[Flexradio] Report From Fredrichshafen
Hi folks Exciting hamfest and also exciting place in the world to be! Country is absolutly beautiful. People are wonderful! Gerald - K5SDR gave an SDR presentation on the SDR-1000 to standing room only crowd of about 250-300 people. They drug chairs in from other meeting rooms and lined the walls. Klaus and Heino are manning the Waters-Stanton booth with an SDR-1000 set-up and the Truly amazing Beppe - IK3VIG has a beautiful display of SDR in Italy with Winradio and SDR-1000 demonstrations. Beppe brought Italian champagne which we sampled all day (guess I did anyway), It's hard to say enough about this creative genius! SDR Users Italy Booth is a tribut to his talent. He has singlehandedly set this up with an impressive display of SDR talent in Italy and the SDR - 1000 and Win Radio! Only disappointment this far has been my camera which is failing, and my cellphone which is not working, even though I set it up for international roaming. Gess time for a new camera, in the land known for cameras. Have a wonderful Day Eric2 - AA4SW -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/flexradio_flex-radio.biz/attachments/20060623/0167a4f1/attachment.html ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archive Link: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com
[Flexradio] Hello From Fredrichshafen!
Hi All WHAT TRIP! Eric and Kathy arrived first in Frankfurt at about 9 Local (utc+6), Then Gerald at 11:10, and Klaus and Heino arrived at about 11:15! Perfect timing! After picking up a rent car, and a little re-learing of Stick Shift. It was off to Fredrichshafen on the "Mr Toad's wild ride" called the autobahn! Just got back from Dinner at our Hotel Lowen in Meckenbeuren about 4 miles from Fredrichafen. Americans DON'T know what fine dining is any more! Joined by our Old Friend Guiseppe! IK3VIG and SO. We had a wonderful time! More later from Fredrichasfen. Hope to be on Teamspeak in the Wee hours of Saturday. But don't blame me if i'm not. Gerald just stole my wall adapter and I am on Battery Power! Super place super friends! Eric2-AA4SW -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/flexradio_flex-radio.biz/attachments/20060622/c2f9a9dd/attachment.html ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archive Link: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com
Re: [Flexradio] Potential purchaser questions
Dana Although I don't want to say anything about the UCB project at this point, there are discussions to jump start this project again. As N4HY mentioned the possibility of some one to manufacture it. I have been discussing it with a number of folks, and also Reflector folks responded to me regarding the project, volunteering help. I will post when something is decided. Initially designed by Tony - KB9YIG with Terry - W0VB and Mike - KM0T, this is a great project, which needs some modifications and polishing. I would also like to see the Poor Man's UCB make progress, and Wally - M0ZAZ would be happy to have someone 'pick up' the project. More on all later. Thanks Eric2 - AA4SW -- Original message -- From: N1OFZ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who responded to my questions. > > I think at this point I am going to wait until a run of the UCB > happens before I purchase a SDR-1000. Unfortunately, unless I can > get a UCB or similar product the SDR-1000 is not going to work for my > application. If any of the original list of pre-orderers backs out > I'd be happy to take their place in line. > > In anticipation of my future purchase I'm going to sell my D800 > laptop and buy a FireBox, PowerMate and an external reference. I'll > still be on the list hopefully absorbing everything I can about this > great radio. > > Again thanks, > Dana > N1OFZ > > ___ > FlexRadio mailing list > FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz > http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz > Archive Link: http://mail.flex-radio.biz/pipermail/flexradio_flex-radio.biz/ > FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.flex-radio.biz/pipermail/flexradio_flex-radio.biz/attachments/20060501/8e9e5e90/attachment.htm
[Flexradio] Teamspeak Audio 12-31-05
Folks Posted the Teamspeak audio Flex-Radio-Friends forum audio! Happy New Year! http://flex-radio.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=8685#8685 Eric2
[Flexradio] It's about time
Folks It's about time we had a brainstorming session on the topic of frequency stability and precision on Teamspeak. There is no question that all the recent posts are 'spot-on' as the Aussies and Brits say. I don't think that I am any more addicted to anything SDR related as I am to this subject, thanks to Tom, John and Lyle. I am buying all the parts necessary! As Cecil says here it is an excellent opportunity for our Xylo experimenters and there are several good ideas on the table as how to do this with the SDR-1000. There are many interested in seeing that happen. However, with the Xylo project there is also the opportunity to design a 'stand alone' reference al la Reflock II. Obviously we need a method of getting references either in to the SDR 1000 or out of the SDR 1000. Gerald has provided the in but we need an 'out of'. Also since there are good ideas on the table regarding thermal insulation of the 200 m LO we should get the expanding foam and 'heater' into something users can manage. The bid on the most recent HP3801 on E-bay was at $450 when I left it! Anyone interested, show up on Teamspeak Jan 4, 2006 at 0100 utc. Eric -- Original message -- From: KD5NWA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The project being discussed for the Xylo is;1. Thermal isolation with a accurate heater to reduce the drift.2. Use the Xylo to connect to a GPS and have a accurate 1 pps clock3. Use the 1 pps clock to measure the DDS 200MHz clock, integrate multiple reading to make for finer resolution.4. Use the 1 pps clock to measure the A/D clock, take multiple readings also.5. Feed the results to the PC who will proceed to correct the internal math so there is no drift.No attempt will be made to change the physical 200 MHz clock to something else that is changeable, so phase noise is not affected. The Xylo will measure, the PowerSDR software will use the data to correct it's internals, resulting in very accurate, and stable frequencies with minimal changes to the existing hardwareThat is my understanding on what the game plan is.At 10:02 AM 12/31/2005, Philip M. Lanese wrote: Tim, Eric2, et al You can enclose the oscillator can within a thick block of material that has high thermal resistance (high thermal inertia). You do not want to have air moving around the oscillator because the heat conducted away from the oscillator will vary as the air flow varies and that effect will make the problem worse. This technique assumes you can safely heat the crystal to a good margin above any maximum ambient. In order to heat the crystal, you need to know the CRYSTAL turn-over temperature, a specification not usually available for 'canned' oscillators, or you could end up frying the oscillator that is also inside the can or over stressing the crystal itself, in which case it will go PERMANENTLY off frequency and ready for the round file. Most likely when you are about to make that once-in-a-lifetime DX contact. You may reduce drift somewhat but the whole question of frequency stability and accuracy is: does anything you do matter if the various other ends of the communications circuit are not at least as stable as your end AND there are no variations due to propagation effects of the signals. Take EME at and above 432 MHz as an example. No matter how accurate and stable your frequency or that of your QSO partner, you still have to use your RIT to chase the returning echoes because of changing Doppler shift. WSJT's EME mode 65C is no longer used much, if at all, because it depends on the INCOMING signal, as well as your