Apollo Comms Part 27: Quindar Tones Microphone Hack

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Жыл бұрын

Nothing is more emblematic of the Apollo communications than the Quindar tones, which you hear at the beginning and end of each transmission. In this episode, we hack a cheap commercial microphone to bring it up to NASA standards by adding the tones. After explaining what they do, of course.
Apollo Comms Playlist: • Apollo Comms Part 1: O...
Project notes and schematics: www.curiousmarc.com/space/qui...
Links to doc:
www.curiousmarc.com/space/apo...
virtualagc.github.io/virtuala...
www.ibiblio.org/apollo/
Music Credit: Crinoline Dreams by Kevin MacLeod
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Пікірлер: 177

@CuriousMarc Жыл бұрын

I just posted my lab book notes with explanations and the schematics on my website: www.curiousmarc.com/space/quindar-tone-generator . Have a go at it, and let me know if you ever make a proper PCB for this project!

@frankbrockler Жыл бұрын

Quindar tones still work to this day. Whenever I hear one, it instantly triggers "7 year old boy sitting on the living room floor 2 feet from the TV watching astronauts on the moon" mode in my brain. Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Marc.

@sethtaylor5938 Жыл бұрын

Quindar aka QEI is an Electronic Manufacturing firm in Springfield NJ that manufactured analog DTMF and FSK hardware back in the 70's and 80's. They are still in business.

@brocktechnology Жыл бұрын

Thankyou, the only thing mark left out was where the name came from.

@greenconscious210 Жыл бұрын

Darn it. Now I want a Quintar tones plugin for Zoom PTT mode

@624Dudley Жыл бұрын

Ooh 😮, that would be useful!!

@MikeF1189 Жыл бұрын

That would just piss my teammates off. I have to have it!

@rootvalley2 Жыл бұрын

huh didn’t even know zoom had ptt neat

@user2C47 Жыл бұрын

Or as an external program, so it would be usable by all platforms.

@greenconscious210 Жыл бұрын

@@rootvalley2 when your MIC is muted you can use the space bar as a PTT key

@Yrouel86 Жыл бұрын

Not only the Quindar tones were used for Shuttle but they are still in use today with Crew Dragon

@stevewalston7089 Жыл бұрын

Seems like a far better method than saying "roger" or "over".

@Yrouel86 Жыл бұрын

@@stevewalston7089 Indeed plus astronauts are generally already familiar with it so it didn’t make sense to change. It’s one of those things that you keep because it actually works and not because of inertia and resistance to change

@muadeeb Жыл бұрын

@@stevewalston7089 Huh? What?Who ?

@stevewalston7089 Жыл бұрын

@@muadeeb Maybe the Quindar tones?!

@Gracana Жыл бұрын

@@muadeeb What's your vector, Victor?

@TheM4man Жыл бұрын

Spending my saturday night watching 20 minutes about beeping sounds and im not even sad! This is amazing, thank you for your service for humanity!

@TimoNoko Жыл бұрын

These two tones are already ingrained to our psyche. I have push button which turns a remote device on or off. I wanted immediate feedback what it is doing. So I made these Moon Men Microphone Sounds from a small speaker, without knowing what they are called.

@624Dudley Жыл бұрын

Thanks Marc! All these years I thought the tones were simply audio cues, used in the way you mentioned. I didn’t know about their triggering function. This channel is awesome! 👍👍

@AndyFletcherX31 Жыл бұрын

Back in the 1980s I used to design equipment which used a continuous 2970Hz tone to key transmitters. Because the tones were present whenever someone was speaking they had to be filtered out of the audio stream. There is a problem with Qiundar keyon and keyoff tone system design in that if a tone burst is missed by the transmitter it will stay stuck in whatever mode it was in until the next tone burst comes along. Considering the worldwide routing of the Apollo audio streams I would expect occasional dropouts which could if you were unlucky would lose the Quindar keytones.

