the sun so I connected a small television which has a composite video input to remote the display. This works well. You can see the 2 1/2 inch bumpout in this photo.

Camera in box and composite monitor

The best images are shot with the camera zoomed in a bit. I’ve worked out how to crop the pictures consistently with GIMP. A stretch goal is to make a video of the whole occlusion. I’ll need a photo every 30 seconds, two hours and 45 minutes should fit on a 2 gig camera card.  But I worry about having to change camera batteries in the middle of the sequence.

I worked up a BASIC script with the Canon Hack Development Kit. It is based on a Wiki post by Keoeeit, his version 3. It should solve the setting consistency problem if I have to change the batteries and fires the camera at a set interval.

It has the following parameters to set:

• Initial Zoom amount, a number 0-8 for the A530
• Delay before first shot Min, Sec, Allows time to reposition the camera after a disturbance
• Number of shots to take, zero runs forever
• Time between shots, Min, Sec.

I run the camera in Manual mode with shutter about 1/80 sec at F4.5 (the small Canon cameras don’t really have an iris). I don’t want the exposure to change any time during the run. I put a magazine page in the box so the lens has something busy to focus on then put the camera in CHDK mode and start the script, .

The following happens:

1. The lens zooms out to the fixed setting supplied.
2. There is a delay countdown so you can tweak the camera position
3. The lens focuses and then locks the focus
4. A ten second delay to allow removing a focus target.
5. The camera begins taking pictures at the specified interval.

This is the BASIC script

rem Author – Keoeeit
rem Upgraded by Mika Tanninen
rem Time accuracy and shutdown for a710is by Viktoras Stanaitis
rem h-accuracy for delay, j-accuracy for interval
rem Reset zoom added to restore the same picture
rem in case batterys have to be changed during a long session

h=-1
j=-1755

@title Eclipse Intervalometer

rem number of zoom steps to execute at beginning of script
rem A530 has steps 0 – 8
@param i Initial Zoom
@default i 3

rem the delay is after zooming so camera positon can be tweaked
@param a Delay 1st Shot (Mins)
@default a 0
@param b Delay 1st Shot (Secs)
@default b 0

@param c Numb. of Shots (0 inf)
@default c 0

rem interval is the time between shots
@param d Interval (Minutes)
@default d 0
@param e Interval (Seconds)
@default e 10

print”DISABLE THE FLASH!”

rem Move the zoom to a consistent setting
set_zoom 0
for s=1 to i
print “step”,s
set_zoom_rel 1
next s

n=0
t=d*60000+e*1000
if c<1 then let c=0
if t<1000 then let t=1000
g=(a*60)+b+h
if g<=0 then goto “focus”

rem count down seconds until begin shooting
for m=1 to g
print “Intvl Begins:”, (g-m)/60; “min”, (g-m)%60; “sec”
sleep 930
next m

rem set and lock focus
:focus
set_aflock(0)
press “shoot_half”
sleep 2500
release “shoot_half”
set_aflock(1)
print “Remove Focus Target”
sleep 10000

:interval
n=n+1
if c=0 then print “Shot”, n else print “Shot”, n, “of”, c
shoot
if n=c then goto “quit”
sleep t
goto “interval”

:quit
set_aflock(0)
shut_down
end

:restore
set_aflock(0)
exit_alt
end

## Feather Port with Volume Control

Long walks are a good thing and I’ve taken along one of my morse code keyers running in practice mode to pass the time. Neither of the keyers I made fit pockets very well so I decided to build yet another one, battery operated, with headphone only output. The target container is an Altoids Small tin easily carried in a shirt pocket.

An Adafruit Feather 32u4 Basic has built in USB and an on board battery charger so it is a good start for this project. I ported my previous 32u4 code easily. Reference my previous page on the 32u4 experiments here. Driving headphones directly from a Pulse Width Modulated output is different from my previous projects where I used a small audio amplifier to drive a speaker. Headphones have a much lower impedance than an amp so RC filter components change radically. Implementing a volume control would be a challenge. I tried a 500 ohm trim pot and that worked fairly well with some but not all of the headphones I tried. But I couldn’t find a pot with a shaft that would fit in the Altoids tin.