receiver, being stable within 5 to 8 Hz or so over an entire EME receive period. Really serious EME operators use Linrad because they can SEE the incoming signals' drift in 'real time' and can use the RIT when necessary to manually correct for frequency change. You also have to remember that canned oscillators are 'consumer' products and the manufacturer can only invest so much in frequency stability, accuracy, reduced phase noise, etc. before he prices the product out of the market. Any quickie after-market adjustment would at best be a 'one-off' and what are the chances of replicating a one-off 'fix' many times over. If you want extreme accuracy, you have to start from scratch and go thru the whole (non trivial, not inexpensive and definitely time consuming) design process. That's just for the oscillator. Then you have to design temperature stable buffer circuits to insert between the oscillator and the load to effectively isolate the load, as well as other problem sources, voltage regulator noise, RF, etc., so the oscillator is not affected. Then, as Jim, W6RMK, and others have pointed out, you turn your attention to 'fixing' the PC oscillator, the sound card oscillator, the OS software and the application software as needed. Phil, K3IB - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Folks Yes, Bob N4HY mentioned on Teamspeak that he
Re: [Flexradio] Suggestions for Teamspeak topics (long)
Ken Thanks for this well thought out list of possibilities! In the past a number of these had been suggested. I would love to see Teamspeak to be utilized more, and am delighted to see that the Amsat science team is finding it useful. What this will take is for some or many individuals willing to take on one or more of these topics. Perhaps even on a recurring basis. Is there anyone here who would like to pick up on any of the topics? Some, like "Beginners Night", and "Programmers Introduction to SDR-1000 coding" etc might even be better on another designated forum night and be scheduled. We had started Teamspeak with focus topics in mind, and I guess I have just sorta dropped the ball on trying to make it even more useful and interesting. We to get MANY hits on the published audio each week. I have seen as many as 150 hits to the messages with the posted audio, and get gentle 'nudges' when I don't post the audio from Friday! BTW I will publish last night's and last weeks audio today. Apologies, but during the holiday it was a busy family time. Happy New Year everyone! I look forward to continuing my excitement with you great folks! Eric2 - AA4SW -- Original message -- From: Ken N9VV <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > a few random Teamspeak topics: > -- > o N4HY explain his new document about DttSP > > o Bob Cowdery G3UKB from England introduction to: > - Squeak > - His dreams for future SDR control technology > > o If you were buying an oscilloscope, what criteria > should you use? there are hundreds of used ones out there. > Is there a reliable merchant (other than eBAY)? > > o Tony KB9YIG, Bill KD5TFD, George N2APB tutorial on the > SoftRock Version 5.x and it's future. > > o Recent reports indicate that over 1000 SoftRock kits > have been ordered. What does this mean for the penetration > of SDR technology into Ham Radio? what does this mean for > the future of SDR? How can we draw some of these builders > into Teamspeak forums? > > o N8VB, VE3ENA, M0KGK, I2PHD, to explain their approach > to SoftRock receivers all written in different languages > using different tools. > > o Phil VK6APH tutorial on his AGC document with his > comparison to other high end gear. > > o Phil N8VB tutorial on his dedicated design and new > architecture using FPGA and TI chip(s). > > o The SDR-1000 and the PowerSDR console are the only way > to generate a truly user controlled HiFi ESSB signal. Why > have the YaeComWood manufacturers limited their new > hardware to 3Khz wide signals? Is this the end of ESSB? > Has the U.S. am community abandon interest ESSB > (HiFi-SSB)? what about Europe, JA, and AU? > > o FOR SALE night - any ham radio related gear > > o Programming for Dummies using SharpDSP (free compiler) > > o What are the differences in .NET 2.0? > > o What are the differences in Viz Studio 2.x? > > o What are the differences in DirectX versions? > > o Introduction to FPGA for dummies > > o Introduction to Xylo for dummies (compare to Saxo) > > o Introduction to Wolfson for dummies (compare to TI) > > o Tutorial on how it is that a Pentium IV has enough > horsepower to perform all the DSP arithmetic when an > Orion-II from Ten-Tec needs two very fast dedicated DSP > chips and the IC-7800 needs four. > > o Introduction to Linux O/S > > o Introduction to a CDROM bootable Linux > > o How could a ham convert from Windoze to Linux? Is it > far too complex to even consider? > > o How to optimize your SDR-1000 setup for CW. > o How to optimize your SDR-1000 setup for SSB and ESSB > o How to optimize your SDR-1000 setup for digi modes > o How to optimize your SDR-1000 setup for VHF/UHF/SHF/ > Transverter use. > > o Flex please explain more about the architectural > changes coming in 1.5.x (decoupling the console) > > o Bring your kid to Teamspeak night. Bring some 9-14 yr > old kid to speak with other kids about Ham radio. > > o Phil N8VB tutorials on his TCP/IP bridge, Vcomm, and > Vsound, and now FPGA and his High Performance designs. > > o Bob K5KDN tutorial on the new CAT commands and what's > next. > > o Simon HB9--- introduction to Ham Radio Deluxe and how > it will mesh with the SDR-1000. > > o Rick VE3MM explanation about how he uses Oscilloscopes > as diagnostic tools in his experimentation. > > o Terry W0VB discussion about how he presents the > SDR-1000 to groups. > > o Terry W9VB discussion about the new remote shack > operation and his new antenna farm. > > o John (TAPR Pres) introduction to how he will keep the > SDR-1000 on frequency and locked to an external ref. > > o Bob N4HY to explain his new xponder experiments and > how SDR fits into satellite communications in the future. > > o Frank AB2KT tutorial on (j)DttSP and how it might > evolve in the future. > > o HRO and AES principles to discuss what is happening in > the Ham Radio sales business. What are the directions > things are going? any speculation about the YaeComWood > rigs in the future
[Flexradio] PMUCB update - Poor Man's Universal Controller Board
Folks I have been working with Wally - M0ZAZ on this project in the 'background' through several discussions and revisions. Thanks Wally for 'picking up the ball' and learning ExpressPCB and coming up with the design features. This should be a cute little inexpensive kit, which will be easily assembled and provide protection for the SDR, when keying amplifiers, using an external PTT and perhaps external mute circuit. It will be very compact and also bring out 5V, Ground and the X2 'non-dedicated' lines to a DIP header for expansion on an external switching board of the users design. The dedicated output pins will be opto isolated switching to protect the chip in the Radio. Will try to get the current design posted in the next couple of days with an RFC. Thanks Wally! Eric2 - AA4SW -- Original message -- From: "Larry W8ER" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Wally, > > I don't presume to answer for Eric but I am using x2-12 to mute my SDR1000. > It was put into Preview 8. You must however go to the options screen and > enable it by checking the box. > > -- Larry W8ER > > - Original Message - > From: "Wallace Watson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> To: "Eric Wachsmann - FlexRadio" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> Cc: > Sent: Saturday, December 31, 2005 5:01 AM > Subject: [Flexradio] (no subject) > > > > Grettings Eric, > > As you know Eric Ellison and I are working on a kit for the Poor Man's > > Universal Control Board (PMUCB) that will plug directly into the X2 > > connector on the SDR-1000 radio. I would like to incorporate in the > > design > > an additional RCA connector input that connects to the X2 Pin 12 to mute > > the SDR audio from an external source. > > Please advise if you have incorporated the handling of X2-12 in the > > PowerSDR code or if plans are yet on the table for implementation of this > > function. Our final design of the PMUCB depends on your response. > > Thanks and 73's, Wally - M0ZAZ. > > > > -- > > Wallace Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Croughton RAF Base - England > > -- > > > > > > ___ > > FlexRadio mailing list > > FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz > > http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz > > > > > > > > > ___ > FlexRadio mailing list > FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz > http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
