Recently I had to make a bootable SD card for a Raspberry Pi Zero and I faced some issues. I thought to write some hints on how to properly clone and shrink a Pi image on an SD card. Here’s how you can create a compressed ISO (or disk image) from your Raspberry Pi SD […]
Most of my website posts that include code use syntaxhighlighter to nicely format code. Unfortunately, you have to manually tag the piece of text as code. I thought it would be nice to have one or more buttons in the classical editor toolbar that will automatically surround the code with needed tags to be displayed […]
Here are some handy commands that can be used to check the hardware version on a Linux-based machine.
I want to get back to FPGA design because I have some projects in mind and I did some in the past that were quite fun and very interesting. I am a bit rusty, though, and I am afraid I have to review all my past, and very diluted, experience with FPGAs. This has a […]
I was always interested in learning morse but I did not have my mind seriously set on it until recently. My shack conditions do not allow me do much DX-ing on SSB and I am not very keen of FT8 and other digital modes so I consider CW as the only possible way to get […]
Recently I hit a blocker when using journalctl -b -1 did not work. Using the flags ended up in error
Some tests done with Blackmagic Camera application for iPhone.
The autumn 2025 edition of Tuzla Field Day, Constanța, Romania, took place between 16 and 22 september. A lovely event, an occasion to meet old friends and make new ones.
I recently ran into an issue with my Raspberry-based radio node. I tried to connect to some othet WiFi access points and I realized that I had no idea how to set connection priorities if I have multiple candidates for connection. I was used with wpa-supplicant way of doing things which was just to add […]
… or at least so I think I met a guy that has a small company, “Forcatz” that builds nice window cages for cats, allowing them to lazily lay outside without the risk of falling over.
While doing some research on Raspberry Pi supply filtering, I put together a list of interesting references. All are very instructive reads. Noise countermeasures reference (pdf, 76kB)
CM108 has a set of four GPIOs that can be used via hidraw. These can be read from or write to.
Today I did some thermal measurements with my Flir C2.
My new radio node that I designed last month is back from production at jlcpcb. Designed in Romania and built in China 😁. This is my first attempt using jlcpcb for the entire manufacturing chain, from PCB creation to part selection and assembly.
There is a problem (or I am doing something terribly wrong !) with the coordinate system in KiCad.
I am already one week into the design of the PCB for my new radio node and today I discovered some schematic errors that I had to fix. Running the DRC (Design Rule Check[er]) KiCad threw some schematic parity errors which “occurs when there’s a mismatch between the schematic diagram and the physical PCB (printed […]
Today I finalzied the designed for my new Raspberry Pi Zero-based radio node. Designed around SA818 and CM108B sound codec, will replace my old dead-bug style radio node that I used for so many years.
More work today. Some wires got loose and I did some experiments with .asoundrc and ALSA settings. I added a 39 Ω ballast resistor on SDIN and SDOUT lines and put a ferrite core on both wires. The radio node works as expected, absolutely no issues with one exception, a periodic pop that is audible […]
Update July 11, 2025 Some thoughts and tasks today. The project is the same I2S interface.
Recently, I made my mind to purchase some items that I long wanted to have, various tools and stuff for projects. So here is this list, June edition. Under ongoing revision, permanently adding new items. 🙂
I have some Si5351 chips that I never used for any projects. I purchased them from Mouser, I believe for an APRS project, long-standing and overdue. That APRS project I started some time ago but I never completed and maybe I should strongly consider to complete. But this is another topic.
Some photos here from a vintage car show today. Fiat, Citroen, Ford…
These days we are at Tuzla, in the sunny Dobrogea, on the Black Sea coast, for the sixth edition of Tuzla Ham Radio Field Day. From May 21st to May 25th. Amazing for this event is our desire to meet and socialize. In a world and time when people spend more time with bots and […]
I just ran into this show today. Nice memories.
One year ago I got into geocaching. It was during our vacation in Croatia, in the beautiful town of Omis when I discovered this hobby and was suddenly drawn to it. It seemed to be quite fun and I think I found 5 or 6 caches in Omis. Coming back home, I found that it […]
While testing my I2S project I ran into some boot issues on the Raspberry Pi 4 host. For what seemed to be some unknown reasons the boot process was completely chaotic, sometimes running well, sometimes hanging. I banged my head for some time looking for a solution until it came to my mind to change […]
It came to my mailbox today: my new toy, a Panasonic HC-VXF1 camcorder. Many of you might wonder why — in the age of DJI and GoPro mini cameras — would anyone buy a camcorder. True, these seem to be quite obsolete, old-fashioned technology in the age of 4 and 8k (and beyond) and mind-boggling […]
RDA1846, the transceiver inside Baofeng UV-5R, Yaesu FT-4XR, SA818 and other radios is no longer manufactured. There are equivalent chips that can be used.
Update September, 2024. Activities and notes while developing the I2S interface for my radio node.