Amateur Radio Station W4KRL

I've got a lot of projects half-done and creating this page is one of them.

Arduino Control of a miniVNA

The Arduino is an easy to use, low cost controller well suited to ham radio projects. I am developing a controller for the miniVNA using an Arduino UNO and touch screen color graphic LCD display. Normally the miniVNA is connected to a PC by USB however it has a 3.3V-level RS-232 port built in making it easy to interface with the Arduino serial port.

My first objective is to control the miniVNA using the touchscreen and display SWR for selected ham bands. Once this basic function is achieved it should be possible to add other measurements such as resistance, impedance, cable length, etc.

Utimately, it may be possible to control a direct digital synthesizer (DDS) and completely duplicate the vector network analyzer making the miniVNA unecessary.

First Progress Report (video)

miniVNA product information

AMRAD presentation May 9, 2013 

2.6-inch LCD Touchscreen pinouts 

Arduino Resources:

(off site links)

Ladyada (Limor Fried) has a wealth of information about all things Arduino at:

http://www.adafruit.com/

Her tutorial on the graphics library used by  most Arduino products is excellent:

Adafruit GFX Library Tutorial

Once you want to expand your knowledge of C++ beyond the excellent reference at the main Arduino site take a look at

C++ Tutorial by Juan Solie'

ereid from Chile has developed an easy installation package for the lastes Arduino IDE. It adds useful features to the compiler:

 Arduino Enhanced Release IDE

womarts sells a number of Arduino shields and sensors. Only the 2.6-inch display is known to be compatible: 

 2.6-inch LCD touchscreen supplier

The ARRL publishes an excellent book full of ham radio Arduino projects:

Ham Radio for Arduino and PICAXE