[Flexradio] Project update UCB
Folks Many of you have e-mailed me regarding progress on the Universal Controller Board project. There are quite a number of 'orders' for this board on Dale's website and I have not forgotten the project. The UCB was produced last year by our wonderfully creative Tony - KB9YIG in collaboration with Terry - W0VB. Mike - KM0T did the most with his board and really wrung it out. Six boards were produced in this alpha test. This month Mike, Terry, Tony and Myself corresponded and had Teamspeak sessions to suggest modifications to make it more 'user friendly' in production. The modifications are well thought out: As everyone knows, Tony - KB9YIG has had phenomenal success with his SoftRock series of receivers and and is currently in the midst of producing 500 Version 5 kits with about 1000 daughter boards and shipping worldwide. I KNOW that this is a huge undertaking, and there are many grateful folks out there who will be experimenting with this wonderful little SDR gadget that he and Bill - KD5TFD have perfected. In a brief converstaion on Teamspeak last night, Tony indicated that he would probably be over the hump on the V5 kits and would have time to make the very useful board modifications to the UCB. I'll stay in contact with he, Terry and Mike in the next couple of weeks and we will put this 'group buy' into motion. I appreciate everyone's patience since it has been quite some time since I suggested this undertaking. It should be worth the wait for those contemplating complex switching schemes with the SDR - 1000 especially when using external transverters and antennas. If you are new to the SDR-1000 and are interested in this 'group kit buy'. Please check out the documents on Dale's www.hamsdr.com website. You will find the ordering section under Projects. Thanks Eric2 - AA4SW - V31SR
Re: [Flexradio] A question on Frequency stability vs. Temperature
Folks Yes, Bob N4HY mentioned on Teamspeak that he had 'insulated' the osc with some material which cut down on drift. Perhaps he could elaborate a bit more on the scheme he used. Eric2 -- Original message -- From: KD5NWA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > I've heard it on Teamspeak that when a scheme like that has been > tried it worked very well. > > Thermal stability like you mentioned, along with electronic > compensation of the clock by comparing it to a GPS clock is one of > the projects the Xylo will be used for. > > At 12:49 AM 12/31/2005, Tim Ellison wrote: > >I have a question about frequency stability of the SDR1K in regard to > >variable temperatures inside the SDR1K. The reason for concern is > >frequency drift while working digital modes. For the sake of this > >argument and staying on point, let's assume that the frequency delta is > >significant, although in reality it probably is insignificant. > > > > > >Some initial background information. I am seriously thinking about > >installing a temperature-proportional cooling fan speed controller in > >the SDR1K to further reduce fan noise. The controller is not designed > >to provide a stable temperature (thermostatically controlled), it just > >increases the fan's RPMs as the temperature increases until it reaches > >max RPMs @ 105 F. I assume that since the fan is not providing constant > >CFM air flow, under high duty cycle operation, there will be a more > >rapid rise in temperature until the fan is running at full speed, at > >which some level of temperature equilibrium is reached, as opposed to > >having the fan run at full speed all the time resulting in a temperature > >change that would be less drastic. The net effect is that the internal > >temperature will vary more with the fan controller therefore resulting > >in more drift in the XO. > > > >I am aware of the ability to use external precision clock sources to > >more precisely drive the DDS, but in my current configuration, the > >Valpey-Fisher VF-161 XO is utilized and is sensitive to frequency drift > >with changes in temperature. From the specs, the max temperature for > >the XO is 85 C and the stability is +/- 20 ppm. > >http://www.valpeyfisher.com/PDFs/vf161_E.pdf > > > >Assuming temperature stabilization is warranted, my question is this - > >what advantages / disadvantages would there be for trying to minimize > >temperature variations of the OX by adding some insulating material > >(Styrofoam maybe) around the XO or by adding an external precision > >crystal heater ( @ 40 C) to *stabilize* the temperature at a fixed value > >and hence the frequency drift? > > > >An example of the precision crystal heater is found here: > >http://www.kuhne-electronic.de/english/special/crystalheater.htm > > > >Any and all comments welcome. Thanks! > > > >-Tim > >--- > >Tim Ellison > >Integrated Technical Services > >Apex, NC USA > >919.674.0044 Ext. 25 / 919.674.0045 (FAX) > >919.215.6375 - cell > > >>> PGP public key available at all public KeyServers <<< > > > > > > > > > >___ > >FlexRadio mailing list > >FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz > >http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz > > > Cecil Bayona > KD5NWA > www.qrpradio.com > > "I fail to see why doing the same thing over and over and getting the > same results every time is insanity: I've almost proved it isn't; > only a few more tests now and I'm sure results will differ this time ... " > > > ___ > FlexRadio mailing list > FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz > http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
[Flexradio] Reflections of a constant newbie
Folks We have just had a really good discussion on Teamspeak on this eve of the new year. Ross - ZL1WN commented that perhaps this Reflector 'turns some folks off' due to the 'technical' nature of some of the 'threads' posted here? Ross also commented that the SDR is really not that difficult to get going no matter what level of knowledge you have. I agree, and this IS the forum, as well as Teamspeak to ask questions regarding anything about the SDR - 1000. I don't follow probably 60% of the technospeak stuff, yet I still can operate this radio and have fun with it! I have never used digital modes, or Olivia, Moonbounce etc, although I find it fascinating. The fact that this SDR-1000 radio can explore all these new modes is encouraging! If you found yourself attracted to Amateur Radio in some form or another, then you probably committed to more than putting a plug in an 110 v outlet and doing plug and play. The SDR-1000 is not a common radio, yet it is not that difficult to to learn to use. Ask my granddaughter! We went to Belize and made about 3500 Q's during the recent CQWW Phone contest. I was not an expert at it, but it worked! Please, shuck the technospeak and ask your questions! I takes everyone to make a town! ASK your questions! Eric2 - AA4SW
Re: [Flexradio] FW: A bit of light entertainment
