Morserino-32 Assembly, or "Bit rusty on that CW, aren't ya, pal?"

 Hey guys! Yes, I know it's been forever since I've posted a blog entry, but hey I'm back now. Everything kinda got put on hold for a bit with COVID-19 and other life stuff, but I've now gotten back into the swing of things with my favorite hobby.

For those who have read this blog, you'll know I jumped on the CW bandwagon back in 2019 with my buddy Scott K4WRX. For Christmas 2019, he bought us each a Morserino-32 CW Device Kit, which is a pretty bad-ass CW trainer/keyer/repeater/etc that's battery powered, micro-processer controlled, wifi-connected, and even has it's own built-in capacitive paddles! This thing is pretty amazing...

...which of course means that I let it sit. Unassembled. For 2 years. 

Flash-forward to earlier this week. I finally bought a compatible battery (well, rather 6 of them), so I decided to put this thing together. 

First, gotta get organized:

I put all the parts out on my handy-dandy silicon soldering mat (that I had to scrub clean after I left outside on my back porch and it got filthy) to do an inventory. Everything was there, but the Headphone i/o jack (marked "X2 IN/OUT" on the board) was broken. As this didn't look to be a show-stopper, I pushed ahead. 

Assembly was pretty straight-forward using this awesome video from Rose W1RBG (I think that's her call!). I definitely recommend her methods for bending the pins to help with initial retaining, as well as her method for "putting the 18-pin headers on the Heltec module THEN inserting them into the board for soldering"!!! THIS WILL MAKE YOUR LIFE INFINITELY EASIER! Heed my words...

Almost at the finish line! You can see the missing headphone jack spot, and this was right before installing the speaker. Once that was done, it was just a matter of assembling the case and done!

 

Since I decided to put the battery underneath the main board, I used both bottom standoffs for maximum height. I then put a strip of double-stick tape on the bottom of the battery to secure it, then a piece on top (leaving the top's sealant paper on), to doubly prevent any accidental "pins touching battery":

 

Next was WIFI setup and Firmware update! This is pretty straight-forward when you follow OE6FEG's awesome video. I went straight from v2.1 to v4.1, so no need to do any steps in-between.

IMPORTANT NOTE: when doing the firmware update, it took about 20-ish minutes to do. The web GUI had a changing progress indicator that appeared to be stuck at times, but then it would progress.

So BE PATIENT!!! Once it's done, the Morserino-32 will reboot on it's own. You can then check the firmware version to see what it's at.

Afterwards, you'll be handsomely rewarded with something like this:

Now, it's really time for me to get off my ass and get my WAS CW!!!