BlueClone - The Blue Room's Own Comms System

[ChristoffSP]

Going SMD is certainly something you could look at. And after our recent tweak to resistor values it'll reduce the number of feeders on your P&P machine.

 

I think there are a couple of components that might cause an issue...

 

The FET is carefully chosen,not sure if it's available in SMD.

 

Ditto the opamp which drives the headphones. It was chosen because of its high output drive capability and its ability to tolerate shorts etc, an ordinary opamp won't cut it. But, if you went SMD it could be replaced with an ordinary opamp with an output stage beefed up with a couple of transistors. I have a design for such a thing that I've used over the years.

 

What P&P do you have? I'm always on the lookout for people who can do small production runs for my own work.

The pick and placer is one from Charmingh. Got a great deal on it from a friend that bought it and then ended up changing direction with his manufacturing business. It's a 4 head and 30 pneumatic feeder model. I just finished a batch of controller pcb's with about 20 different SMD components in the BOM and it worked a treat. I spent some time last night looking at SMD equivalent parts. Some of them will have to stay through hole but the less hand soldering I need to the better haha. The led's I can do SMD and 3D print a light tunnel for the surface mount led's to be viewable from the panel. Welcome to send some pcb's to have assembled I'm based out of south africa so shipping might be more expensive than ordering it assembled from JLCPCB.

[LEdgeley]

Can anyone suggest a suitable Op Amp to use in place of a TCA0372 for IC4? Other than some questionable china-based eBay suppliers I can't find anyone who stocks them in a DIP-8 package any more. Somewhere in one of the BoM documents attached to this thread I saw an L272M suggested, but that seems impossible to source in DIP8 as well.

[kgallen]

This one appears genuine:

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/174148493364

Edited October 3, 2020 by kgallen

[themadhippy]

https://www.reichelt.com/gb/en/ic-circuit-tca-0372-dp1-p20483.html?PROVID=2788&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIy-vV7-GY7AIVC-ztCh0pCgWzEAYYBSABEgKYAfD_BwE

the shipping costs might hurt if your only buying one though

Edited October 3, 2020 by themadhippy

[pmiller056]

For some projects I've used a small SMD to DIP adapter PCB, allowing the modern component to be placed on an older design PCB. Unfortunately, in this case it will need to be a custom adapter PCB to go from the current 16 pin SMD device to the older 8 pin DIP pcb. If you choose to do this be aware that there appear to be a number of different versions of the SMD device, so check the actual part number to be used before starting to design anything.

[sunray]

I once had to replace a chip as an urgent repair - as in curtain up in 30 mins - the other way SMD to throughhole. My solution was 15mm lengths of tinned copper wire, bend a small foot and solder to the PCB then form wires and solder new chip on the ends. Yes a horrible solution but it worked and I had the brainwave to encase it in hot melt. That reminds me ... I never did do the proper repair.

[cedd]

Hi all

Does anybody know where the v1.4 files have gone? Just looking to download a few bits and pieces, and the link isn't working. 

[dmxlights]

I have the some of the v1.4 files here https://mcgcs.net/BluecomBeltpack1_4.zip

Hope this is of help

Edited February 3, 2022 by dmxlights

[andrew.p.r]

Has there been any exploration into a wireless version of bluecom at all or is this well outside the realm of this project?

[boatman]

It's certainly outside my experience so, unless someone else has an interest, the answer is no.

[cedd]

I've toyed with the idea several times, but the project is well beyond my skillset. I can imagine though a Raspberry Pi (maybe a zero) in a beltpack, running something like Zello. You'd need a server on the LAN somewhere, which could be another pi or a laptop that controlled the system. I think it's achievable, and once someone has done the hard work it could be shared as a disk image for easy install. Bit of GPIO for ptt, call light etc. and you'd be away. Deciding on the audio hardware is probably the hardest part. I guess Bluetooth headsets would be easiest but it's hardly heavy duty and is another thing to go wrong. PC headset in to the pi would probably be best. 

Then the thing just needs powering, and probably a way of interfacing to wired comms too. 

Big project, but probably not too difficult for someone in the know. 

[pmiller056]

You could use one of the Bluecom beltpacks with simple extra circuitry to provide similar functionality to a TW-47 two-way radio interface.

The radio part of the system is NOT full duplex because that can be awkward to do with analogue radios. Any audio on the radio system is fed to the wired system. The wired system call button must be pressed to make the base station radio transmit and send the wired system audio to the radio system.

Note that most radio systems have an inherent short delay (around 0.5 to 1 second) to 'wake up' after pushing the transmit button. The transmitter needs to switch to transmit then the receiver 'squelch' circuit operates to pass incoming audio, assuming an FM system, which is most likely in normal use.

Read the TW-47 manual and note in the applications section how the relay and the audio transformers (DI box?) are used to interface between wired system and the radio. For experimenting, cheap PMR466 handheld radios can be used, provided there is the means to easily connect an external speaker/mic or similar.

[dmxlights]

I also looked in to this a few years ago as in using raspberry pi(s) with mumble and someone has done it but I did not do much as for getting time to do it and then the lockdowns in 2020.

From what I remember reading there was push to talk and always on (as in mic on all times) this was fully duplex as well. The belt packs where battery powered some how. If I get a chance I will go though my bookmarks to see if I have it in my bookmarks.

From reading the delay was very low as in a few mil seconds as it was all local as in internal wifi or wired network

[dmxlights]

This is one of the links I found to a raspberry pi been used

https://projectable.me/I-built-a-wifi-walkie-talkie-for-my-kids-now-you-can-too/

Here is the main one I seen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14hbYhLjQ8Y

https://inside.arcada.fi/kultur-och-media/made-in-arcada-an-open-access-diy-intercom-system/

Edited to add this below

This is the one I seen and was looking for

https://github.com/matiaspl/intercom

Edited March 18, 2022 by dmxlights

[J Pearce]

13 hours ago, pmiller056 said:

The radio part of the system is NOT full duplex because that can be awkward to do with analogue radios.

You can get much more workable than the hold call button solution by using one frequency to transmit the wired partyline to all packs and a separate frequency to transmit from wireless back to wired. Only one wireless user can talk at a time, but all wireless users can hear the wired comms all the time. Be aware that some radio kit is not designed for 100% duty cycle though.