TomGeorge:
Hi,
Can you answer the questions in post #11 please.
You have got the Tx what about the Rx to complete the repeater?Tom..
Hi, sorry - I figured because I'd solved the problem, no one would have any further interest.
You'll have to bare with me because I don't work to convention and am actually prototyping in reverse. I don't have any system analysis or design docs, no pseudo code, no Venn diagrams or anything like that. I just have an end result in mind and work towards it, dealing with any problems I encounter along the way and adapting where necessary.
I am all more or less self taught so I have a workflow that baffles most people LOL.
So at the moment, I've just been working on the output stage in very simple form and then building on that.
Mainly to ensure everything worked together as I had hoped before getting too carried away - if that makes sense?
So at this point in time, I only have a basic TX board prototype which comprises of an Atmega328P-PU, an MP3 Module, a Real Time Clock and a transmitter module. And all I've got it doing so far is running a simple test program which transmits a morse ident every 15 minutes which is played from the MP3 module.
Because I anticipate the code becoming rather large and complex in the end, I wanted to save space and resources and struck upon the idea of using these stand alone MP3 modules to handle the morse and voice idents with pre-recorded MP3 files which the board transmits at set intervals. So rather than having to alter code to change the morse ident every time, I just change the MP3 file(s) to suit.
The other reason for opting to use the MP3 module was to make the project more user friendly without people needing to alter too much code. So they can just make their own mp3 recordings, name them accordingly and insert the SD card and they're good to go. If I ever get anywhere with this project, I hope to release it open source - once I've ironed out the basics and proved the concept.
So that's where I'm at at the minute with it. And now I've managed to rid the interference problem, I can carry on moving forwards.
Believe it or not but On and off, this project has been almost 2 years in R&D...
I'm only a hobbyist and I've had to learn everything along the and I've made a number of alterations / improvements along the way as I've made new discoveries.
I'm now light years away from where I started believe it or not. I originally started out chemically etching boards which were rather large and used through hole components and using rather large hand held baofeng walkie talkie radios controlled by relays and now I'm milling my own PCBs using surface mount componants and MOSFETS for power management where before I couldn't tell you anything about a MOSFET lol. And I've also managed to get the standby power consumption down to around a milliamp or two along the way which was one of my primary goals. It's all taken me a lot of time but I'm getting there lol
So in short, to answer your original question lol, I've not got as far as the RX side of things yet, I'm sort of going with the flow and letting one design influence the other, if that makes sense?
But now I know the TX board can work and nothing interferes with anything else I can start working towards developing that side of the project.
Thanks again!