They say it is edible but the whole growing out of the sack grossed me out on this one so I passed.

… Yeah, that is understandable. Great find! And I like the picture of the gills a lot

Bonus birbs

Interesting… Good to hear!

Sorry, I am in the process of moving and have not been able to keep a close eye, and the disk filled up. I have increased the disk size now, but I see some errors with the images. I need to sleep now but in the morning if it is not fixed I’ll figure out what is happening.

Is your friend alright?

Yes, there is a lot of potential. There are micro-spectrometers available covering this range, like the MEMS-FPI type spectrometer or the multi-pixel arrays with filters (example: https://www.mantispectra.com/products). But this new kind of detector seems to come with higher resolution, faster readout than the MEMS-FPI, and more sensitivity. It is quite exciting, I’m curious to see if they commercialize it soon.

I am not 100% sure, but I think that the designer bears the cost of the wafer yield.

The PDK is specific to the manufacturer, and I imagine that the risk associated with specific features is known and the yield range can be estimated. A design with more and riskier the features would lower the expected yield, and it makes sense that this risk gets passed onto the designer. The contract may have some protections for the case when the yield is significantly lower than expected because of the manufacturer’s fault. Just a guess though, it would be great if someone with real experience can answer.

Very cool!

I also like that they included a device cost analysis. I think they used some aggressively optimistic assumptions (100% yield from the wafer) and large-volume procurement prices that I am skeptical of, but if true it is valuable info.

That’s awesome!! Are they in a terrarium or outside?

Yes! This happens to be pretty good reception of an image, there are others which are not so great. Sometimes you have to tweak the settings, or make sure you’re using the correct decoding mode; there are quite a few of them. They have names like Martin and Scottie, among others.

Alright, I think this is one that I should first practice with an SDR. I already identified the signal at 14,230 KHz, but maybe the phone is not capturing the audio from the device with the quality required. Or it might be the decoding. This will be easier to test with the computer.

If–and I hope you’ll forgive me for an assumption here–you have a US mailing address, you could get your US amateur licenses fairly quickly and then operate under CEPT (once you have General or Amateur Extra) within certain Dutch jurisdictions. You do not need to be a US citizen, or even live here. You can conduct your entire exam via online zoom call. I did my Tech (first license in the US) from a beach on a tropical island with adequate WiFi during the pandemic, and then I did General and Amateur Extra upgrades a couple of years later in a different part of the world, each only weeks apart, also via zoom.

Thanks for the tip, I wish I was a in tropical island at the moment. I don’t have a US mailing address, although I some in my family and family friends do. However, the system here appears to be quite streamlined - register online, show up to the test center, answer 40 multiple choice questions - I will do some practice tests with the relevant Dutch terminology and give a try. There is no penalty for failing (other than test cost) and no limit to how many attempts I can do. My partner also wants to get one so that she can also transmit, otherwise she’d see me having all the fun.

I tried a few different training methods and I am liking this one: https://stendec.io/morse/koch.html

Ooh, is that what SSTV should look like? I tried capturing some earlier today using Radio 36, but I could not get a good image. I even trying capturing the image directly from the audio of YouTube videos, and I could only get the silhouette of the image that way. I’ll keep trying.

Alright then, I’ll do it then… The exam will combine two challenges in one for me because I’ll have to take it in Dutch, and my Dutch is still not amazing, haha

I was just now looking through a few resources to learn morse code so this is very helpful! It is fortunately simpler than I thought - I was under the impression that the code mapped to full words, not individual letters/numbers, and so that it was essentially a different language. Memorizing the alphabet seems relatively straight forward to me now, but it probably takes a lot of time and effort to become proficient. I’ll give it a try.

It is indeed magical when one considers the minimum resources needed to transmit and receive CW over long distances. Of course digital modes are quite efficient and accessible now, but I don’t think most people can turn millisecond arrays of 0’s and 1’s into actual words without the help of some fancy device.

Thanks a lot for your kind words and recommendations!

As for Morse code, actually yesterday I watched a video that blew my mind, this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvQ_UnePS7w

It is so cool. Even if no longer necessary, the way this operator communicates over Morse code is fascinating and I would really like to be able to do that some day. So, if I do get a license I am for sure going to at least try to learn the bare minimum to identify myself and say hello with this nice gadget 😄

I don’t have a license yet, or any SW transmitters. I have been thinking of maybe getting a license. I started playing with GSM/LTE modules, then LoRa, then got into identifying signals all over the place using SDR.

This past week I decided to buy a dedicated shortwave radio to see if it gives me something that the SDR doesn’t, and it actually does, it has different ergonomics and I find it a lot smoother for exploring the 100 KHz - 30 MHz region. With my SDR I think it is a bit cumbersome to explore this region as someone who doesn’t know what to look for. The radio is more constrained and set up to move through the spectrum in ways that make sense.

That’s a good method, it makes sense! I will remember these now: 3.5,7,14,28 = 80,40,20,10, and use them to anchor the others.

As I played with the radio I would compute 300,000 m/s / 40 m -> 30/4 is 7.5 so somewhere close to 7 MHz… But this method was a bit cumbersome so I have just been ignoring the wavelengh so far, hehe.

I still haven’t memorized the wavelength mappings so I always think in frequency

Nice!

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I would make use of a VPS to serve a directory with the files using Nginx. The VPS is ~$5 /month. You can share the ip or buy a domain name for ~$10/year. If you are not opposed to vibe-coding, you can probably generate the Nginx + HTML config to play through the songs without having to click them individually with little effort.

Wait what, how do you know my code?