Do you plan to offer openQRP transceiver kits ? When?

I am planning to offer both partial and full kits in the near future. First there will be a round of beta kits.

What are beta kits, how do I get one ?

I am looking for 20 builders who would be interested in building up the transceiver in its current form and provide feedback and improvement ideas. Ideally some of these builders would be interested in helping out with the transceiver firmware. I really want this to be a community effort with free exchange of ideas and software. The design is very stable but like anything technical, there is always room for improvement. If you are interested in helping out please email me through the “Contact Us” link on the bottom of this page. I will charge a nominal amount for the kit to cover the parts cost.

Why did you choose the Arduino CPU ? Why C and not assembly language ?

The number of Arduino users in the world is staggering. The openQRP project could be a bridge to amateur radio from the digital world for some of these folks. The Arduino development platform is very stable and it is actively being improved, its free, and there is a large amount of information about Arduino on the Internet. Plus it is quite easy to understand and develop firmware with. I like C because it is abstracted from assembly language which frees you from worrying about register allocation, stack usage, memory paging, and all that machine level stuff, allowing you to concentrate on the application. Arduino supports both C and C++ so this can be a platform to introduce object oriented programming as well.

Why is the project taking so long ?

I ask myself the same question every day :) I am the only one contributing to the project at the moment and I have a full time job with other responsibilities. I work on openQRP “in between the cracks”. I did not want to bring others into the project until I was relatively confident in the design. This is the fourth version of the PC board, I have learned much along the way but it does take time. The good news is that I feel it is finally ready. Beta will start just after New Years and I’m hopeful it will be more exciting in the coming months.

We want to make our own PC Boards and use your design files, is that allowed ?

Yes, of course, I actually encourage it. All design related files will be posted and can be downloaded free of charge. All parts are easily obtainable through Mouser, Digikey, and other sources. I will be offering enclosures at a nominal charge, but like everything else, the mechanical drawings for that will be available also.

I have some ideas and suggestions for PC board changes, is there a possibility to incorporate them in the final design ?

If it is worthwhileI will do one more version of the board before final design sign off. I’ll make a judgement on this based on what is found in the beta build. It is relatively inexpensive to generate a new PCB version, the risk is that any change, big or small, can have unexpected side effects which might generate yet another version of the board :( I designed the board using FreePCB which anyone can download and use. I am even open to others tweaking the PC layout and submitting it for fabrication, the management of this is tricky if we have more than one designer working on the design but I have had experience with this before and know how to manage it.