Kategori: Stellex

Stellex mini-Yig control board

Mega 8 controlboard

Finally got around to make a PCB to control the Stellex synthesizers. I got a bit frustrated trying to use KiCAD, placing aribtrary vias is something KiCAD could improve as well as arcs in copper layers. I was going to use eagle, but found http://easyeda.com that worked fine, at least for something this simple.

I am not very found of ”cloud” solutions, but being able to do routing wherever you are is appealing…

The boards are not anything special, just a AVR mega 8 and two voltage regulators. I included points to connect to most unused pins, perhaps I will use this for some more generic tasks as well.

Hopefully I will get the boards today, they are on the way from dirtypcbs with DHL. Shipping is more expensive than the pcbs, but I didn’t want to wait for the HK post shipping…

This is just to get started, future plans include stabilization of the internal 10Mhz reference oscillator with GPS and/or an OCXO.

Stellex mini YIG success!

Finally! After tracking down the final bug I got the Stellex Endwave synthesizer to phaselock.

Next step is to maybe build a bit more standalone solution, currently an ATMEGA8 residing on my STK500 controls the LMX2336 on the synthesizer. I have written a real nice piece of code to control the LMX23*6 family of PLL’s before, but I couldn’t find the source so I borrowed John Miles, KE5FX, code and modified it a bit.

Without his site I would never have been able to get it up and running!

Pictures will follow then I get some more work done.

End goal is a LO for my 10GHz transverter (and perhaps for 24G in the not too distant future…)

Before that I will replace the on-board TCXO with external OCXO.

/SA7AEN