Mare & Gal Electronics

You can get CDM324 module on ebay for about 6€. It is constantly transmitting and receiving at 24GHz. It’s output is the difference between transmitted and received signal frequency.

I made a simple PCB with opamp, analog comparator and a powerful MCU STM32F4. Besides that, there are some other peripheral components. The PCB connects to the module with 3pin header. On the PCB, another PCB with small joystick is soldered. This joystick is used to interact with GUI on 128×64 graphic OLED display. The main PCB also has USB connector for virtual COM port and charging of 240mAh lithium battery.

Render of the device

Continue reading ‘Radar under 20€ using cheap CDM324 24GHz doppler module’ »

The Voluhar project will be / might be open hardware and open software project for any DIY and videographer enthusiast that would like to get those enviably steady smooth shots. Well, for now this statement is a bit of a long shot since I don’t really know what I don’t know about brushless gimbal systems.

Continue reading ‘Voluhar project – 3 axis camera stabilization’ »

When debugging algorithms in an autonomous vehicle a light that can show algorithm state in real time was proven to be effective for easier debugging and additional insight to what is going on in the code.

Continue reading ‘Multicolor signal light with beeper’ »

I will descvribe here the USB interface between the redio station and the computer which I recently developed and tested. This post is a continuation of the first part, where I described a simple interface for controlling two digital lines using the USB / Serial Converter, where I presented simple interface to control two digital signals (e.g. PTT and CW). This time I will describe an interface that combines more functions:

• Controlling several digital (switching) inputs and outputs,
• Interface for controlling the station via the serial interface
• Audio input and output interface (sound card)

I had some implementation issues with the microcontrollers and USB virtual com ports, which I have described in detail in the previous contribution, I decided it’s better using the tested solutions. The block diagram of the interface is swhown in following picture:

Block diagram of the interface

Continue reading ‘Tiny, isolated USB to Xcvr interface (PTT, Audio, CAT, …)’ »

In this post, I will first introduce some of the basic technical background of the control of the transmit signal (PTT) and other signals (eg CW or linear activation). The second part will describe the  interface development and the final product.

Standard DB9 male connector

Continue reading ‘Small USB to PTT/CW adapter’ »

Photoelasticity is wonderfull phenomenon. It describes changes in the optical properties of a material under mechanical deformation. It is a property of all dielectric media and is often used to experimentally determine the stress distribution in a material, where it gives a picture of stress distributions around discontinuities in materials. Photoelastic experiments (also informally referred to as photoelasticity) are an important tool for determining critical stress points in a material, and are used for determining stress concentration in irregular geometries. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelasticity]. Experimenting with photoelasticity photography gives some nice photos at least. It is usefull tool for visualisation of the internal stresses within (transparent) material.

My experiment setup:

Photoelasticity photography setup

Continue reading ‘What is inside plastic?’ »

This is complete project for 1×6 antenna switch. It was bult in more than 50 pieces around the world and performs really good. Even big guns use it for their systems. The project was designed with help from other OMs (S55O, S59MA, S50LD, S51CT, S51ZJ, SM2WMV/SJ2W and others).

6×1 antenna switch

Continue reading ‘6×1 antenna switch’ »

Do you ever wondered how much magnetic field garbage is around you? This is cheap and easy build to measure magnetic noise or to compare which switching supply is more sh*tty.

Near field probes are nothing new. It’s easy to find one via web search. Here is one good reference for H and E field probes which I found via google image search:

EMC near field probes for H and E field

Continue reading ‘Cheap sh*t magnetic pickup’ »

There are many steps from c source code to cloud data storage. Let’s start…

“To get the end, you must go back to the start” – Grandmother Yelsh

In this contribution I will describe how I started using Espressif ESP8266 with Eclipse and some other details how to store data in “usual” web server. I will not talk about the hardware too much. To follow the tutorial it is enough to have any ESP8266 module connected to serial port on PC either via USB/UART virtual cvom port or directly (rare these days). Two most common possibilities are either module with the USB/UART integrated on-board or separated USB/UART + ESP8266-xx module (usually on breadboard with some additional periphery):

Two most common types of dev.boards for ESP8266

Continue reading ‘From c source to cloud with ESP8266’ »

_________________ Work in progress _______ Last change: 22.10.2017 ______________

What I missed in my workshop is nifty small programmable precision voltage source which can be used as calibration voltage source for testing and calibration purposes. I decided to make one, because instruments which have word “calibrator” have price with same digits as there is vocals in this magic word.

Let’s start with block diagram:

Voltage calibrator – Block diagram

Continue reading ‘Precision voltage source – voltage calibrator’ »