There are plenty of radios you can buy that pick up MW and SW bands if that’s what you’re into. Or, you can follow [mircemk]’s example, and whip one up yourself instead.
The build employs an ESP32 as the brains of the operation. It’s hooked up to a rotary encoder and a small colour TFT screen, which displays an old-school style tuning dial for choosing the desired frequency. This setup is paired with an Si5351—a capable clock generator chip that can deliver just about any frequency from <8KHz up to 150+ MHz on command. There’s naturally a bunch of supporting analog hardware for the radio end of things, plus a NE612 mixer IC and a PAM8403 class D audio amplifier board, hooked up to a small 0.25W speaker for audio output. [mircemk] has set up the rig to act as a simple radio set, or, with the flick of a switch, it can be configured for SDR use with an attached computer.
It’s a handsome build, and one that likely proves a pleasant way to browse the MW and SW bands on a rainy afternoon. We’ve looked at other hardware in this category before, too. Video after the break.
Nice, I have this comparable device, an ats mini at home https://atsmini.github.io/
No power amplifier on it but I’d guess equally if not more capable, and all digital
I was expecting an SDR and Raspberry Pi. Nice to see it’s an analog radio.
With an IF out for soundcard/PC/SDRadio.
The Dream software for DRM reception might also work with it.
It’s beautiful but. Is there a labelmaker shortage of which I was not aware?
White rub on letters would have been so much nicer.
Why not just go whole hog and spend real money on a silkscreened or engraved panel? Of course, some if have budgets.
Maybe they should have melted some metal, cast the enclosure and machined the text into the front panel with their mill. Or perhaps called it good enough as is…
You buyin’ ?
Some things better off left unfinished.
Alssso, the power button is upside down. Keep it that way.
Power switch orientation is cultural, so unless you’ve taken a tour around the creator’s home you can’t really tell whether this one is upside down.
I would think that there was some logic to the convention, but is there I wonder.
I suppose that if you are collapsed or ducking down, or on the floor during a fire or something it would be easier if you could just reach the switch to turn it off when downwards is off.
The US should start a big partisan fight about it, to celebrate 250 years of decline :)
“An assortment of tarnsistors”
That’s actually an interesting sounding component.