@W6EL Жыл бұрын

I had the same thought. But it could be solved with a VOX circuit AND’d with a timer. If no tone and no audio and we’re past the timeout, then we switch off anyway. Of course most likely this would be noticed and someone would just have to click the mic to get it back I assume.

@richardmattocks Жыл бұрын

I had no idea these beeps had an official name and also, until you pointed it out I hadn’t spotted that the start and end transmission tones were different, and the reasons for them is so obvious once I thought about it. Also, I appreciate you using actual electronics to generate the tones. You absolutely nail the tones in every way that any digital version just couldn’t and would have been ever so slightly “off” (it’s a real niggle of mine when I hear recreations of oldschool sounds made via digital generation). It never quite hits the mark IMHO, so total respect to you sir! Loving your channel. Great work!

@rogervanbommel1086 Жыл бұрын

I mean, gnuradio can do exact FSK, so I can probably get it exactly the same in software in THIS CASE

@paulmorley1225 Жыл бұрын

Can you tell me the word origin of niggle?

@zh84 Жыл бұрын

I was used to hearing those beeps and never knew what they were. Thank you for the excellent explanation!

@comput3rman77 Жыл бұрын

They were named after the manufacturer Quindar Electronics.

@MatthijsvanDuin Жыл бұрын

It's trivial to perfectly recreate these digitally using a microcontroller and an audio DAC

@moo3993 Жыл бұрын

I know you're catching up on footage you've recorded, and getting it into a finished video. I am loving seeing your videos more often Marc! Always love and appreciate what you do for everyone!

@clayp6415 Жыл бұрын

If only NASA had saved all this stuff and preserved it all in one place. It would be amazing to go to a museum and see all this stuff working and integrated together. Also I just wanted to say, what you are doing is amazing.

@christopherwhull Жыл бұрын

The Apollo Applications (Skylab) and shuttle programs used much of the same stuff through about 1973-1998. Ground equipment would have been cheap to file away but the spending and focus was getting the remaining very large artifacts, flight ready and ground articles to museums across the nation while the program was still fresh in the mind of the us tax payers. The Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System also reworked the direct to ground, VHF, HF electronics on the spacecraft and was the sole standard communications path by 1998. The interesting item will be the implementation of 5G chipsets and software defined radios into future spacecraft. With communications companies such starlink putting 25,000 bent pipe and packet switched solutions under long term space test, bespoke voice and data solutions are a bit archaic outside of VHF and HF backups to backups. A UHF, HF, VHF and Packet Radio radio set is good to 250,000feet Once on orbit Manned spacecraft will just be temporary space based node in meshes of communications services. The weight of comms gear on the Apollo spacecraft in total must have been non trivial. Comms gear to orbit of Mars or the surface of mars will be dominated by high gain for data delivery, the rest of gear more than likely will be Starlink components with in space histories of more than a decade. The economy of the scale of developing what would be bespoke between NASA and Boeing is just Lego components of SpaceX ecosystem is the amazing part of the story.

@benjaminhanke79 Жыл бұрын

05:20 "Radio teletype transmitter" I'm looking forward to see a video of this.

@rsmrsm2000 Жыл бұрын

It was exactly what I expected. Thank you very much for this survey. It had a bonus: simulating the quinder tone in current circuits. You guys are amazing, keeping the magic of man going to the moon alive.

@reneschmitz4845 Жыл бұрын

You have to do this with an original Apollo era Headset. Fran Blanche had showed one on her channel. The sonic signature of these makes it sound like Apollo instantly.

@thes764 Жыл бұрын

Always learn something new on this channel. This time: NASA "roger beeps" are called "Quindar Tones" and really are in-channel signalling for the ground station networks PTT. Excellent video Marc & crew!

@bblod4896 Жыл бұрын

Roger beeps are still popular with the CB crowd.

@johnk7302 Жыл бұрын

haha stir the oxygen tanks that's a good one man.

