Pete reports new developments with the uBITX transceiver
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Pete Eaton (WB9FLW), who writes:
Last March, Ashhar Farhan (VU2ESE) the designer of the very popular BITX20 and BITX40 series of mono-band HF Transceivers announced a new low cost rig called the uBITX (micro BITX) a full blown 80-10m 10 Watt SSB/CW Transceiver. Now comes word that after many months of very hard development work by Ashhar this much anticipated Rig will soon be available.
For those not familiar with the project this is *not* a kit, rather like its sibling (the BITX40) it consists of two assembled and tested Circuit Boards. The RF board measures 5.5 x 6 inches and a second small plug in daughter card that takes care of the digital portion of the design including the 2X16 LCD, Arduino Nano, and Si5351 which are used in the VFO.
Add a cabinet, knobs, and connectors and you have a full blown HF Rig! An added plus is that except for the Gerber PCB files everything else (including the firmware) is Open Sourced!
The original description can be found here:
http://www.phonestack.com/farhan/ubitx/ubitx.html
Farhan has just released the Firmware, Schematics, and Wiring Diagram for the production version on GitHub
Arduino Sketch:
https://github.com/afarhan/ubitx
RF Board Schematic:
https://github.com/afarhan/ubitx/blob/e481ea2a2457fc4e7be7a6a4bc9a0fba12bf2cde/ubitxv3.pdf
Digital (Raduino) Board Schematic:
http://www.phonestack.com/farhan/ubitx/raduino.pdf
Wiring Diagram:
https://github.com/afarhan/ubitx/blob/e481ea2a2457fc4e7be7a6a4bc9a0fba12bf2cde/ubitx_wiring.png
Farhan has a social conscience as well giving several local ladies much needed employment for final assembly and checkout of the Rigs.
There are still a few final tweaks being done to the design so pricing is still to be determined. But if it's offered at a similar price point as his earlier Transceivers it should sell like hotcakes!
For the latest info check out the BITX User Group at:
Wow! Amazing project! Thanks for the tip and updates, Pete!