Bob And it is all on your original thread, which I find particularly amusing! Since your approach is state of the art... Just a bunch of Old Farts remembering the "Good Old Days", which always start agian with TODAY! YEA! It's obvious to me that NONE of us dwell on the past to a fault, since we are always looking forward and still actively contributing to the future in one way or another! Eric2 -- Original message -- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Several tens of messages and a few bottles of wine later I have no idea what's going on but everyone have a happy new year and I might even dig out my Atari from the loft. If I can find the loft that is! Bob -Original Message-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 30 December 2005 16:36To: Flex RadioSubject: Re: [Flexradio] FW: A bit of light entertainment I hooked it up to my Televideo 950 terminal, 10 meg HD, and the twin Pertec 1.2 Meg drives and it booted right away, I said my goodbye and took it all to the dump, hardware, software, books. In absolute mint condition, that use to be my baby until 1984. I have regretted it, not just for the money but the memories of the fun I had with that computer. Different days, with very efficient software, the OS would boot in less than .5 seconds once the HD spins up.At 08:58 AM 12/30/2005, you wrote: AND YOU SOLD IT OR LOST IT?You shall pay a hefty fine of 25 geek points and serve a sentence of 42 years of regret and you just slid off the geekdar.BobThat said, we have drifted (yes, with my help) hopelessly off topic and I suspect we are boring a lot of Flex Radio types.KD5NWA wrote: That might be worth a lot of money to a museum, I know a friend that sold a Altair for $40,000. I could kick myself, I owned Altair #19, personally delivered and signed inside by Ed Roberts, I use to know him well. Funny thing his dad use to look just like Jimmy Carter the President.Young people can be quite dense, I got to know him, and often I would give him rides or pick him up from the Miami airport when he was flying to Albuquerque, It took me a while to figure out that he was the President of MITS he never mentioned it. One time I complained that my kit for the Altair had not arrived, when he came back from New Mexico he carried Altair #19 with him and gave it to me, he told me he knew a couple of people at Altair. Being dumb as a stump when it came to personal matters, I still didn't get it, until one day I noticed a stack of mail at his office addressed to Ed Roberts president of MITS, duh, the light bulb finally lit up.My Altair was in mint condition, with every board they ever made, and fully functional, my wife nagged until I threw it away, four month later, my friend called me and wanted to know about my Altair, a Museum in Japan was interested. When I found how much my friend got for his (which wasn't functional) I very calmly told her how much making a little extra room in the garage had cost, she was unusually quiet for several days. -- AMSAT VP Engineering. Member: ARRL, AMSAT-DL, TAPR, Packrats,NJQRP/AMQRP, QRP ARCI, QCWA, FRC. ARRL SDR Wrk Grp ChairmanLaziness is the number one inspiration for ingenuity. Guilty as charged! Cecil BayonaKD5NWAwww.qrpradio.comI fail to see why doing the same thing over and over and getting the same results every time is insanity: I've almost proved it isn't; only a few more tests now and I'm sure results will differ this time ... *** Confidentiality Notice *** Proprietary/ConfidentialInformation belonging to CGI Group Inc. and its affiliatesmay be contained in this message. If you are not a recipientindicated or intended in this message (or responsible fordelivery of this message to such person), or you think forany reason that this message may have been addressed to youin error, you may not use or copy or deliver this messageto anyone else. In such case, you should destroy thismessage and are asked to notify the sender by reply email. --- Begin Message --- ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz --- End Message ---
Re: [Flexradio] FW: A bit of light entertainment
Guys Wonder what Byte Issue #1 might be worth? Couldn't afford the IMSAI or Altair at the time. But read everything about it. Jumped in on the SOL-20 and got it as a kit of parts. Had to wait 6 months after the glamour adds started showing up in Byte. Didn't work at all at first, but a plated through hole had not been completed or reported by (PT). Fixed very easily with a jumper! Then it would quit after about 1/2 hour of operation. So I wrapped it in bath towels in quadrants and stuck it in the freezer along with a long power and monitor cable, until I found the quadrant of the board which was causing the problem! (Freeze Zone) Figured it must be the 8080A so got one from Radio Shack (they had just started selling them for $19 bux). Lo it worked for the next 3 years. What fun it was! Used a TT Mod 15 as line printer. RS ascii keyboard kit as keyboard, and Sony tape recorder as storage. First project was a hand entered machine language CW trainer! First year spent hand patching code in 768 bytes of ram left over for user after initialization. Ended up with and ALS8 board in proms INSTANT LOADING! 15 k tape Basic, with only 16 K of memory (4 x 4 K S-100 buss cards which took about 20 amps at 5 volts! A heater! kept the shack warm in the winter!) First Atlanta Computer Society meeting I went to had an Apple 1 on the back tables, and about 80 members. Speaker of the night was Dennis Hayes, showing his wire wrapped S-100 buss 110 modem! Writing was on the wall, so went the Apple 2, Vic-20, (Formed Victims group in Atlanta), Commodore 64 (Till Commodore published my home phone number in the 'user groups'!) Ahhh yep "OLD langs signs" Enjoyed the walk down computer memory lane! Eric2 -- Original message -- From: KD5NWA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> That might be worth a lot of money to a museum, I know a friend that sold a Altair for $40,000. I could kick myself, I owned Altair #19, personally delivered and signed inside by Ed Roberts, I use to know him well. Funny thing his dad use to look just like Jimmy Carter the President.Young people can be quite dense, I got to know him, and often I would give him rides or pick him up from the Miami airport when he was flying to Albuquerque, It took me a while to figure out that he was the President of MITS he never mentioned it. One time I complained that my kit for the Altair had not arrived, when he came back from New Mexico he carried Altair #19 with him and gave it to me, he told me he knew a couple of people at Altair. Being dumb as a stump when it came to personal matters, I still didn't get it, until one day I noticed a stack of mail at his office addressed to Ed Roberts president of MITS, duh, the light bulb finally lit up.My Altair was in mint condition, with every board they ever made, and fully functional, my wife nagged until I threw it away, four month later, my friend called me and wanted to know about my Altair, a Museum in Japan was interested. When I found how much my friend got for his (which wasn't functional) I very calmly told her how much making a little extra room in the garage had cost, she was unusually quiet for several days.At 07:13 AM 12/30/2005, W0UN -- John Brosnahan wrote: At 12:43 AM 12/30/2005, Tom Clark, W3IWI wrote: Eric offered the sidebar: Guys don't forget my: Processor Technology Sol - 20 . . . We used to call them the Proctology-20. They went the way of the CommodeDoor C-64. I had a couple of Imsai's myself. I remeber my first 256 byte RAM card and writing a one-D PONG game for the front panel status switches.Tom--I was the Colorado dealer for IMSAI when I started the Denver Amateur Computer Society --I guess that was about 1977 (+/- a year). I still have three of the IMSAIs and most notablyI have a fourth one that is still a KIT in an unopened box. I sold the company, IntermountainDigital, to Don Lund, WA0IQN. What is even more amazing is that the IMSAI STILL LIVES. As the IMSAI Series TWO.Looks like an old IMSAI but it is a case for a modern computer. If you want a bit of realnostalgia check out http://www.imsai.net/ 73--John W0UNYou see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat." -- Albert Einstein ___FlexRadio mailing listFlexRadio@flex-radio.bizhttp://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Cecil BayonaKD5NWAwww.qrpradio.com"I fail to see why doing the same thing over and over and getting the same results every time is insanity: I've almost proved it isn't; only a few more tests now and I'm sure results will differ this time ... " --- Begin Message --- ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/ma
