Re: [Repeater-Builder] Re: CTCSS Encoder/Decoder
And then there are those who need to 'have' a repeater but have next to no money and lots of time. As a member of that group I also appreciate discussions like this! I do the best I can with what I can get, and often end up spending untold hundreds of hours re-inventing the wheel. 73, Paul N1BUG ae6zm wrote: I think this thread has clearly demonstrated that there are a couple different groups involved in building/maintaining repeaters. Those who are involved in commercial systems are likely best served by purchasing commercial grade parts/packages/systems, as their focus is on 'having' a repeater. Then there are those of us who are interested primarily in the experience of 'inventing /designing/ building/ debugging a repeater, and then starting over with a new idea. In behalf of all of us in this category, I say thank you all for your ideas, experiences and words of wisdom. As one who spent many years in the first group, I find it immeasurably enjoyable to now be one of the second group. No pressure to 'GET IT BACK ON THE AIR'. Just have some fun, learn something, and try to pass it on.
Re: [Repeater-Builder] Re: CTCSS Encoder/Decoder
Amen to that! However, instead of re-inventing the wheel, I find myself spending a lot of time making discarded sow's ears into the proverbial silk purse. g 73 and aloha Eric KH6CQ --- On Sat, 5/8/10, N1BUG p...@n1bug.com wrote: From: N1BUG p...@n1bug.com Subject: Re: [Repeater-Builder] Re: CTCSS Encoder/Decoder To: Repeater-Builder@yahoogroups.com Date: Saturday, May 8, 2010, 5:19 PM And then there are those who need to 'have' a repeater but have next to no money and lots of time. As a member of that group I also appreciate discussions like this! I do the best I can with what I can get, and often end up spending untold hundreds of hours re-inventing the wheel. 73, Paul N1BUG ae6zm wrote: I think this thread has clearly demonstrated that there are a couple different groups involved in building/maintainin g repeaters. Those who are involved in commercial systems are likely best served by purchasing commercial grade parts/packages/ systems, as their focus is on 'having' a repeater. Then there are those of us who are interested primarily in the experience of 'inventing /designing/ building/ debugging a repeater, and then starting over with a new idea. In behalf of all of us in this category, I say thank you all for your ideas, experiences and words of wisdom. As one who spent many years in the first group, I find it immeasurably enjoyable to now be one of the second group. No pressure to 'GET IT BACK ON THE AIR'. Just have some fun, learn something, and try to pass it on.
RE: [Repeater-Builder] Re: CTCSS Encoder/Decoder
Building a PL decoder out of NE567's is old-school, and I've never seen a design that didn't have drift problems. The MX-COM (now CML Micro) tone chips were a better way to go, but many have been discontinued. If you can find them on the surplus market, that would be the easiest way to go. The part numbers were MX-3x5, where x was one of several numbers. Some were designed to be used with a DIP switch for frequency selection, others were designed to tie to a uP and took serial data to select the tone. Dig around for the datasheets, I'm sure they're out there... --- Jeff WN3A -Original Message- From: Repeater-Builder@yahoogroups.com [mailto:repeater-buil...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of tracomm Sent: Friday, May 07, 2010 10:14 AM To: Repeater-Builder@yahoogroups.com Subject: [Repeater-Builder] Re: CTCSS Encoder/Decoder I have to agree, unless you need to Reminisce about the good old days when men actually built the things they used, there are so many inexpensive options for ctcss that actually work, very well. There are a few Selectone units on ebay at about $2.00 and I am certain members here could supply more than a few boards very cheaply that actually work reliably. CJD --- In Repeater-Builder@yahoogroups.com, kevin valentino kevinvalent...@... wrote: Grab an old Standard HX300 or C734 etc. off ebay for practically nothing(if you find one) the enc/dec board is a plug in w/wire leads, very small, dip select, and rock solid. I have one kickin around with the schematic if your interested. I have adapted these to many old crap radios and they always work perfectly. Just a suggestion :-) --- On Thu, 5/6/10, James ka2...@... wrote: From: James ka2...@... Subject: [Repeater-Builder] CTCSS Encoder/Decoder To: Repeater-Builder@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, May 6, 2010, 10:35 AM Hi Guys, We have been experimenting with building CTCSS Units using the 567 Tone Chip and good components, i.e. Caps, multi turn pots etc. The stability is not good in my opinion. We will set it to 107.2 and the next time you check it is off enough to where it won't decode until it is re-tuned slightly. I am wondering what your experiences may have been with this CTCSS Chip. Many articles say they work well with the addition of a stable voltage regulator, so we added a five volt regulator, no difference in stability. Any comments and experiences with this and other chips would be appreciated. The availability of CTCSS Chips seems limited. No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.819 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/2842 - Release Date: 05/07/10 02:26:00
Re: [Repeater-Builder] Re: CTCSS Encoder/Decoder
