Tag Archives: hacks

Kenwood TS-440S IC-10 Upgrade and DIY CAT Control for Linux

My radio club, SFARC, has helped me get into an HF rig, namely the Kenwood TS-440S. This radio is a bit old (1986ish) but, IMHO, this thing is awesome. It has a fairly compact form factor, runs of my 12V off grid power without issue, and with the following upgrades will talk to my computer.

I first purchased a digimode cable that has opto-isolated audio input/output as well as a USB PTT coupler which is allowing me to experiment with digital modes on this transceiver. While this is great, I would like to be able to view and control the frequency of my radio from FLDIGI via HamCAT or hamlib. Turns out this will require a little bit of hacking (awesome!) to get it working.

Kenwood TS-440 Digital Interface Cable

Issue #1: The 13 pin DIN, ACC 2, only provides audio and PTT functions. If I want to provide a serial interface I need to use the 6pin DIN, ACC 1, interface. I need to build an interface cable.

Issue #2: This interface is a serial connection using TTL voltage (5.5v) but with the same logic as a standard serial port. I need an FTDI breakout board with inverted logic.

Issue #3: The 440 requires an upgrade kit (IC-10) to provide serial communication capabilities. This kit is semi-rare and costs about 50 bucks.

In this article issue #1 will be addressed with a six pin din plug ordered from amazon.

Issue #2 will be handled by an FTDI USB board I already have on hand and an XP virtual machine running FD_PROG to invert the logic. Unfortunately this makes this solution NOT 100% Linux. To resolve this I will use the command line Linux program ftdi_eeprom to clone my firmware and post it here so Linux only users can use ftdi_eeprom or flashrom to program their FTDI boards with ease.

Issue #3 is easily resolved by ordering the chips individually or by purchasing one of my $15 IC-10 kits from eBay.

IC-10 Chipset for Kenwood TS-440 / R5000

#1: Build the plug.

After receiving the plug from Amazon, I repurposed a shielded USB cable to build the plug. I hooked up all the wires even though CTS/RTS were not required. RFU style as it were. Perhaps adding flow control in the future would speed things up. I don’t know I haven’t tried. Anyway….

Disassembled Plug

These are the pin numbers as viewed from the solder side:

  1. GND
  2. TXD
  3. RXD
  4. CTS
  5. RTS

Here is how I hooked up the 5 wire USB cable:

  1. GND -> Cable shield
  2. TXD -> Green
  3. RXD -> White
  4. CTS -> Black
  5. RTS -> Red
Wiring Diagram

#2: Install the chips.

After I received my chips, I installed them following this guide. To sum up, remove the top and bottom cover from the radio. Then remove the face-plate screws and then loosen the 5 small screws for the metal grounding plate so it may be removed. Once this is done the chip slots will be exposed ( they are the only two empty slots on the back of the face-plate ). You will need to use a flat surface to bend the pins slightly inwards so that they will line up with the sockets when you insert them. Pay close attention and make sure the chips are fully seated properly into the sockets.

Once this is done reassemble the radio and ensure that it is working properly. Now the ACC 1 port has serial com capabilities.NICE!

#3: Hook Up the FTDI Breakout Board

The only pins required for communication are GND, TRX, and RTX. You supposedly can use a 5 wire connection using CTS/RTS flow control but it is not necessary. The FTDI breakout I used for this project only made CTS and DTS readily available so I went with the three wire setup. There may be advantages to having flow control and I would be interested to hear input on this in the comments.

My Notes

Attach the TX from your rig to the RX on the FTDI and the RX from the rig to the TX on the FTDI. GND goes to GND.

FTDI on the proto board

#4: Program the FTDI Board

Although the wiring is done, we still need to invert the logic on the FTDI board. There is no linux app to easily do this so I ran the FD_PROG utility using an XP virtualbox install to run this program. There are multiple drivers available from FTDIChip, make sure you use the correct driver for your system.

If you don’t have a windows install to program your FTDI chip, you can flash the following firmware to your FTDI chip using ftdi_eeprom. This firmware has the inverted logic necessary to communicate with your rig.