Re: [Flexradio] FW: A bit of light entertainment
Guys don't forget my: Processor Technology Sol - 20 or SWTP 6800. I still also have my SIM 1. Now THOSE were processors! Eric -- Original message -- From: Duane - N9DG <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > --- w2agn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote: > > > Ok, when is someone going to write software for my trusty > > TRS-80? > > Or how's about my trusty Sinclair ZX81??? Or even my > Commodore B128 (not to be confused with the C128)?? > > ;) > > N9DG > > > > > __ > Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. > Just $16.99/mo. or less. > dsl.yahoo.com > > > ___ > FlexRadio mailing list > FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz > http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] A bit of light entertainment
Bob Well, I'll BE! I am curious, what is under the Widgets and Supplies tabs? Super! Eric -- Original message -- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you feel things are getting a little heavy in the real SDR world the KISS principal radio is starting to do things. It must be; because I stopped writing code and started to tune around, a sure sign that something is working. Take a peek at http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/g3ukb/ . I promise you there is just one picture and not very many words. Trust everyone had a good Christmas and all raring to get going on new SDR projects in the new year. 73 Bob (G3UKB) *** Confidentiality Notice *** Proprietary/ConfidentialInformation belonging to CGI Group Inc. and its affiliatesmay be contained in this message. If you are not a recipientindicated or intended in this message (or responsible fordelivery of this message to such person), or you think forany reason that this message may have been addressed to youin error, you may not use or copy or deliver this messageto anyone else. In such case, you should destroy thismessage and are asked to notify the sender by reply email. --- Begin Message --- ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz --- End Message ---
Re: [Flexradio] Mine's bigger than yours?
HO! HO! HO! "Away they all flew till they came into fright" -- Original message -- From: Frank Brickle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > You can see it got a *lot* bigger when we started including all the spyware. > > (Just kidding) > > 73 > Frank > AB2KT > > Joe - AB1DO wrote: > > Hi all, > > > > Yesterday I got a great birthday present - a new radio (Preview 9)! And > > it was the biggest one yet, which prompted me to look at size (in kB) > > over time. (see below). I only jumped on this band waggon in overdrive > > in late May, so that's as far as my analysis stretches back. Also the > > release dates are approximate, as I did not always immediately download > > on release. > > > > > > Needless to say, none of this pretends to be scientific and I leave any > > conclusions up to you. As far as I'm concerned, bring it on baby! > > > > > > Thank you all who have worked so hard to make my ham experience such a > > wild and exillerating ride this year. Have a great holiday, > > > > 73 de Joe - AB1DO > > > > Configuration: > > Dell Dimension 3000 /w 3GHz P4 + 1GB RAM + XPHomeSP2 > > SDR-1000 + RFE + 100W PA + USB Adapter > > Delta-44 + Break-out kit > > > > > > > > > > ___ > > FlexRadio mailing list > > FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz > > http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz > > > ___ > FlexRadio mailing list > FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz > http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] remote
Also, Bob - N4HY mentioned UltraVNC. Eric -- Original message -- From: Ken N9VV <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Richard, for your remote operation, you might want to look > at tightVNC. It has some extra .jpg compression features > that could increase your panadapter response: > http://www.tightvnc.com/ > de Ken N9VV > > > richard allen wrote: > > The Skype voip stuff for the audio is pretty low bandwidth and would > > work well over dialup. The LogMeIn screen and control stuff would be > > a bit sluggish but would probably be usable if you did not care about > > the panadaptor display window. I'll need to reconfigure my laptop > > for dialup and give it a try. > > > > Richard W5SXD > > > > Jiri Sanda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote: > > (12/24/2005 04:48) > > > > > >>Hi Richard, > >> > >>how much bandwith you need for all that stuff ? > >> > >>73 ! > >>Jiri > >>OK1RI > >> > >>On Sat, 24 Dec 2005, richard allen wrote: > >> > >> > >>>Several folks have asked me about remote operations for an sdr1000. > >>> > >>>http://flex-radio.com/download_files/PowerSDR/Docs/SDR_Remote.pdf > >>>outlines some basics. > >>> > >>>My system has just started operation this week and is described here. > >>> > >>>I have a 100 w sdr1000 operating in remote service. I use Skype for > >>>the audio and LogMeIn for the video and controls. It is all free > >>>software and works very well. The system described in the link above > >>>went to a lot more effort than I did to handle the audio. I simply > >>>use a second sound card for Skype and plug directly from its line and > >>>mic ports into the speaker and mic ports of the Delta-44. I get > >>>excellent audio reports with no transformers or other conditioning. > >>>It may not work as well at higher power but 100 w is no problem. I am > >>>using an old crashcraft r6000 vertical. The response time is very > >>>good with the panadaptor updating at 4-8 Hz when set at 15. I use a > >>>Heil Pro Set headphone/mic for the audio interface. CW ops are only > >>>using the memory/keyboard but I'm working on improving that. > >>> > >>>I use an eight outlet ethernet power controller > >>>http://www.digital-loggers.com/EPC.html > >>>to allow me to turn the computer, cable modem, and sdr1000 on and off. > >>>It also lets me switch antenna relays and room lights for the webcam > >>> > from remote. The webcam is for watching the eme dish outside the > >>> > >>>window. The remote computer has a cable modem followed by a router/ > >>>switch so the power controller is a seperate internet entity and can > >>>control the computer. It also provide watchdog capability to get > >>>restarted after a crash. > >>> > >>>Richard W5SXD > >>> > >>> > >>>___ > >>>FlexRadio mailing list > >>>FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz > >>>http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz > >>> > > > > > > > > ___ > > FlexRadio mailing list > > FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz > > http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz > > > > ___ > FlexRadio mailing list > FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz > http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] Linux: was "Scope Black Out"
