Arguably, the crossed bananas display (CBD) was not the next most needed accessory in my shack. I mean, who needs a crossed bananas display, anyhow? Nonetheless, I built one, and it seems to be working.
The CBD is a tuning aid for frequency-shift keyed modes. At one time, these displays were particularly in vogue among RTTY operators. The original version made use of an XY-mode analogue oscilloscope. The demodulated sound from the radio was filtered at the mark and space frequencies and each signal was then fed to either the X or Y input of the scope. Ideally, the tones would be sine waves, and when one tone would be sent, the other would be off. Each tone corresponds to a “banana” or oval on the XY display. The oval is horizontal for one tone and vertical for the other. When the radio is perfectly tuned, the two tones are located right on the two filter center frequencies. When a RTTY signal is sent, or even while it is idling, there is rapid alternation between the two tones, so the vertical and horizontal ovals appear so quickly that they appear to overlap, hence crossed bananas. When the radio is a bit off frequency, the phase relationship changes and the traced ovals rotate and distort. When only noise is present, the tracing is a random jumble. It’s easier to see this in action than to describe it, so I made a video of how it looks on an oscilloscope and how it looks on my newly minted digital CBD.
This lovely little display breakout is the best way to add a small, colorful and bright display to any project. Since the display uses 4-wire SPI to communicate and has its own pixel-addressable frame buffer, it can be used with every kind of microcontroller. Even a very small one with low memory and few pins available!
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