  1. FTDI Firmware File
  2. ftdi_eeprom Config File

Download both files to the same location, plug in the FTDI and program it. Something like this:

ftdi_eeprom --flash-eeprom ftdi.config

#5: Time to play radio!

You can now use FLDIGI or similar to read/send the frequency and PTT key your radio. Software config is beyond the scope of this article, but this is what it looks like:

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References:

  1. FTDI Chip Utilities
  2. FTDI Chip Drivers
  3. Installing an IC-10 kit into a Kenwood TS-440S/AT HF Radio
  4. TS 440 Serial Communications Interface
  5. TS-440 SAT Modifications
  6. Kenwood TS-440 mods reviews software and diagrams
  7. Build an Easy USB Computer Interface for Your Old Kenwood Rig

Charge Bauer 20v Lithium Packs Using a Balance Charger

This all started the other morning when I realized I had left my Bauer battery pack and charger outside in the rain. Long story short you can use the plug from a broken charger to make an adapter to charge your battery packs with a RC Vehicle Balance Charger.

Bauer 20v + TBS Charger
Bauer 20v Pack Connected to Balance Charger

The Story

After sitting, plugged in, in the rain, overnight, there was a large amount of blue material on the battery and charger connections.

Pushing the button on the battery showed full charge, so I cleaned off the connections and tried it in my drill. No dice. I dissembled the battery pack by removing the four torx screws on the bottom. There was corrosion on the inside of the connector but everything else looked OK. I cleaned off the connectors from the inside and reassembled the battery.  JOY! The battery is working again.

Things were not so good for the charger. Under the charging board there was a huge black spot where a bank of resistors had fried.

Magic Smoke Stain

I was thinking about repairing it when I noticed that the plug part inside the charger was a self contained unit. Not only that, the connection plug for the sense port was the same as the plugs on the batteries for LiPo  RC batteries (eg Drone Batteries).

The pin-out on the above mentioned plug is not the same as a standard RC LiPo battery, but all the necessary components (and then some) are. If you are looking at the balance plug (on a Drone Battery for example) with the bumps facing down, the leftmost wire is ground and the next wire to the right is the voltage of one cell. The third wire is the voltage of two cells, the fourth wire is the voltage of three cells and so on depending on how many cells you have.

The Hack

In a nutshell we need to make the Bauer battery pin-out match a stander RC Lipo Battery. The finished adapter will look something like this:

Bauer Adapter Dongle
Bauer Adapter Dongle

You will need security torx bits (with holes in the middle) to remove the bottom plate from the charger. Then just unscrew all the Philips screws until you have just the battery plug unit. Unplug the 6 wire plug from the board and cut the red and black wires as close to the board as possible.

Using a small screwdriver to press down the tabs, remove the pins from the 6 pin plug (they need to be rearranged).  The small yellow and red wires (that you just pulled from the plug) are for the battery’s internal temperature sensor, we don’t need to monitor this sensor so we can use these wires to finish our plug. De-solder the small yellow wire and solder it with the main negative (big black wire). De-solder the small red wire and solder to the main positive (big red wire).

Move small red wire to big red wire post. Move yellow wire to big black wire post.

Solder a battery connector (salvaged from old battery pack) to the main positive and negative (big wires). Finally reinsert the pins into the plug as pictured:

Bumps Up: Red, Grey, Black, White, Blue, Yellow

The adapter is finished and just needs to be tested. Plug the adapter into your Bauer battery pack. Using a volt meter your battery plug should show about 20v. With the bumps facing down your 6 pin plug should test as follows (voltages are approximate and will vary depending on the level of charge):

  1. Yellow: (-V)
  2.  Blue: (+3.7)
  3. White: (+7.4)
  4. Black: (+11)
  5. Grey: (+14.7)
  6. Red: (+18.4)

Using the adapter you can now connect and charge your Bauer tool packs. In the program mode set your battery type to 3.7V (Lithium Poly or LiPo). Set the amperage to match the AH listed on the side of the battery pack. The charger will auto-detect the number of cells (5) and  after doing a quick balance on the cells will charge the pack until full.