@JD_Viddy Жыл бұрын

I remember using a XR2206 back in the mid 1970's when I built a controller for a 2m RTTY repeater above Los Angeles. In normal operation it would convert the incoming audio to digital using a common circuit using a couple of toroids. That would then go into a UART to be converted to 5 parallel bits and then back into the UART for regeneration and then on to the XR2206 to go back to audio. For testing you could apply a PL tone and it would just route audio from the receiver to the transmitter. Good times.

@soulrobotics Жыл бұрын

Fantastic Marc! (add french pronunciation! lol. clever output with that mosfet!. so this video make my day! thanks! I am not the only one that wants to visit that basement!!!Man, that is a living museum!

@sarhtaq Жыл бұрын

I remember back in the late 1970'ies early 80'ies, the CB community around here simply called them "Apollo beeps" when we used them on our radioes :)

@karlmadsen3179 8 ай бұрын

This is so wonderfully geeky, it is irresistible to me.

@Derrick6162 7 ай бұрын

I have a faded memory of my grandfather sitting in front of an old black and white console tv watching the landing as I stirred about.

@tbp-channel8870 Жыл бұрын

Hi Marc, XR2206 and Baudot are warm reminders of my first ham-experiments with an old teletyper and a ZX81, my first computer. The Interface (and the ZX81) still exists. Always a pleasure to watch your videos. Great team also, absolutely.

@garylucas6511 Жыл бұрын

My initial education was Broadcast Comms and Electronic Theory. Brings back memories fooling around the lab at college. And also being a long time space nut, I LOVE this channel!

@thomasgrunwald9065 Жыл бұрын

Marc.... Kudos to you and your team for all the amazing restoration of this sometimes maddening original Apollo comms equipment!! The trigger for my comment is the elite 2 Circuit Design Test System that you breadboarded the Quindar circuitry on. I worked on one of them for over 10 years, mocking up the circuit designs that the engineer I worked with came up with. I just finished a 42-year career with the FAA, specializing in Air Traffic Control Radar, then Physical Security. I believe that the Moon Race is what sparked my early-teens interest in electronics, leading to my career. Again, congratulations to you and your team!!!

@surplushunter Жыл бұрын

Marc, an excellent video!! I remember hearing the Quindar tones when I was a little boy and wondering what they were for, I investigated years later and found out. Way to go!!!

@alexpinkerton7459 Жыл бұрын

Every Teams meeting demands the use of a "Quindar Tones" intercom mic. It will make you sound like you're talking to your team from another planet, and discourage others from asking you any questions - which is a win win!

@GordonjSmith1 Жыл бұрын

Every time I watch, my world gets larger! My thanks.

@yuglesstube Жыл бұрын

So very interesting! I had wondered why, and now, years later, i know.

@thickdickwad7736 Жыл бұрын

Excellent video! Thanks for sharing 😊

@ntsecrets Жыл бұрын

I had no idea what the beeps were called and that they were at different frequencies. I actually thought they were just made periodically to show you were receiving, but now I know! Thanks!

@ReneSchickbauer Жыл бұрын

The XR2206 is a good thing for one of my future projects. I was currently looking into how to generate sine signals, then i watched this video. This chip will make my project so much easier, now that i know it exists!

@AlexanderGibbonsAudio Жыл бұрын

I'm seeing a lot of TekTronix scopes in the images you shared, lovely to see them in play :)

@haom95 Жыл бұрын

Awesome!!! I Didn't find that kind of project in magazines such as Popular Electronics, or Electronics Now. It's very cool because you use a lot of electronics, that I used to use in my career as Electronics Engineer so long ago Great Project !!!

@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Жыл бұрын

Very informative, and very cool! I did not know about Quindar tones. Thanks for this explanation, great technical equipment too!

@PeterGagen Жыл бұрын

What a nice little projecct - well done and thanks. I thnk my radio ham transmissions will be definatly be getting an improvment. 🙂

@SubTroppo Жыл бұрын

I wonder how many bleeping meetings were required to decide on the bleeps back it the day, or whether an engineer just said, "...here they are".