Thanks to all who have shared their comments and experience on the LM567 for CTCSS Encode and Decode. I have many ideas to work with now and in the future. You have all given me several ways to go from Skips comments on how to prefect the 567 to Ken and Jeff's recommendations on the CML Micro MX IC's. Again this group is the best resource for Amateur Radio Information available anywhere. Thanks to all who has taken the time to share information. 73 JIM KA2AJH Wellsville, NY On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 11:13 AM, skipp025 skipp...@yahoo.com wrote: Hi Chuck, Chuck Kelsey wb2...@... wrote: Skipp, I suspect that you were the exception rather than the rule, then. I'm often told the above... for more than one reason. Why some of you are smiling sideways when you say that is another subject unto itself. To me there are better ways to do it than a 567. Sure there are... but back in the early 1980's I had a lot more time than pocket money so I built a lot more discrete circuits and the 567 was pretty inexpensive. I remember playing with various 567 circuits back in the 70's. Never could get reliable performance. I tried a number of different circuits using a lot of the different chip available at the time. I didn't have much of a problem with the 567 circuit once the support parts stopped changing value or I used better quality parts. Used them for paging frequencies. Gave up and started using commercial encoders and decoders and never looked back. Of course when it became time to do things on a more professional level... I used more professional equipment. But I built most of my early ham repeater controllers from scratch. Maybe you can give the guy some guidance to get some stability and choke down the bandwidth so that adjacent tones don't false the thing. Chuck Rather than reinvent the wheel... I provided a real world CTCSS circuit references for those who would actually care to chase that information down. There are more practical methods to decode CTCSS... but the NE-567 or equivalent will do the job. As Jeff said, yes it is old school but at least it is possible to use the chip for the cause. cheers, s. -- Jim Cicirello 181 Stevens Street Wellsville, N.Y. 14895 (585)593-4655
Re: [Repeater-Builder] Re: CTCSS Encoder/Decoder
At 5/7/2010 04:21, you wrote: We have been experimenting with building CTCSS Units using the 567 Tone Chip and good components, i.e. Caps, multi turn pots etc. The stability is not good in my opinion. For encoding, there's a million PIC-based solutions on the net. I designed my own, using a different PIC (12HV615) to reduce extra components to minimal: it has a built-in voltage stabilizer (no 78L05 needed, just a resisitor), and using bitstream D/A so no external D/A network neccessary. By bitstream D/A do you mean PWM? If so, how fast do you clock it how many serial bits do you use to create each sample? For decoder, check out http://www.mcarcoh.org/ke8rv/photo-sd.html, specific the comments about his controller. I exchanged mail with the designer and his design is facinating, though not publically available, which is understandable. It's really mind-boggling what can be done with PICs. I see Don's using the analog input of a fairly low-end PIC, but I'd think you could use a digital input if the output of the LPF was limited via a very high gain amp. stage, a la ComSpec. Did he implement an IIR filter in the 12F675? Bob NO6B
Re: [Repeater-Builder] Re: CTCSS Encoder/Decoder
Skipp, I suspect that you were the exception rather than the rule, then. To me there are better ways to do it than a 567. I remember playing with various 567 circuits back in the 70's. Never could get reliable performance. Used them for paging frequencies. Gave up and started using commercial encoders and decoders and never looked back. Maybe you can give the guy some guidance to get some stability and choke down the bandwidth so that adjacent tones don't false the thing. Chuck WB2EDV - Original Message - From: skipp025 skipp...@yahoo.com To: Repeater-Builder@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2010 6:37 PM Subject: [Repeater-Builder] Re: CTCSS Encoder/Decoder Waste of time and effort. Very old technology that never worked well. I guess I'll have to pull the 567 ctcss decoder I built way back when... even though it still works just fine... I copied a Yaesu 567 CTCSS Encoder/Decoder circuit and it works well to this day. Still have the diagram around here somewhere but you can also reference the TD-3 circuit I provided a link to in an earlier post. s. Yahoo! Groups Links No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.819 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/2858 - Release Date: 05/06/10 14:26:00
Re: [Repeater-Builder] Re: CTCSS Encoder/Decoder
At 5/6/2010 19:09, you wrote: Skipp, I suspect that you were the exception rather than the rule, then. To me there are better ways to do it than a 567. I remember playing with various 567 circuits back in the 70's. Never could get reliable performance. Used them for paging frequencies. Gave up and started using commercial encoders and decoders and never looked back. Maybe you can give the guy some guidance to get some stability and choke down the bandwidth so that adjacent tones don't false the thing. The problem is if you reduce the BW to +/- half a standard tone freq., the detection time becomes unacceptably long. I tried using them for both DTMF CTCSS detection a long time ago. Compared to commercial CTCSS decoders, they were more prone to falsing and/or talkoff. Eventually I found a cheap, reliable solution: take a ComSpec SS-32 encoder add the decode circuitry (the SS-32 the TS-32 use the same divider/encoder IC). I still have that decoder it still works just as good as an actual TS-32. Though my 567s seemed to work OK as DTMF decoders, a lot of other people had problems getting them to reliably decode, probably due to the timing capacitor changing value with temperature. Bob NO6B
