Things have been a bit quiet on the blog front as I work to get the CC-40 beta up and running. Last month, I had an initial set of beta PCBs manufactured, but I made a really big mistake. Somehow I bungled the footprint of the ATmega168 microcontroller, and it ended up much smaller than it should have been. I managed to wire the microcontroller to the PCB using 30 AWG Kynar, but another problem manifested itself. The wires acted like an antenna and radiated the 16 MHz clock all over the board, causing a high pitched whine in the audio. I continued to build the board, and for the most part, the rest of it worked as expected, but I couldn’t release a board with such an obvious fault to the beta testers. It was probably a good thing that I was forced to spin the board again, as I found some other subtle problems that needed to be corrected. The new PCB design was submitted to the PCB vendor early this morning, and with any luck the new board will be here in about two weeks.

The current beta test unit is still usable, especially if I hook it up to my external AF amp, which cuts off high frequencies pretty well. Early this morning, I shot a video comparing CC-40 to my SW-40. I’m listening to JA1NUT and manually switching between the CC-40 and the SW-40. It’s not a great indicator of the performance, but at least it will give you a little taste of the character of the radio.

While I wait for the new beta PCBs to get here, I’ve still got plenty of work to do in preparing documentation, setting up my shipping station, and getting my web shopping cart configured. We’re also going through the fun of Noah teething, so sleep is at a bit of a premium for us at the moment. With any luck, the next update will be some happy news about how the new beta PCBs work great!