@LostAgain1970 Жыл бұрын

Marc managed to find "Mr Fancy pants" so maybe he can also find the bleep engineers? That would be cool!

@garylucas6511 Жыл бұрын

With 400,000+ folks working on the program, I don’t doubt they had a dedicated engineer for the beeps.

@SubTroppo Жыл бұрын

@@garylucas6511 An engineer for the higher tone and one for the lower tone? ...and a tonal manager to keep the peace in the inevitable turf-war.

@mikus4242 Жыл бұрын

Don’t forget this NASA. You would have the higher tone contractor engineer and manager….. AND the lower tone contractor and manager. PLUS the safety NASA engineer and safety manager + their contractors.

@benjaminhanke79 Жыл бұрын

@@LostAgain1970 That Person would probably be in his 90s but everything is possible.

@KeritechElectronics Жыл бұрын

A lightweight, quirky and cool piece of tech :)

@eurisko84 Жыл бұрын

Brilliant as always. 10 minutes to learn about something I didnt know I needed to know! This is getting shared far and wide (already annoyed the wife about my new found knowledge lol)

@paddle_shift Жыл бұрын

Crazy, but the "bad" mic sounded better in the video than the "good" one! 😂

@Zadster Жыл бұрын

Ahh the good old "roger bleep". Many fond memories of the CB radio days here in the early 1980s, and a young me, making roger bleep circuits for me and my friends, with 555 timers, a relay and a whaterer other components this particular 11-year-old had to hand or could obtain. Later on, with the addition of a 4017 and a bunch of preset pots, it was possible to play a little tune. I don't think I ever appreciated they were 2 different tones!

@Carlou_ Жыл бұрын

je vote pour que ce soit installé dans tous les supermarchés, j'adore! :) Merci encore pour toutes ces vidéos super intéressantes!

@dhpbear2 Жыл бұрын

Those tones bring to mind "The Jetsons" (!) I also heard it on radio call-in shows back in the early 60s. They were sent at regular intervals during a call.

@RowanHawkins Жыл бұрын

I always thought they were a standard RogerBeep. Some amature repeaters use a tone for exactly the same purpose. Learned yet another something new.

@bborkzilla Жыл бұрын

Good old Exar 2206. Brings me back to when I was messing around with packet radio and HF RTTY.

@PeopleAlreadyDidThis Жыл бұрын

When I heard your first generated tone following the original, I thought, “No, that’s not it. It’s flat.” Then you explained the pitch/frequency difference between the two. So now neither of us are crazy.

@AndyGoth111 Жыл бұрын

9:00 Ohh that's so dark!

@leewyton7975 Жыл бұрын

Pretty damn good!

@74HC138 Жыл бұрын

Our local ham radio repeaters have a 'courtesy tone' which sounds when you drop carrier, so the others you're talking to know when they can key up, just a short beep. Sounds like you're talking to the moon to the uninitiated :-)

@paulromsky9527 Жыл бұрын

Great video. I am going to add Quidnar tones to my home landline phone. I am going to use an Adafruit Trinket M0 which has a true DAC Analog output that can produce these tones in phase, a single pole RC LPF, and a 2N2222 as a speaker driver, that should do it.

@AntoninKral Жыл бұрын

Niiice, I think I am going to build this one as an USB soundcard for my Zoom/Meet/Teams calls ...

@marvintpandroid2213 Жыл бұрын

The term quindar tone is going to push something out of my circuits, even with a brain the size of a planet I only have so much space.

@Mrshoujo Жыл бұрын

"We Apologize For The Inconvenience."

@marvintpandroid2213 Жыл бұрын

@@Mrshoujo and other terms from the good book.

@ryanhebron4287 Жыл бұрын

I'm surprised you didn't decide to modify a desktop PTT mic from a ham radio set.

@paulmorley1225 Жыл бұрын

Marc chose that one specifically for it's aesthetic and extra mute button that could be repurposed.

