One remotely controllable switch that Project TouCans has been missing is an on/off switch. Once the rig's up in the air, it's powered until we bring it bakc down or the battery goes dead. We're working on changing that. A few weeks ago after reading about Darlington arrays on a ham radio forum message I can no longer locate, we put a plan in place. K06BTY got our twow main comcponents soldered ont a board and we stepped away from the project for a few weeks. We're back and just about ready to go.

Here's what we have now

K06BTY installed our keyer relay dead-bug style using superglue below the single-pole double-throw power relay. We're using the Darlington relay pictured at the top of the column to protect the Pico-W from directly delivering current to the relay coils, an activity that can destroy at least the GPIO portion of the Pico-W, (ask me how I know.)

More updates soon. For step by step progress updates see TouCan's github page for this project.