Getting NJQRP DDS to work with arduino

About 10 years ago (or more?), I got one of those NJQRP DDS kit. I quickly put it together, but then I became radio inactive. Two months ago, I was looking at various boxes and found this board and I have a need to have a good signal generator that can be used to trace signals for receiver debugging. So, I started trying to get it to work with Arduino Uno board. Initially I had an ambitious goal to get a 0.96" OLED and a rotary encoder working along with the DDS. I started with the encoder, got it working, then the display, got it working. The code quickly became dirty.. and then added code for the DDS. I hard coded the output frequency to 7.040 MHz, tuned my receiver with dummy load to that frequency. No luck! The DDS is supposed to produce about 5mW (or +7dbm) output. 5mW on 50Ohms translate to a Sin wave with approximately Vpeak of 0.7v. Power = Vrms²/50 = Vpeak²/(2*50) = 5mW. I then rewired all the connections after removing the display and rotary encoder, rewrote the code to program only the DDS. That just worked fine. Integrating the encoder and display seem a lot less difficult now.

Once that is done, I would like to package it up as a benchtop signal generator. For that I will have to integrate the arduino with a veroboard more tightly. Perhaps I may move to an Arduino Nano for that. The code should just work. I am also in the process of thinking about making a "bending brake" (a way to bend metal sheets) like this one from Harbor Freight, which seem to be essential to have a sturdy base on which the boards can be screwed in.