Bob Sounds like you are branching out to hardware! Recently a group of Flexers and others got together an ‘offshoot’ fourm based on a little FPGA project board called the Xylo. We took it off the Flex Reflector since it is a little off topic and there was a lot of interest and activity. At least 4 or more folks are planning new SDR type projects or are in that ‘stage’. My hope is that the group will produce a high quality programmable audio processor, however, all interests are welcome. I don’t think your ‘project’ will bore anyone. Eric2 Xylo-SDR mailing list To post msg: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscription help: http://lists.ae5k.us/listinfo.cgi/xylo-sdr-ae5k.us Xylo-SDR web page: http://xylo-sdr.ae5k.us Forum pages: http://www.hamsdr.com/hamsdrforum/ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2005 12:11 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Linux: was "Scope Black Out" Ken N9VV wrote > Python version of the console? > - > I remember reading some very encouraging info about the > progress that Bob G3UKB was making on his Python > implementation. The Python project is mothballed at the moment for a number of reasons. It's gone out to a lot of people and I would hope some have found it useful. I am currently working on a much more dynamic radio that I have high hopes will finally be the SDR breadboard that I want for experimentation. I won't bore the list with intricate detail as I know these kind of activities are minority interest. If enough people are curious I might be persuaded to post a write-up somewhere... 73 Bob (G3UKB) *** Confidentiality Notice *** Proprietary/Confidential Information belonging to CGI Group Inc. and its affiliates may be contained in this message. If you are not a recipient indicated or intended in this message (or responsible for delivery of this message to such person), or you think for any reason that this message may have been addressed to you in error, you may not use or copy or deliver this message to anyone else. In such case, you should destroy this message and are asked to notify the sender by reply email.
Re: [Flexradio] Question about Auto Power on
Eric1 Sounds like you are getting close to 'something wonderful'! Not that it isn't already... Will keep my eye on release notes! Have a Happy and a Merry! Eric2 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Eric Wachsmann - FlexRadio Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2005 6:59 PM To: 'Martin Hirsch'; flexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Question about Auto Power on The first thing that jumped into my mind when I read this was an onscreen keyboard along with keyboard shortcuts. We have not added it yet, but we have it on the list to add a command line string that would automatically turn the power on. Stay tuned to the release notes for more info. Eric Wachsmann FlexRadio Systems > -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > radio.biz] On Behalf Of Martin Hirsch > Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2005 5:24 PM > To: flexRadio@flex-radio.biz > Subject: [Flexradio] Question about Auto Power on > > Hello to all, > I plan to put the sdr1k in a solid case together with a small itx- > mainboard, > 8'' LCD and shuttle pro controller. Power SDR will be in the > autostart-folder. Is there a way to start the radio without taking a mouse > and click the ON-button ? > Maybe I take a Touchscreen LCD but in this case it would be nice to > control > the frequency by tipping on the screen. (frequency up-down-button or > something like that) > btw: I'm very pleased with new beta8 (especially the new agc and max-gain) > > Martin > > > ___ > FlexRadio mailing list > FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz > http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
[Flexradio] First reply to Mike, since everyone has responded!
-Original Message- From: ecellison [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2005 12:40 AM To: 'Mike' Subject: RE: [Flexradio] Confession Mike I think the important question I have for you as a user myself is how is 1.4.4 working for you? Are you satisfied with its performance? Are you having any difficulty with it, or something you don't understand? I feel many of us users can answer your questions. I am using 1.4.5 since there definitely has an improvement in power output. That is the version we used on the Belize DXPedition recently, and I would be comfortable recommending. We pushed the 2 radios to their limits, for 48 hours, and the only problems we had were occasional break in USB apparently due to a high RF condition in the shack. Other than that we made 3500 contacts in 48 hours barefoot. There are very few areas where this radio does not excel beyond the "regular style radios." Read Mike King - KM0T's recent post on snow bounce. Don't be intimidated by reading the product development cycle you are watching on the reflector. There are many, including myself who don't understand much of what is being discussed. However, any of the folks posting stuff, you see, and perhaps don't understand would be glad to 'slow down' and explain it in more detail. Basically what we are somewhat privileged to see is the 'birth and design' of a 'new radio', as if we were sitting in the Research Project Room of Icom, or Yaesu. Watching as 'they' develop a new product. We are constantly getting a "Sneak Preview" of the next generation. The great thing is we don't have to pay for the new radio, as we do with other commercial offerings. When there is a new stable offering from Flex Radio, the manual will be updated, new features described, and you will have a new radio, just as if you were buying a new Icom etc. In that situation, you would read the new manual, learn to use the new knobs, and marvel at the new and improved features. If you understand the SDR in version 1.4.4, and are comfortable with it, then there is no need to revert to anything. In the near future there will be a 1.6.X stable version of the radio which will knock your sox off. You are watching it's impressive development, test, failure, retest success cycle, and it should be Thrilling, that you are beating obsolescence! C U on the air and on Teamspeak! Eric2 - AA4SW - V31SR. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mike Sent: Monday, December 19, 2005 10:47 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] Confession Fellow SDR users, I am using version 1.4.4 with my SDR. I have been reading the reflector for several months and I must admit that perhaps I have made a mistake. I am at somewhat of a loss at this point. I am reluctant to try any further versions of the software. It seems that my area of expertise is in areas other than computers and computer programming. Therefore I have very little clue as to the meaning of most of the posted messages on the reflector. Perhaps I am in the minority, or perhaps there may be others who might benefit from a "translator" of sorts to attempt to put some of the available knowledge into a language which might be understood by a person such as I. At this point in time, I am inclined to "revert" to my comfortable regular style radios that I have been using for the last 46 years. My onboard computer(brain) is running way over the 100% level trying to comprehend. At any rate, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all Flexers. 73, Mike K5NU ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] Confession