LiPo Charge, Auto
Charging in full swing
Individual Cell Voltages and Balance Charging

In summary, this hack is very simple and could be considered an upgrade to the charger from HFT. Having the info display showing the voltage of each cell and balance charge mode are both great. There is also a fast charge that I haven’t tried, but this already charges my batteries quicker and more completely than the Bauer charger.

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Amazon Kindle Fire 5.3.1 Hacked – Rooted and new Rom

I just purchased a Amazon 5th gen kindle fire to use as a ground station for my drones. The device supports OTG and has the power needed to run the 3dr usb telemetry device.

Out of the box the fire is kind of useless for anything but an e-reader amazon buying tool.  Rooting and a ROM upgrade solves this! It is fairly simple, however the process is time consuming with lots of waiting (have something else to do like a book or a movie while you’re waiting on certain processes).

Step 1: Make sure you have 5.3.1.0 fire OS installed on device
Go to Settings -> Device Options -> Software Updates to check the version. My device shipped with 5.3.1.0 so I did not need to load a different firmware. Your mileage may vary.

If version is less than 5.3.1.0 follow This Guide instead.

If version is greater than 5.3.1.0 follow these instructions to install the 5.3.1 firmware. download from here

DO NOT attempt to downgrade a > 5.3.1.0 device below 5.3.1.0!!! This it will BRICK your fire.

Once version is 5.3.1.0 go to step 2

Step 2: Reset to factory settings
Go to Settings -> Factory Reset and perform a factory reset. This will reboot the device.

When device boots skip all set up and do not connect to WiFi yet (this will slow down any unwanted update process).

Step 3: Enable Developer Mode
Go to Settings -> Device Options and tap the build number seven times to enable dev mode.
Go to Settings -> Device Options -> Developer and turn on USB debugging and ADB.

Step 4: Download needed files
Download the latest SuperTool from RootJunky and extract somewhere you will remember.

Download the latest Nexus ROM for Fire Tablet but DO NOT extract it.

Step 5: Run SuperTool
From a command line navigate to the SuperTool folder and run the appropriate file. In Linux the command is
$ ./3-Amazon-Fire-5th-gen-linux-mac.sh
You will see a screen like this:

Press 2 and Enter to root device. First it will install KingRoot to your device which you will then have to run from your device when directed to do so. KingRoot will ask you to connect to WiFi.

You will likely have to run KingRoot repeatedly before it will work. Time to grab a book or a movie as this part takes time. Each time you run KingRoot it will reboot your device a few times and show progress on the screen. Each attempt takes about 10-15 minutes or more. After the first attempt I unplugged my device from the computer and had to run KingRoot a total of 4 times before it worked. Just keep trying.

Once root is gained plug your Fire back into the computer (you may need to cycle the ADB setting on your device for it to be recognized) and continue the SuperTool process following all instructions there. This will install SuperSu which will need interaction from you on the device. Follow the setup procedure according to the instructions in SuperTool.

Once this process is done run “Block OTA updates” to prevent accidentally losing root access.

Step 6: Install Rom via FlashFire
While still in SuperTool install FlashFire (option 6).

From your computer copy the zipped ROM file downloaded in Step 4 over to the INTERNAL storage of your Fire device.

On your device run FlashFire and follow these steps exactly, otherwise you risk the installation having problems:

Select the red plus (+) button to expand a selection of options, choosing Wipe.
Select System data, 3rd party apps, and Dalvik cache if they are not already checked.
Click the red plus (+) button again and choose Flash ZIP/OTA.
Search for the Nexus ROM that you’ve copied over and choose it.
Automount and Mount /system read/write need to be unchecked.
Drag Wipe to the top of the queue.

Hit the flash button to start the process.

This will take a few minutes and the screen might go blank for a while. It will eventually boot into the new ROM.

Step 7: Enjoy!
With new ROM installed be sure to update Google first. After it updates clear google app and framework cache and reboot.

Install apps. You will need EVERYTHING as this is a very vanilla ROM.

OTG works great with APM/Tower or DroidPlanner software.

Much faster, full play store support and NO ADS! Yay!