[RTTY] FSKit

[Doug Hall]

I've had a few inquiries about the difference between the FSKit (which
is described in the August 2011 QST) and the FSK regenerator, which is
a similar project I did a few years ago. I made the schematic and
source code available for the regenerator and some of you got chips
from me and built units. No PC boards were available for the
regenerator project.

The FSKit does the same thing as the regenerator, but adds a few
features such as selectable tone pairs and normal and reverse shift
for the FSK output. (I also designed a PC board for the FSKit and had
some boards fabricated.) Since the new features are selectable by
jumpers connected to the microcontroller the software for the FSKit is
necessarily slightly different from the original code in the
regenerator microcontroller. So if you have one of the original micros
lying around it won't work as described in the new circuit board.
However, if anyone wants a circuit board and has the old micro that
they want to use in it I will swap your old micro for a new one with
the new firmware programmed into it.

I don't want to use the reflector as a platform for selling chips or
PC boards, so after reading the QST article if you have an interest in
pre-programmed microcontrollers or PC boards for the FSKit please
contact me via email at k4dsp at arrl.net. That's the place to go for
questions about the design as well.

One last item - at present I am not planning on producing a kit or
assembled units. By making PC boards and pre-programmed ICs available
(as well as the C source code for those who have interest in such
things) I have tried to make it as easy as possible to reproduce.
Also, if any of you make modifications or improvements to the source
code it would be nice if you would share your work as well. At the
very least I'd like to hear from anyone who actually takes the time to
build the source code and program their own micro. I'd be interested
to know how many hams are actually into embedded software development.
I know the number is small, but hopefully it's growing.

Thanks for the bandwidth & 73,

Doug K4DSP