FOR DX FT8 KIT INFORMATION AND ALL RELATED DISCUSSION YOU CAN JOIN BluQRP FORUM GROUP IN THIS LINK: https://groups.io/g/BluQRP
DX FT8 TRANSCEIVER BUILD AND OPERATION GUIDE CAN BE USED FOR OLDER 5 BAND VERSION AND 7 BAND VERSION without Internal Battery.
ALL VERSIONS ARE IDENTICAL IN BUILD AND OPERATION DETAILS EXCEPT THE OPTIONAL INTERNAL BATTERY INSTALLATION ON V2.1 BMS 7 BAND BOARD.
DX FT8 TRANSCEIVER OPERATION GUIDE YOUTUBE VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcSgQS4a3Tk
DX FT8 TRANSCEIVER PROJECT is a collaboration between Charles(Charley)Hill, W5BAA and Barbaros(Barb)Asuroglu, WB2CBA.
DX FT8 Project is brain child of Charles(Charley)Hill, W5BAA. Charley designed and build various versions of GUI based FT8 Transceivers over the years.
I was lucky enough to collaborate with Charley on 3 different versions of GUI FT8 Transceiver.
DX FT8 is the culmination of all that experience we gained from previous versions.
I can't thank enough Charley for his excellent GUI FT8 Firmware and his perseverance to create a standalone FT8 TABLET Transceiver.
It's a pleasure for me to collaborate with Charley,W5BAA, on hardware side, RF design and PCB design of DX FT8 Transceiver.
DX FT8 is a FT8 Digital mode capable HF QRPp GUI (Graphical User Interface) based multiband Transceiver.
DX FT8 is abreviation for Digital Xceiver for FT8.
Main aim of DX FT8 Transceiver Project is to create a highly portable stand-alone FT8 GUI Transceiver. Stand-alone aim is to create a user interface for working FT8 digital mode plus Multiband transceiver packed into one unit.
This creates an advantage for carrying one GUI based FT8 operation capable Transceiver unit and no longer needs to carry a PC or a laptop or tablet for GUI interface operation for FT8 with a classic transceiver.
This approach is quite appealing for smaller and lighter setups for backpacking for SOTA or POTA activations or as a travel transceiver with FT8.
Here are some highlights on DX FT8 Specifications:
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DX FT8 Transceiver GUI (Graphical User Interface) and processing power comes from ST Micro STM32F746 DISCO Evaluation board. This is a ARM CORTEX based evaluation board for STM32F746 microcontrollers with below outlined specifications:
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STM32F746NGH6 Arm® Cortex® core-based microcontroller with 1 Mbyte of Flash memory and 340 Kbytes of RAM, in BGA216 package
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4.3 inch RGB 480×272 color LCD-TFT with capacitive touch screen
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128-Mbit Quad-SPI Flash memory
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DX FT8 Transceiver RF Board plugs into STM32F746 DISCO evaluation board to form the DX FT8 transceiver.
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DX FT8 Transceiver operates on 5 HF bands or 7 Bands depending on PCB type. Design files for both 5 band and 7 bands boards are posted in this github page.
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These bands are:
For 5 Bands Board:
1 – 20m (14.074 MHz)
2- 17m (18.100 MHz)
3- 15m (21.074 MHz)
4- 12m (24.915 MHz)
5- 10m (28.074 MHz)
For 7 Bands Board:
1 – 40m (7.074 MHz)
2- 30m (10.136 MHz)
3 – 20m (14.074 MHz)
4- 17m (18.100 MHz)
5- 15m (21.074 MHz)
6- 12m (24.915 MHz)
7- 10m (28.074 MHz)
DX FT8 Transceiver has two RF Power Output Selection, LOW RF POWER and HIGH RF POWER which can be selected with the RF POWER Slide switch on the side of the transceiver.
40m 372mW 844mW
30m 373mW 843mW
20m 380mW 823mW
17m 354mW 762mW
15m 314mW 654mW
12m 259mW 520mW
10m 231mW 445mW
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DX FT8 Transceiver can operate either from 5V USB power bank or any 1000mA capacity USB power source or by using the DC barrel Connector can be powered from 7V to 15V external power supply. A power supply source can be selected with DC POWER SELECT slide switch located on the side of the Transceiver.
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DX FT8 TRANSCEIVER uses an unconventional RF power Amplifier consisting of a TTL octal buffer IC and step up RF Transformer. There is no conventional MOSFET PA transistors. This creates an extremely resilient RF PA for failure due to high SWR or no antenna accidental operations. This is an advantage for portable operations as antenna conditions can vary.
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DX FT8 TRANSCEIVER incorporates a TAYLOE detector based Qudarature Sampling detector receiver with a high gain RF Preamplifier which outputs an I and Q phase output to STM32F746 DISCO board which generates true Upper Side Band (USB) SSB receive signal.
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A short video of DX FT8 in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b2WOxESAVU
DX FT8 FIRMWARE UPDATE HISTORY:
V2.0.0 includes four major improvements over V1.9.7:
TX Queue: You can now click on multiple received messages in either QSO or Becn mode. The firmware will queue appropriate responses, automatically sort them, and transmit the best one for you.
When calling CQ, replies from multiple stations will be queued automatically as well.
On Device Editing: Six buttons were added under the "Tune" page.
click one of these buttons to activate editing window:
CALL: YourCall or YourCall/P (Note: other prefix/suffix formats aren’t supported)
GRID: YourGrid
FREQ: 7074/.../28074 (optional) (Note: the firmware doesn’t validate frequency; make sure it's within the band. Use Band-/Band+ to switch bands.)
F1: Free Text 1 (optional) (Free Text also works for "CQ [A-ZZZZ] [YourCall] [YourGrid]")
F2: Free Text 2 (optional)
COM: Comments for the session (optional) (This will be added to each QSO in the .ADIF file)
Tap the same button again to finish editing and changes are saved to StationData.ini.
Auto-Generated StationData.ini: If no StationData.ini file is found on the SD card, the firmware will create one using an internal template. Just enter your callsign and grid on the device and you're ready to go—even with a blank SD card.
Showing worked QSOs for the current session: Tap the middle-right side of the screen to view worked QSOs, tap again to view the next page. (Tips: take photos as a backup in case the SD card fails)
FOR SOURCE CODE PLEASE VISIT: https://github.com/chillmf/DX-FT8-Transceiver-Source-Code_V2
DX FT8 3D PRINTED CASE FILES ADDED. A big Thank You to Dave,ZL1DMM for his excellent 3D case design.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:
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We would like to thank Paul Winwood, G8KIG, Zhenxing han, N6HAN and Wei Cheng, AG6AQ for their contributions to develop and adding new features and cleaning the code of DX FT8 Firmware.
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DX-FT8 Firmware is inspired by work done by Karlis Goba, YL3JG. Here is a link to his website: https://github.com/kgoba/ft8_lib.