HiFiBerry DAC+ ADC daughter board for a RPi, a suitable RPi and the HiFiBerry Case on hand, it is time to put stuff together.
Assembled HiFiBerry with RPi4 in their metal case
HiFiBerry DAC+ ADC Case Assembly: https://www.hifiberry.com/docs/hardware/steel-case-assembly-new/
Now I need to find some time to “Play Pactor!”
73
Steve
K9ZW
For the last 19 seasons I have used WordPress’s Classic Editor but today 16th Jan. 2025 that editor is gone from most menus.
Yes you can add it back in, but only if you buy up to a $40 per month business plan.
$480 plus taxes to restore what was there until today?
Not happening, WordPress!
Time to evaluate options.
WAIT – maybe it just disappeared briefly and is back? OR – it isn’t offered if you were pushed into the Block Editor on prior page? IDK
Actually it seems if a post was saved with the Classic Editor, that the Classic Editor remains available, but that from drafts and new posts that the classic editor becomes part of the greed machine by no longer being directly available.
Presently there does seem to be a free work-around of manually replacing the “&action=edit” at the end of the URL when opening for editing with “&action=edit&classic-editor” before forcing a refresh.
Whether that workaround stays available or not IDK.
Seems it is still time to evaluate options!
73
Steve
K9ZW
SPOT displayed on the Raspberry Pi500 and Monitor
[The uptime is less than 100% in the relaunched SPOT BBS due to pre-alpha software issues. If it isn’t up come back later.]
Now running on a VPS (virtual private server) SPOT BBS is available at:
Telnet
spot.bbses.org:1123
ssh
spot.bbses.org:1122
Presently the HTML (Web) directly is not up and running.
At some point I’m hoping to sort out the original address to point to the new server.
73
Steve
K9ZW
I drive a big vehicle and drive it about 20-22,000 miles a year. It used to be I would do about 26-30,000 miles yearly, but online meetings and the general transition towards more impersonal sales has changed that.
Usually I trade them in around 80,000 miles, and the last ones have been GMC Denali Yukon XL SUVs.
And it is trade-in time on the current 2021 Denali.
So the dealership’s fleet representative had a new 2025 GMC Denali Yukon XL for my test drive.
It only took me eight miles of driving to move from “meh” to “I don’t think so” with the revised interior styling.
This new styling is all about technology.
And it sucks.
I was surprised that the seating felt constricted. Felt narrowed, and felt like the seat didn’t go quite as far back as the 2021. The steering wheel is thinker and for a tall drive obstructed seeing the dash.
What is that about? Appears that the addition of several cameras point to watch the driver may be a big player in restricting the likely area the drivers face (and hence eyes) would be. So the driver needs to be pinned-in to keep the system happy.
I don’t think the SUV would be drivable, other than short distances, in full winter attire, by a guy as big & tall as me. Not good.
So I started fiddling with adjustments to find that majority have been moved to a giant touchscreen (about a 20 inch monitor size in portrait orientation vs the 2021’s 10.8 inch in landscape mode – a design that worked just fine), that also likely contributes to the narrowing of the driver’s position.
This means you have to take your eyes away from the road and if cold season take off your gloves, to play computer games.
I tried to get the HUD (Head’s Up Display) to show, and it was several swipes followed by a few taps to get to a set of sliders on the touchscreen vs the two tactile switches easily found on the dash in my present version.
Talk about moving backwards.
The anticipated Flex-8600 order was filled with the radios arriving the day before Christmas.
Because of time restraints it was first last week when I unboxed them, and put the first one into service at the Washington Island QTH on Friday January 10th 2025.
I had forgotten these would be “signature versions” which basically has a special label on the bottom. I don’t think there is much else that is different.
Here is the rackmount equipped one intended for my main QTH rack:
Flex-8600 with rack mount fittings (the other I fitted with handles)
And here is the special underside labelling:
Two weeks of power (see writeup)
Did some testing with Winston KC9FVR’s Battery Box device running the Raspberry Pi500 and Monitor.
We maxed the RPi’s processes and ran up the power usage of the monitor/speakers to try for a worse case simulation, and found the unit had a theoretical 14.8 day capacity. Better than two weeks with the RPi500 setup using everything we could coax it into consuming.
We might have got a bit more efficiency trying various combinations of USB power cables, rather than going through the AC outlet on the battery box.
I’m doing some calculating incorporating the KX3, as the radio draws 3/4 Amps RX to 2.1 Amps in TX flat out. My best guess is the radio at full use plus the RPi500 setup would run off of KC9FVR’s battery box about 30 hours.
For a projected 8 hours max activation with everything running flat out, doing US Islands Activations or one of the [X]OTA events, a battery about 1/4 this size would work out. Hmm…
73
Steve
K9ZW
With Varying Frequency - Amateur Radio Ponderings 