Category Archives: openASC - Page 12

openASC front panel

Posted by on January 8, 2010 Comments Off on openASC front panel

Today I finished one of the front panels for the openASC box. I milled it at work with a CNC mill. I also have CNC plasma burn table, Powermax Hypertherm and I am also using a CNC plasma software. First I engraved it, then milled out all the slots and after that I did the paintjob to get the engraved slots black. I think when I’ve done the last front panel I’ll be pretty good at the paint fillings. However I ran out of black paint so I need to go and get some for the other fronts.

When I retrieve the right distance screws which I ordered from ELFA I will mill the back panels. Those are black anodized which means I don’t need to do any fillings, I will just engrave it and get aluminum colored letters.

Here are the pictures, looks great for being homebrew!

Milled front panel
Milled front panel
Milled front panel
Milled front panel

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The new openASC boards

Posted by on January 7, 2010 Comments Off on The new openASC boards

I received most parts for the openASC boards now after Christmas and have started to assemble them. I have totally 6 pcs of openASC control boxes to assemble, 7 pcs of positive driver modules and 4 pcs of sink modules. This takes a lot of time but now the first set of boards have been assembled and I plan to test everything on rev 2 this weekend. Most should work fine since it’s pretty much the same design as version 1 except some patches and the addition of a couple of more buttons.

Check the photos below, I have captions to each picture which explains it.


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openASC software progress

Posted by on December 3, 2009 Comments Off on openASC software progress

Now when the winter season has started there is more time to do work on the electronics which will be installed at the station. A system I have been working on is my openASC system which stands for open source Antenna System Controller. It will be used to control the whole station and enables us to have extreme flexibility from each operating positions, to have access to all different antennas and rotators. It also gives us the possibility to control everything over the Internet.

I have ordered parts to build the complete system and while waiting for that I have been working a bit on the configuration software which is cross-platform Linux/Windows. It is written in C++ with QT4 as graphical platform. I first wrote the software in Java but got tired of it and decided to rewrite the whole thing in C++, which also made me rethink some of the ways I had implemented stuff.

When starting the openASC box and pressing a certain button it enters setup mode. Now we can connect to it from the configuration software and change all the different settings in the box. Some examples are shown in the screen shots below. Enjoy!

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openASC progress

Posted by on January 24, 2009 Comments Off on openASC progress

Been doing some Java programing lately and also implemented an external EEPROM to avoid having space limitations when it comes to settings in the device. Also trying to complete the functions for transmitting settings between the configuration software and the openASC-device.

Here are some screenshots of the program, how the status currently is.

openasc_configuration

Various configurations

tx_antennas_20m20M antenna setup. Antenna #1 has also got it’s sub menu configured

stack_setupThe setup for stack options, here the 20M stack

rx_antennasRX antenna configuration

ptt_sequencerPTT sequencer

debug_windowDebug window, used to debug the openASC device

Still a lot of work to be done but I’m slowly making progress. Plan is to have a public release if interest of this open source project gets big enough, and that people can add features to the public release.