With PWM Direct Digital Synthesizer generating a sine wave I might be able to throttle the PWM output with software. I have an Adafruit Rotary Encoder that fits the Altoids tin if I’m careful so I worked that into the demo program.  Rotary Encoders are basically mechanical, therefore subject to contact bounce like any other switch. I Googled up a half dozen different Encoder sketches and all of them would glitch badly. I finally found code by Oleg Mazurov that uses a Grey coding technique to ignore invalid inputs. It works well. I was able to get that code running on the Feather and contributed the sketch to the Adafruit Feather forum.

This photo shows the slightly truncated Feather in the Altoids Small tin. The encoder is the green object in the center of the lid. There are a couple of Oscilloscope umbilicals attached and the battery is not yet installed.

Changing the apparent volume of the DDS output is a process of multiplying the Sine table values by a volume parameter between zero and one. I copy the Sine table into RAM and apply this transform. But since I use only integer math in the sketch, the method is, read the value from flash then multiply by 0-63 volume, then divide the result by 63. Close enough.

One more improvement: in the original sketch, even when the volume is set to zero the PWM signals are 50% high and 50% low, averaging zero as far as the Sine wave coupled through the output capacitor is concerned. That means the output pin is still driving full voltage at the PWM frequency. With the low load impedance it’s a significant drain on the DC power and I’m using a very small battery. The remedy was to lower the zero crossing base line in step with lowering the amplitude of the Sine table.  A new volatile variable maxSine passes the necessary correction to the DDS Interrupt Service Routine. The ISR doesn’t like having it’s variables changed on the fly. Rotating the Encoder makes a scratchy sound like a dirty potentiometer but it’s fine when you stop adjusting.

I measured 18 milliamps constant draw from the USB supply before implementing the zero crossing shift. With the shift, current varies from 10 ma at zero volume to 17.6 ma at maximum volume. The 150 mah battery should last 6-10 hours, way more than my morse code attention span.

My example sketch with all the experimental options in the previous version is downloadable from Dropbox. A short video showing the waveforms produced is on YouTube.

## Plow Plane Arm Repair

Broken planes is a subject that comes up often in the Facebook Unplugged Woodworking group. Stripped threads are common on wooden planes that use threaded arms to position a fence. They usually break next to the arm’s foot as that is where the fence is most often needed.

This is my example, it will be my repair experiment. Years ago I demoted it to a kerfing plane by replacing both skates with a blade cut from an old rip saw. I screwed an inch and a half spacer block on the fence to skip over the defective threads, which worked, but is awkward and heavy.  I’m going to simply cut out the defective section, which will shorten the range of the plane, but who plows grooves six inches out anyway.

These are the two threaded arms. Each was made from a single piece of wood with a 3/4″ O.D. threaded section. The challenge is to securely and accurately splice the amputated threads back on the foot.

So my plan removes the stripped part, then makes a half inch round tenon on the end of the good threaded rod, with a matching half inch mortise in the foot. The two parts are reassembled with a 1/4-20 threaded steel rod pulling them together, I think it will be at least as strong as the original solid wood part.

Most of the work was done on my Delta DP-300 drill press on which I have carefully aligned the press table square to the quill.

The first task was to make a fixture to hold the threaded arm accurately aligned with my drill chuck. I had to file the hole in the drill press table a bit to get the threaded arm to pass up through easily from the bottom.

To make the alignment fixture, I screwed a bit of 2×4 to a piece of scrap, clamped that to the press table, then ran a 3/4 inch Forstner bit down as far as it would go, I had to finish the bore with a longer spade bit. I removed the drilled 2×4, cut a slot on the table saw, then installed two screws to help clamp the threaded arm in place. It did take a small amount of sanding to get the threaded arm to pass through.

This is the bottom of the fixture. Two screws hold the drilled 2×4, they are placed so they will not interfere with the clamping slot on the top side. It’s easy to align the fixture on the drill press table, insert the threaded arm from underneath through the hole in the table about half way into the fixture. Lower a 3/4 forstner bit into the top of the hole, lock the table, and set the clamps.

I sawed the stripped arm off about an eighth inch from the foot. That left an inch or so of threadless wood on the shaft to practice on. In fact, I used a piece of 3/4 dowel up in the fixture to make the first practice tenons.

The first operation is to drill down on the sawn face with the 3/4 Forstner bit. That leaves a center dimple and faces the end off square.

The mortise will be drilled with a Forstner bit so I made a half inch hole in a piece of hardwood scrap to test the size of the tenon. I believe this is called a Mullet.