@marcusdamberger Жыл бұрын

I remember that untill they built the new Huston mission control center rooms they had these tones going into 90's from the original Apollo era control room. You knew Huston had control when those tones sounded. When they would transfer control over occasionally to the Marshall Spaceflight Center those tones would go away tell Huston took over again. During Shuttle missions.

@TomKappeln Жыл бұрын

One for the algorythm

@rtchrg440 Жыл бұрын

Fantastic - love hearing the original tones! Any thoughts on hooking up a Plantronics M50 headset, like they used in mission control?

@gcewing Жыл бұрын

Beep, fascinating video, boop!

@Testequip Жыл бұрын

Thanks for that interesting topic. Since there were just over 20 STADAN stations worldwide, I'm assuming the Quindar tones were also used for all the STADAN nodes. I'm curious if they were. In the early 80's I had a brief stint at the Hartbeeshoek Earth Satellite Station (telephony division) South Africa. Next door is Hartrao/SANSA fomerly known as DSS-51- one of the STADAN nodes.

@cprogrck Жыл бұрын

The only legitimate use of a roger beep lol.

@Consequator Жыл бұрын

Neat!

@ml.2770 Жыл бұрын

The cheap mic sounds more authentic.

@AmauryJacquot Жыл бұрын

genius !

@MonkeyUnit Жыл бұрын

Ohhh! My favorite game. Pause at 2:33. What instruments can you identify? At the top I see a Tektronix RM 503 oscilloscope. Just below that I see a Dymec 2401C voltmeter/counter. Further down at chin level I see an HP 5245L counter. I need help identifying the HP instrument with the analog meter at forehead level.

@CuriousMarc Жыл бұрын

That last instrument would be an HP 413AR null voltmeter. Pretty rare to see an “AR”, the rack version of it.

@alexlandherr Жыл бұрын

I think all video conferencing software should use this. Would solve that pesky problem of people talking over each other...

@Damien.D Жыл бұрын

never understood why these tones are not mandatory in any ptt comms. It's so easy to mentally iolsate a message thanks to them.

@Wizardofgosz Жыл бұрын

Just make a foam windscreen for the cheap mic and it will probably clear up the boominess.

@MrMilarepa108 Жыл бұрын

Not the stir to the oxygen tanks!!!!

@draganlalkovic567 Жыл бұрын

Very interesting work. The symbol for NMOS in the final schematic is wrong 😄

@marka7831 Жыл бұрын

I think I will use the "Apollo Beep" courtesy tone on the club ham radio repeater during the week of the moon landing anniversary.

@BM-jy6cb Жыл бұрын

Really interesting. No idea they were developed for the equipment and not the people, but what exactly did they enable in the equipment? Would be a nice follow up video. Thanks.

@muadeeb Жыл бұрын

Probably just a simple xmit on/off control circuit. Used to have something similar in the Marti RPU great, but it was typically used in a repeater setup and not exactly in band audio

@davidyoder562 Жыл бұрын

I was thinking about it, wondering how we would have ever heard these tones if they are used to signal PTT. My logic was that if PTT was not initiated until the tone, then the transmission would not include the tones (or at least they would be somewhat truncated). Then I realized, well of course, recordings we've heard on the ground would have been sources upstream of the remote link. So we hear the what the transmitter station hears. I wonder, then, if what the astronauts heard would have been a more chopped off version of these tones? Kinda makes me wonder about whether they did, indeed, use these as courtesy tones? 🤔 (I'm also the guy who watches Back to the Future and points out all the logical flaws 🤦‍♂️)

@Allan_aka_RocKITEman Жыл бұрын

*_Cool._*

@smartups1 Жыл бұрын

I requeste you . Please open the Apollo comand module sine wave inverters .

@camhyde9701 Жыл бұрын

3:46 - Eb and D roughly =)

@Pedro8k Жыл бұрын

On CB they were called Roger bleep

@ezquimal Жыл бұрын

How they connect the push to talk with the relay of the linear amplifier that transmite the voice? Or that was made manual?