Folks (Especially USERS of this paradigm shift of a radio) There are MANY 'just plain' users of this radio out here! Not everyone is interested in the software and development side! Collectively the flavor of the reflector is currently in a 'design and test' phase of the radio, so there are fewer posts on 'how to'. That is exciting to many who are voluntarily contributing to the advancement of the software. They represent the best and most innovative programmers, special interest operators, and designers the radio art has to offer! Do NOT hesitate to ask operational questions, as a user! It IS users of the design effort who will make this paradigm shift in the end! The USER is what it really is all about. You might not get that 'feeling' from the reflector at this moment, but don't be intimidated. In this enthusiastic group I have NEVER seen ANYONE, of any brilliance, not stop to help the user. It is synergistic! You just have to meet Gerald, Bob - N4HY, Frank Brickle, Phil Covington to name a few, to realize the sincerity and dedication of these folks to bring us a better radio, and are also having fun in their area of expertise. If you ever meet them they all make you feel better about yourself as a user and not a designer! Alas, they are users. If you can get comfortable with a radio without knobs, CONTROLLED by a PC then that IS the only 'hump' you need to cross. Even that might change with a console with knobs. In the future that is the way it will be done! Actually it is getting comfortable with "RAPID CHANGE" which is the problem. Hang in there! It just gets Better! Eric2 - AA4SW - V31SR -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mike Sent: Monday, December 19, 2005 10:47 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] Confession Fellow SDR users, I am using version 1.4.4 with my SDR. I have been reading the reflector for several months and I must admit that perhaps I have made a mistake. I am at somewhat of a loss at this point. I am reluctant to try any further versions of the software. It seems that my area of expertise is in areas other than computers and computer programming. Therefore I have very little clue as to the meaning of most of the posted messages on the reflector. Perhaps I am in the minority, or perhaps there may be others who might benefit from a "translator" of sorts to attempt to put some of the available knowledge into a language which might be understood by a person such as I. At this point in time, I am inclined to "revert" to my comfortable regular style radios that I have been using for the last 46 years. My onboard computer(brain) is running way over the 100% level trying to comprehend. At any rate, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all Flexers. 73, Mike K5NU ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
[Flexradio] Congratulations Phil Covington
Folks Phil Covington has a new job! If I missed previous mention I apologize. Congratulations Phil… Looks like a fascinating project. Enjoyed reading your blog and looking at the pictures at the OSU Site! Good Luck! Hope it won’t cut into your marvelous contributions to SDR and leading edge amateur radio technology. Eric2 – AA4SW http://pcovington.blogspot.com/
[Flexradio] First Xylo Teamspeak discussion
Folks Here is the first Teamspeak Xylo FPGA project discussion. Obviously has a great deal of potential application(s) for the SDR-1000 and SDR in general. http://www.hamsdr.com/hamsdrForum/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=12&MessageID=49 Eric2 – AA4SW
[Flexradio] Teamspeak Audio Posted for 12-17-05
Folks Link to Teamspeak Audio for 12-17-05 http://flex-radio.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=8667#8667 C U On Teamspeak Eric – AA4SW – V31SR
Re: [Flexradio] Forums are back
Eric and Gerald VERY NICE JOB! Congratulations! Thanks for getting the content back. Also back it up so it is never again lost. As a few have mentioned this really is historic as well as informative. Storage space is cheap thesedays. I really like the new format. I tried the instant link to Teamspeak and it worked GREAT. Just install the software and click on the link and you enter the 'transporter' and you are on VoIP! Course I guess folks may have to get the audio settings right, but mostimes you will here something out of the speakers! I didn't check, but I hope that it saves the server settings automatically that way you can change the username to from Guest, so we can tell who you are! Everyone is welcome on Teamspeak who is interested in SDR and other related things! In response to Gerald's earlier message regarding user contributions. Why not set up an SVN, if not here then I think Dale would be glad to do it. That way, trusted 'write' contributors could contribute to manuals and documents and with Subversioning, and a 'commander in charge' could merge new contributions. From what Dale said on Teamspeak the other night, SVN works with ANY file, not only software and coding. Many times I have seen alert contributors suggest changes to manuals etc, to you and you had to make the changes. You can have any number of downloaders, but not contributors to the document so that users could always get the latest versions of all files. EXCELLENT collaboration tools for an excellent radio, and user contributions. Just thoughts Onwards and upwards! Eric -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Eric Wachsmann - FlexRadio Sent: Monday, December 12, 2005 5:45 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] Forums are back I am pleased to announce that the forums have been recovered and have been placed back on the website. You will note a new link on the sidebar called Community. On this page you will find links to the reflector, the forums, and to the TeamSpeak server. Thanks for your patience as we dealt with these problems that were outside of our control. Eric Wachsmann FlexRadio Systems ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] SDR-1000 kicks butt again on 24 GHz
Mike Why not send this to QST. I think it would be appropriate! Is this the first recorded snow scatter? Certainly the first DX snow scatter! A thrill! Eric -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mike King - KM0T Sent: Sunday, December 11, 2005 5:55 PM To: Flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] SDR-1000 kicks butt again on 24 GHz Hi all, USING THE SDR-1000 - I made a 24 GHz snow scatter QSO today for grid number 13, 175 miles - about 282 km. Jon - W0ZQ was out portable up in Minneapolis. All the details are under the current news section on the main page at www.km0t.com For those of you that may not know, grids are what we strive for in weak signal VHF/UHF/SHF...there are a dozen or so in the US with 5 grids. Two of us (myself included) with 10 grids on the band. No one with 15, thats what were trying to do. This is extreamly difficult given the propagation characteristics on 24 GHz and the terrain involved. In fact, I think it can only be done in the midwest, or the Texas area, as there are terrain obstacles on the coasts that get in the way. So, we are praying for more bad weather here for going after the next two grids! There is a nice screen shot of the SDR-1000 showing the signal. 73 and let the snow blow on! It was very exciting stuff! Mike - KM0T ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] QS4A210/PI5V3331 upgrade etc
David Actually it is the computer screen you need to look at! Remote the black box. Have you sceen Beppe’s console? Another six months and separation of the GUI should tell the story! But ….. yep, sure hope Gerald is working on the new version of hardware… We been talking 1.5 years about it! (smile) Eric2 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of David Queen Sent: Sunday, December 11, 2005 4:18 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] QS4A210/PI5V3331 upgrade etc I seem to remember in the QEX articles the the performance curve on the QSD chip started to get worse right about 10 meters. Are there better choices out there now? I have been thinking a lot bout the SDR the last few weeks and about the New IC-7000. I am having a hard time resolving in my mind the better receiver chain approach. The wide band noise etc reaching the QSD does not seem to be a problem, but I still "believe" all that wide band crude would have an impact in a negative way. I guess it comes from cutting my teeth on a tube radio. I have a bias toward if you you don't tune it its not optimal. Also I wish the SDR-100 was sexier looking. Its pretty plain Jane. Form follows function I guess, but the big name rigs know how to make you lust after one. The new IC-7000 is a a hot looking radio. Perhaps if you they ever do another major redesign they can try to make it look better. Maybe more like something from your entertainment center. Great radio, just wish I was in an apartment. -- If you can read, thank a teacher. If you can read in English., thank a soldier.
