The SignaLink worked. Yay. Now I just have to put in the PS/2 pass-throughs so I can get rid of the rat’s nest of wires that come out of the box. So it will now be a VHF/UHF Packet/NBEMS go-box.
I have to admit that I really like the SignaLink. Well-built and simple to understand.
OK. So here is the promised electrical schematic. Pardon the crappy pencil drawing; I need to trace it out in pen so breathing on it doesn’t smudge it. (Well, if not, it comes close. The scanner certainly managed to smudge it, so I cleaned it up and took a picture of it with my iPad instead.)
I forgot to note that the TNC and radio connections are Anderson PowerPoles. They didn’t have to be, but they are. Just makes life easier if I want to pull one of them out of the box.
The USB charger port I used is here: BANDC PJH-RS-0123 Power Outlet Dual USB Charger Socket 2.1A 1A for iPad iPhone Car Boat Marine Mobile It’s similar (probably identical) to one I bought from PowerWerx some time back for another project, and cost about the same.
I think I mentioned earlier that the batteries are standard AGM 7.5Ah batteries wired in parallel. When using the batteries that way, be sure you take the positive off of one battery and the negative off the other battery. (If you use more than two in parallel, take the positive off the first battery and the negative off the last battery, like I did for my 30Ah battery box. The picture doesn’t show that, because I wasn’t done wiring it, but that’s how I did it.)
I’m going to use the box on the voice nets this week and see how it works. I think it’s going to need an external speaker; it sounds like it’s down at the bottom of a well 🙂 Definitely audible, just crappy sound quality.
ETA: I just realized that I left the 4-way PowerPole block out of the schematic. It would look pretty much the same as the USB port, except that it has a 15A fuse on the positive side. The PowerPole block is kind of important, since I charge the batteries through it 🙂