1802 Membership Card - Loader

I can now load anything into my "all memory" 1802 Membership Card. I located this fine work by Don Meyer on his loader built using an Arduino HERE.

I had everything I needed for this build except the MCP23017 Port Expander chip (Adafruit PRODUCT ID: 732).

I am using a Teensy 2.0 as a USB to Serial adapter to connect to the 1802 Membership Card serial port. The example sketch to perform this function is included with the Teensy 2.0 and under File>Examples>Teensy>USB_Serial>USBtoSerial in the Arduino IDE software.

I am now successfully running the Super Monitor and BASIC3 with no issues using the bin file here --> http://www.sunrise-ev.com/MembershipCard/MCSMP20B.bin via the Serial port on the 1802 Membership card.

1802 Membership Card (For me and you and the 1802)

I built the 1802 Membership Card this weekend and had a blast playing around with it.

It has been 4 decades since I ran code on this processor. Lee Hart has done a great job with this kit.
Next step is to go beyond the "blink" Q hello world and get a Monitor and Tiny Basic running over the serial port.

Balloon Payload Package

I have been working on another balloon payload package. This time it will be based on a TeensyLC MCU and transmit on HF radio using the 10 meter band with telemetry encoded with FT8. I am just getting the basic design worked out now but my working code is uploaded to GitHub HERE.

I spent a bit of time figuring out how to generate a 10 digit Maidenhead Grid value. The details of the Maidenhead Grid system on THIS GitHub page were very helpful. My Maidenhead Grid code can be directly accessed HERE.

I hope to do testing with the payload package with a kite and then a balloon launch by summer.