@EthanRDoesMC_ Жыл бұрын

“Warning, it’s loud EEEEEEEEeeeeeEEEEEeeeeEEEE”

@Richardincancale Жыл бұрын

Does anyone know there the word ‘Quindar’ comes from? Is it a company name or something? [Edit: A quick search shows it was named after the company who made the tone creation/detection system - Quindar Electronics]

@nigeljames6017 Жыл бұрын

I’m getting a little old I suppose, but I can hear the talk, make out the circuit diagram, but for the life of me I can no longer hear those tones. Another bit of history lost but logged in my brain.

@DRNEGOLICIS Жыл бұрын

im currently trying to add the tones to my UHF repeater system DE KG5DHL

@68hoffman Жыл бұрын

kool :)

@dataruin Жыл бұрын

Marc, any chance you know about the tones generated by the Soviets? I’ve got the tone from the Chernobyl fire station call stuck in my head. Was going to try and tackle it with an FM synthesizer.

@TeslaTales59 Жыл бұрын

I like the Quindar tones. The are important for clarity. NASA should always use them.

@mfx1 Жыл бұрын

If the intro tone started the transmission then how would the astronauts hear them?

@johankotze42 Жыл бұрын

Roger-Bleeps?

@TheHighlander71 Жыл бұрын

My two cents: "Quindar tones were named for the manufacturer Quindar Electronics, Inc., now QEI" - Google

@muadeeb Жыл бұрын

Thank you. Had some of their fm equipment at a station I worked at, and that kinda explains their look

@kd1s Жыл бұрын

Ooo cover DTMF and the old MF signaling

@RA-II Жыл бұрын

Do you have schematics of this setup??

@kd1s Жыл бұрын

In the amateur radio community they're known as roger beeps

@zeproo 14 күн бұрын

Sounds like a ham international CB radio roger beep lol

@NonEuclideanTacoCannon Жыл бұрын

What the hell kind of fancy breadboard is that? I want one.

@CuriousMarc Жыл бұрын

Here is the whole repair adventure of the E&L breadboard system: kzfaq.info/sun/PL-_93BVApb582yUOlRmTJYVtPwrs1pbrh

@NonEuclideanTacoCannon Жыл бұрын

@@CuriousMarc Neat! I would definitely use something like that.

@Chiavaccio Жыл бұрын

👏👏👏👏🥇🥇🥇🔝🔝🔝

@leovanzantvoort Жыл бұрын

as a HAM in the seventy's, everyone has to have "roger-piep" in europe! We all build one!

@mick_hyde Жыл бұрын

Would they have used these components though?

@Edisson. Жыл бұрын

Thus, these notes can be created with the help of two potatoes, ten balls of grape wine, a quarter of a kilo of lemons, several gold and silver bars, three Deuxtelidr decanters and two grams of Tracoquazischutroiridibixtenia. Unfortunately, in today's over-technological age, Deuxtelidre decanters and Tracoquazischutroiridibixtenium are completely unavailable, so it's done the way it's done - simply and brilliantly. Great work 👍 Nice day 😁 Tom

@flinkiklug6666 Жыл бұрын

nooo, where is the Intro Music

@zebop917 Жыл бұрын

I can think of one or two Zoom calls I’ve been on where these tones would have been useful and maybe stop people,talking over each other 😀

@giggling_boatswain Жыл бұрын

I think that an exhibition stand is needed that can be safely transported from museum to museum with a detailed description and connection diagrams, so that even after 60 years the stand can work and repairmen can quickly figure out what's what according to the instructions and the attached diagrams with a description of the work (this is very important create a detailed service manual for future generations). You can even come up with a special shipping container with fasteners for all the elements. The idea is this: I brought it, took it out, assembled it, dismantled it after the exhibition, put it in a container, and took it away. And such a special shipping container for each stand, for each interesting equipment. After all, the task is to demonstrate live a working sample to as many people as possible. It's worth it.