I considered a few alternatives to make a tenon. Maybe a hole saw (too sloppy). I looked at a half inch plug cutter (would have to regrind the tip to get a shoulder). I decided to use a cheap circle cutter, which can be tuned and has an angled bit that would make a nice tapered seat. The inside of the bit is ground flat so it was easy to sharpen with diamond paddles, and the pilot drill is smaller than the #7 size needed to tap the hole. I also ground a relief angle on the inside of the cutter. It was not designed to make a clean cut on the inside, making an angle of 15-20 degrees away from the cutting edge helps a lot. You only need to grind the cutter up about a half inch from the bevel, leave it flat where the set screw clamps.

It was very difficult to set the diameter accurately. I hit on using feeler gauges to measure the gap between cutter and pilot drill. I would hold the cutter against the feelers and tighten the set screw, which allowed me to add or subtract a few thousandths from the tenon diameter in a controlled manner.

You have to lower the circle cutter onto the wooden shaft slowly, it’s difficult to see where the cutter is when the whole thing is spinning. After a half dozen practice cuts in the 3/4 dowel, I had a tenon that fit well in the test mortise. I set the bit depth so that the tenon is a quarter inch long when the body of the tool contacts the wood. And with the fixture, I’m sure the tenon is axially aligned with the chuck and the dowel.

I made one test tenon on the end of the threaded arm, then took a deep breath and sawed the bad part off, leaving about 3/8″ of the stripped area to make the final tenon.

Again, faced off the freshly sawn end with a Forstner bit. Then made the tenon with the circle cutter. It looked good.

The final operations on the truncated arm were to drill and tap a hole about an inch and a quarter deep. I had a couple of 3 inch machine screws to use, but threaded rod would be good also. I used a tapered tap and ground the end of the sawn off bolt to match, to allow a bit more wood where the bolt ends. The bolt was screwed in by tightening a couple of nuts on the protruding end so I could turn it with a wrench. I also cut small grooves in the tenon for possible glue squeeze out.

That completes the preparation of the tenon.

Now to create an accurately aligned matching mortise in the foot. The first step is to secure the separated foot in a good sized wooden clamp for machining. Don’t want fingers near that router bit. I used an engineers square to check that the surface that contacts the fence is exactly perpendicular to the drill press table.

Now lower and lock the quill, run the drill press to maximum RPM, and carefully rout the sawn surface flat. I did this in three shallow passes leaving about a sixteenth inch of the original shaft.

When this arm was originally made, the outside diameter of the threaded part was even with the sides and top of the foot. That made it fairly easy to find the center of the cut off with a marking gauge.

I center punched the foot and drilled an eighth inch pilot hole

clampclamp

Followed by a half inch Forstner bit in about 3/8 inch. The pilot hole was enlarged in three stages finishing with a #7 bit, appropriate for a 1/4-20 tap. I wanted to engage an inch of thread under the mortise so the hole was run in about 1 1/2″.

I had to create a tapered seat to match the tenon. I did this in the drill press with a counter sink bit.

The countersink chattered if it wasn’t fed very slowly but did a decent job. Actually I found it worked better to remove the drill press drive belt and turn the countersink by hand.

Next, the hole was tapped to a depth of about an inch and an eighth. I went through the full set of tapered, plug, and bottoming taps. To ensure the threads were accurate I make the first pass with the tap in the drill press chuck turned by hand. The plug and bottom taps were run in with a tap wrench.

The long threaded bolt was cut to have about an inch and an eighth protruding from the end of the arm.

The final test – will it go together? It did fit a little tight but the arm is parallel to the fence face as best as I can tell. The real test will be is the fence parallel to the plow skates after it’s put back together. That might be the subject of another web log post.

I brought the two parts into the house where it’s warm enough to apply liquid hide glue and screwed the arm home snug but not tight. Here is the repaired fence arm next to the unfixed second arm. You can hardly see where the two pieces are seamed together. The small piece is what was cut out of the bad threads.

The process was successfully repeated on the second arm.

Now the plane could be reassembled. I found the fence would no longer clear the body, so I make a couple of thin spacers to get clearance. I’ve added leather washers to the thin inside fence nuts so the minimum space between blade and fence is about 3/16″. I may tune the fence further at a later date but for now it appears to be parallel to the blade so is very usable.

I tried it out, set the fence to a quarter inch and it kerfs beautifully.

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