It has been a mixed bag with the weather here, so not as much as chance to do the outdoor work I had wanted to do. Mostly its prep for when the Nebula arrives as in measuring out a 5m circumference for the guying points, no chance of that with the wind and rain !
As is I decided to tidy my shack up. As I’m doing far more software development than before and less time with the synths I’ve moved the music equipment to the ‘spare’ room. Everything has fitted quite nicely back in there, making it into a nice dedicated space for the synths. I will take pics when my lad is back and we have it all working agian !
My main motivation in tidying the shack was to get several of my rigs out and make the exterieor and interior cabling as tidy as possible. I really dislike untidy cables, especially in ‘racks’, so i really wanted to get my shack tidy !
Having moved mac #2 out, i have now moved my ‘build’ station to that desk, freeing up the space near the windows where rigs have tended to go (and will likely stay there). Also i have a nice desk for prototyping and working with my new Raspberry Pi 400. I’ve put in a smaller mixer which i will use for the radio audio and maybe the mac audio (good the occasional movie!)
As you can its a heck of a mess at the moment, but this is after moving computer desks around. There is so much cabling with all these things, its quite amazing how it builds up !
The radio worked fine, but I’ve not reconnected the computer yet.
The fish eye lens gives a good view of the room and the new free space, yes that is an exercise bike ! I actually use it durign the week when working, i have 15 minutes away from the keyboard very hour or so to help me concentrate and also get some safe exercise ! but as you can see its quite a mess in here, but still better than it has been.
I love the new RPI 400. At £100 for a Pi, it wasnt cheap, but i love the functionality. Obviously i have a full-scale mac that I use for all my work, but I think the PI will see alot of Pi R&D with actual device I/O programming. The keyboard is excellent and the mouse very ergonomic. I was able to use Youtube, webbrowsing with no problem, its a very capable unit. I wont be in any rush to remove the OS from it, next steps will be to setup the physical ‘build’ board to do some hardware prototyping with.
Here is the smaller mixer I am using for now. Its not as complex and nor does it have USB input for a mac, but i like the size and simplicty of it. As long as I can descern the radio output from headphones and the speakers, it will do for me.
My next job (and why i’ve not gone crazy/OCD On tidying the upper desks) is to install these under desk cable trays. I think they will help alot as i can put the PSU strips in there and also velcro the cables together. I am not 100% on how to tidy the RX/TX cables – its so overlooked that the sheaths are also conductors, so its important to get things like RF bonding and earthing right to remove any in-shack RFI. I’ve asked a fellow Youtube Ham for help, so wont post on here yet, but hopefully stage 2 will have a link to that video 🙂
In the mean time I am looking forward to the Nebula arriving in the coming weeks and getting a couple more transceivers out of storage. I’m keen to get back onto VHF/UHF and maybe even 6M, will see how the tidying goes and how much space i have.
Until then 73 & Stay Safe !
Alan / 2E0FWE