Re: [Flexradio] Teamspeak Audio Forum - Flex-Radio-Friends - 11-26-05Happy Thanksgiving & Holidays!

[ecellison]

Phil   Sounds like a good plan to me. I would say that with the higher speeds of the FPGA and it’s multitasking capabilities the PWM should work. Should also work for a voltage control through some external component for VCXO slaved to the 1PPS or 10 khz sigs from GPS.   Folks: Although buried in the text below, Phil is checking on a purchase, of a few 8785 chips via Wolfson. If you are interested, please E-mail me at   [EMAIL PROTECTED]   Thanks Phil! Nice work!   Eric2     From: Phil Harman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, November 26, 2005 11:00 PM To: ecellison Cc: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Teamspeak Audio Forum - Flex-Radio-Friends - 11-26-05Happy Thanksgiving & Holidays!   Eric,   Having played with the Xylo example programs a little more it seems that we may be able to build our own  D/A's using PWM in the FPGA.  I also think that with a few external analogue components we can make a simple A/D that will be quite good enough  for microphone input (I'm assuming that digital modes will be done using VAC from now on).   In which case I will check price and delivery of the high performance Wolfson WM8785 24bit 192kHz chips but hold off on the others until we have done some more testing.   73's  Phil..VK6APH ----- Original Message ----- From: ecellison To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Sent: Saturday, November 26, 2005 10:38 PM Subject: [Flexradio] Teamspeak Audio Forum - Flex-Radio-Friends - 11-26-05Happy Thanksgiving & Holidays!     Folks   Small but power packed group met for the voice forum on this day after Thanksgiving holiday in the USA.   K5KDN – Bob is well into the the new class structure for Version 2 of the PowerSDR command set. He had coded the TCP hooks to the CAT set and is about ½ way through the CAT commands. He is making good progress and should have all the old and new commands done in the near future! Thanks BOB!   K7RSB – Ross is working on a small board to provide temperature governed fan speed control for the SDR as well as playing with a small ammeter board.   AA8YI – Tom Took some time off from the CW contest to join us and indicated he was knocking of Q’s with the SDR. I hope he gives us a postpartum on the contest and SDR performance. Obviously the SDR and it’s features will be great in CW contesting.   KD5TFT – Bill is ‘dorking’ around with SoftRock40 V.5 on 20 meters, and has been working on the design with Tony for the past month.   AA4SW – Reported the the UCB group buy project is in progress. Upgrades to the UCB boards are being discussed between Mike – KM0T, Terry – W0VB, and myself. Discussions in a separate voice session discussed a number of basic changes from offering a kit complete with enclosure, to adding a LCD 16 x 4 line display. Larry K2LT even offered to try the PIC program to accomplish this. Be patient we are working on it!   AA4SW – Discussed the “Poor Man’s UCB” A project which will probably produce a small board which plugs into the 15 pin X2 port to give protection and isolation to the open collector chip in the SDR-1000. Features: 2 RCA Phono plugs for PTT, and opto isolated Amp key relay. All other X2 pins connected to an on board DIP header for experimentation and control offboard via ribbon cable.   VK6APH – Phil1 is making great progress with the Xylo Board FPGA project, and that topic dominated most of the discussion. He has succeeded in getting information in and out of the Xylo board via USB, and this week will be working on streaming audio from the Wolfson A/D converter via High Speed USB. He reported last week that he had successfully configured a 16 bit I2C – I/O chip for control functions.   The band of Xylo proto board owners/developers is growing. I always felt that FPGA’s were way beyond my comprehension, however, now that I have been doing the tutorial build of a FIR Filter offered by Altera with it’s free programming software “Quartus II – Web v. 5.1” I’m not so sure. It is a virtual logic “Etch-a-sketch”. Programmable in both visual paste up logic elements as well as in a C like structured programming language called HDL or “Hardware Definition Language”. Which comes in several flavors. Verilog seems to be the most popular.   Since getting my Xylo board I have been “Absorbed”. The 2”x2” board is powered from the USB buss, and can be carried around in your pocket, so you can go to the park with your laptop and have a complete project development environment. Drivers and connectors (separate) for Ethernet, I2C (2), VGA, LCD, I/O pins and power, 2 LED’s, 1 pushbutton input are all on board. Board is $119 US and arrives in 3 days via USPS. A connector kit (I recommend) for 30 dollars, and many other add on goodies are available, from LCD panel to separate oscillator daughterboard.   Currently Phil1 – VK6APH,  Phil2 – N8VB,  Bill – KD5TFD, and I have purchased the board, with others on Teamspeak indicating they would be getting one soon.   In a follow on conversation, the Wolfson chips have been a little difficult to obtain via Wolfson’s website. Phil1 is checking on getting a supply of A/D – D/A chips for experiment by the group. I will gladly distribute the chips at cost when we find out if we can do this. Phil is checking on about a 10 quantity, and at least 4 of the set (D/A – A/D) are spoken for. I think Wolfson indicates that these chips are about $6 but that is in vast quantities. If you might be interested in getting aholt of these chips please e-mail me at:   [EMAIL PROTECTED].     Phil1 provided the following links regarding FPGA’s programming etc:   Source of the Xylo Kit:   http://www.fpga4fun.com/board_Xylo.html     Verilog tutorial - look at ONLINE MANUAL -   http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~gerard/Teach/Verilog/     More Verilog sites from N8VB   http://www.asic-world.com/verilog/veritut.html     http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~thomas/VSLIDES.pdf     http://www.web-ee.com/primers/files/VlogIntro.pdf     http://www.doulos.com/knowhow/verilog_designers_guide/     http://www.sutherland-hdl.com/on-line_ref_guide/vlog_ref_top.html     http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/cs141/resources/verilog-tutorial.pdf     http://www.doe.carleton.ca/~shams/97350/PetervrlK.pdf     Teamspeak Audio Fourm Flex-Radio-Friends – 11-26-05   http://flex-radio-friends.net/AVI/tsforums/tsfourm-11-26-05.mp3   CU on Teamspeak! Eric – AA4SW – V31SR     _______________________________________________ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.8/183 - Release Date: 25/11/2005