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Carlos’ Shortwave Art and recording of Adventist World Radio (August 7, 2024)
Carlos’ Shortwave Art and recording of NHK (August 8, 2024)
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The SWLing Post
- Carlos’ Shortwave Art and Recordings of Furusato No Kaze & Nippon No Kaze il bon ue broadcasts
Carlos’ Shortwave Art and Recordings of Furusato No Kaze & Nippon No Kaze il bon ue broadcasts
Carlos’ Shortwave Art and Recordings Explore Extreme Weather
The Radio Phonics Laboratory
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The SWLing Post
- Typhoon Gaemi: Carlos’ Recording of Radio ZP-30, RTI, and Radiofax via the Japan Meteorological Agency
Typhoon Gaemi: Carlos’ Recording of Radio ZP-30, RTI, and Radiofax via the Japan Meteorological Agency
Carlos’ Shortwave Art from NHK and Radiofax via Kyodo News
Carlos’ Shortwave Art and recording of Rádio Mitre (July 14, 2024)
Kyodo News Morning Edition via Radiofax: Expect the unexpected!
Using AI to generate modern QSL Cards
With the recent explosion of artificial intelligence (AI) art generators that are making the news of late for all the wrong reasons, I decided to see if I could put it to good use and design some futuristic QSL cards.
Having recently been contacted by the Special Callsigns QSL Manager and being advised that there were 18 QSL cards waiting for me, I decided it was time to create some QSL cards of my own for future use.
Having never used any form of online AI and not having any artistic abilities I was amazed how easy it was to create images using nothing more than a paragraph or so of text to describe what it was I wanted to create.
Since all the QSL cards I received were for contacts on the QO-100 satellite, I set out to create a visually futuristic QSL card that was based around a radio HAM operator and satellite communications.
![M0AWS - 1st attempt to create a futuristic QSL card using AI Art](../themes/icons/grey.gif)
To my surprise the results of my first image generation were surprisingly good. The AI generated an image that resembled the simple text that I entered, although I never requested a one legged HAM operator!
Pleased with my very first attempt I gradually improved the description of what I was looking for, adding more and more detail to the text and including things that I wanted to see in the image. Over a fairly short period of time this approach started to generate some very interesting images.
![M0AWS - AI Art QSL Image attempt 2](../themes/icons/grey.gif)
![M0AWS - AI Art QSL Image attempt 3](../themes/icons/grey.gif)
![M0AWS - AI Art QSL Image attempt 4](../themes/icons/grey.gif)
With each iteration I gradually got closer to what I was trying to achieve but, never quite got exactly what I wanted so, I decided to rewrite the descriptive text adding even more information than before. The text was now a full blown paragraph with quite specific things described including the angle at which the scene was being viewed from.
The other option I wanted to try out was the theme functionality that the AI offered. This allows you to set a theme for the image from things like steampunk, cartoon, manga, real world and many more. The results were quite impressive and added yet another angle to the image generation.
![M0AWS - AI Art QSL Theme 1](../themes/icons/grey.gif)
![M0AWS - AI Art QSL Theme 3](../themes/icons/grey.gif)
![M0AWS - AI Art QSL Theme 2](../themes/icons/grey.gif)
I disappeared down the theme AI Art generation rabbit hole for quite some time and generated some very interesting and fun results. The best by far though was the Thunderbirds themed image, this did put a smile on my face!
![M0AWS - AI Art QSL Thunderbirds Themed](../themes/icons/grey.gif)
At the other end of the spectrum I tried the Salvador Dalli theme, it produced an image that was very like the work of the famous artist but, wasn’t quite what I was looking for.
![M0AWS - AI Art QSL Salvador Dalli Themed](../themes/icons/grey.gif)
After much fun I eventually settled on the image I was after, a futuristic scene of a radio HAM with a satellite ground station over looking a mountain range and city below.
![M0AWS Satellite QSL Card generated using online AI](../themes/icons/grey.gif)
I’m really pleased with the results from my ventures into AI generated art. The next challenge is to create a QSL card for HF bands Contacts.
More soon …
Carlos’ Shortwave Art and recording of ZP-30 (June 27, 2024)
Carlos’ Shortwave Art and Recording of NHK (June 24, 2024)
Carlos’ Shortwave Art and recording of ZP-30 (June 2, 2024)
Carlos’ Shortwave Art and recording of NHK (May 20, 2024)
Carlos’ Shortwave Art and recording of Vatican Radio (May 13, 2024)
Stamp Commemorates 50th Anniversary of KBS
Update to my NodeRed QO-100 Dashboard
Ever since my QO-100 ground station has been operational I’ve been using my NodeRed QO-100 Dashboard to control my IC-705 and GQRX SDR software to drive my NooElec SmartSDR receiver. This gives me a full duplex ground station with both transmit and receive VFO’s synchronised.
This solution has worked incredibly well from the outset and over time I’ve added extra functionality that I’ve found to be useful to enhance the overall setup.
The latest addition to the ground station solution is a Sennheiser Headset that I picked up for just £56 on Amazon (Much cheaper than the Heil equivalents at the HAM stores!) and have found it to be excellent. The audio quality from both the mic and the headphones is extremely good whilst being light and comfortable to wear for extended periods.
![M0AWS - Sennheiser SC 165](../themes/icons/grey.gif)
To incorporate this into the ground station the headset is connected to my Kubuntu PC and the audio chain to the IC-705 is sent wirelessly using the latest version of WFView. This works extremely well. The receive audio comes directly from the GQRX SDR software to the headphones so that I have a full duplex headset combination.
Audio routing is done via pulse audio on the Kubuntu PC and is very easy to setup.
Since I no longer have a mic connected to the IC-705 directly I found that I needed a way to operate the PTT wirelessly and this is where the latest addition to my NodeRed QO-100 Dashboard comes in.
Adding a little functionality to the NodeRed flow I was able to create a button that toggles the IC-705 PTT state on and off giving me the ability to easily switch between receive and transmit using a simple XMLRPC node without the need for a physical PTT button.
![M0AWS - Additional NodeRed PTT Flow](../themes/icons/grey.gif)
The PTT state and PTT button colour change is handled by the Toggle PTT function node shown in the above flow. The code to do this is relatively simple as shown below.
![M0AWS - NodeRed Toggle PTT Function to change button colour](../themes/icons/grey.gif)
The entire QO-100 Dashboard flow has grown somewhat from it’s initial conception but, it provides all the functionality that I require to operate a full duplex station on the QO-100 satellite.
![M0AWS - NodeRed QO-100 Dashboard complete flow](../themes/icons/grey.gif)
This simple but, effective PTT solution works great and leaves me hands free whilst talking on the satellite or the HF bands when using the IC-705. This also means that when using my IC-705 it only requires the coax to be connected, everything else is done via Wifi keeping things nice and tidy in the radio shack.
![M0AWS - Updated NodeRed QO-100 Dashboard with PTT button](../themes/icons/grey.gif)
The image above shows the QO-100 ground station in receive cycle with the RX/TX VFO’s in split mode as the DX station was slightly off frequency to me. The PTT button goes red when in TX mode just like the split button shown above for visual reference.
As you can probably tell, I’m a huge fan of NodeRed and have put together quite a few projects using it, including my HF Bands Live Monitoring web page.
More soon …