In the previous post, the Kestrel had a two line LCD display on the lower area of the speaker grille. One of the nice things about this transceiver is the sound, and this was compromised by the LCD display obscuring part of the speaker aperture.
OLED displays are commonly available now, so a 0.91 inch OLED was interfaced to the VFO as an experiment.
A couple of VFO boards were obtained from Denys VK3ZYZ, and that was a welcome replacement for the dogs breakfast controller and clock generator in the previous post. Denys sent a couple of Nano VFO boards and a Tracker VFO board. The Tracker board has some spare space on it for custom interfacing etc. I ended up using the smaller Nano VFO board and adding a resistor ladder to interface to the 10 channel selector on the Kestrel. The output of the ladder feeds the Nano with an analogue stepped voltage representing the selected channel.
More information on the boards can be found here http://www.sadarc.org/index.php/projects/
Photos of the boards are below-
A replacement speaker area plate was cut from some 1.6mm Aluminum with a cutout matching the speaker aperture. A 3D printed bezel for the OLED is mounted to the lower left where it doesn’t get in the way of the speaker. The plastic grille was 3D printed and mounted behind the speaker cut out.
The OLED display is a touch small, but it is very readable due to the sharp bright characters. I am keeping an eye out for a larger display but it will do for the moment.
The Nano VFO in the radio has a small extension on it for some extra connectors and the resistor ladder.
That’s it for now. It is set up for 160m, 80m, 40m and some fixed HF frequencies and works pretty well. Power output is about 120 W pep.
VK3YY 