Re: [Flexradio] Spurs on 10 meters etc
David At the risk of being apolitical: I thoroughly enjoyed the signature line! Yet it is a sad commentary and conundrum! Merry Christmas Eric2 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of David Queen Sent: Sunday, December 11, 2005 3:41 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] Spurs on 10 meters etc Would having a 2nd refence for the DDS chip and being able to select between 200mhz and oh for example 161.1328MHz be a cure for the spurs? The frequency where the spur occurs would shift and surely a PC could do the math to provide the DDS with the proper number to hit the same frequency. -- If you can read, thank a teacher. If you can read in English., thank a soldier.
Re: [Flexradio] Poor Man's UCB schematic by Wally WatsonM0ZAZ/WA4ZAZ
John and others It renders ok on the machine I use to upload. I'll go back to the old way of refrencing pictures. Dale is working on the problem. Eric2 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of John L Merrill Sent: Saturday, December 10, 2005 2:24 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Poor Man's UCB schematic by Wally WatsonM0ZAZ/WA4ZAZ Where's the circuit? John N1JM -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of ecellison Sent: Saturday, December 10, 2005 1:24 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] Poor Man's UCB schematic by Wally Watson M0ZAZ/WA4ZAZ Folks Wally asked me to post his schematic for the "Poor Man's UCB" I have posted on Dale's website. While you are viewing it. Why not join the Forums! Forums have the advantage of being able to post content of direct and immediate interest which we can't do on the reflectors. Dale has created sections for various projects in addition to SDR-1000 until Gerald and Eric get the Flex Forum site back up. Dale has a new format for the forums which is very nice, since you can directly include pictures, and also add attachments. Thanks Wally! http://www.hamsdr.com/hamsdrForum/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=4&MessageID=23 Thanks Eric2 ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
[Flexradio] Poor Man's UCB schematic by Wally Watson M0ZAZ/WA4ZAZ
Folks Wally asked me to post his schematic for the “Poor Man’s UCB” I have posted on Dale’s website. While you are viewing it. Why not join the Forums! Forums have the advantage of being able to post content of direct and immediate interest which we can’t do on the reflectors. Dale has created sections for various projects in addition to SDR-1000 until Gerald and Eric get the Flex Forum site back up. Dale has a new format for the forums which is very nice, since you can directly include pictures, and also add attachments. Thanks Wally! http://www.hamsdr.com/hamsdrForum/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=4&MessageID=23 Thanks Eric2
[Flexradio] Teamspeak audio 12-10-05
Folks Here is the link to tonight’s audio forum! Lots of conversation on the new Xylo Group! Don’t worry! I’m lost too! http://www.hamsdr.com/hamsdrForum/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=12&MessageID=20 Eric – AA4SW – V31SR If you have not signed up for the forums on Dale’s wonderful new website Please do!
[Flexradio] Xylo Project - Versioning and Tortoise
Folks Folks Just visited our own personal XYLO SVN on Dale’s website, using TortoiseSVN. WOW what a free product! Nothing posted there yet, however I'm sure Phil and Phil can get us started with project code. This IS the only way to fly on software projects. (not necessarily the Windows TortoiseSVN product, but SVN versioning!) To get the client you can go to: http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/ Note to Ahti, Sami, Klaus and others. This GPL product for developing software has installer language add in’s for the client side, so “let’s go”. No excuse except “I don’t have the time” accepted. http://tortoisesvn.sourceforge.net/translation_status This is not the only SVN product, but the docs are great and docs and scripted customizations and client side control panel are understandable and a neat feature. You can go to the code by right clicking on almost any icon on your desktop. To get to the as yet started Xylo code enter this sting in the URL in TortoiseSVN. svn://206.216.146.154/svn/repos_sdr_xylo/xylo_project1/trunk Course if you want to check out and do coding you will have to get a username and password from Dale Eric AA4SW
[Flexradio] Xylo and Saxo availability
Folks The gathering FPGA Xylo group is growing rapidly and as you probably have seen has a reflector, SVN, and Forum. Thanks to PhilH – VK6APH and PhilC – N8VB for sparking all this fun! The development effort and objective is basically to create a stand alone product which replaces the need for a commercial sound card in the computer. However it can do more than that. As we have discussed many times before regarding “External Knobs” , “Parallel cable replacement”, “Precision frequency standard” etc, this project can do many other things in conjunction with the SDR-1000. The group is using the Xylo board from FPGA4Fun.com. As of last night Jean had 5 or 6 Xylo’s left until February. He is planning to offer a new board which is a Xylo clone and uses the same FPGA, but with the Ethernet and VGA connectors removed. The pins used for those connections brought out to a new header. This should be available late December for $99 without connectors. The product name will be Saxo. Eric – AA4SW
[Flexradio] Dang - Xylo!
Folks The reflector truncated the first list and refused to send the second list “too many recipients”. I have: Phil Harman Phil Covington Bob McGweir Richard Stasiak Brian Fredrickson Steve Nance Christopher Day Don ? – AE5K Cecil Bayona On the current list. Who else? Eric
[Flexradio] Xylo News -
Folks Have lost track of the Xylo group who have purchased or are planning to purchase a Xylo for development. Lots going on in the ‘background’, proposed chips, proposed project boards to extend from the Xylo, Verilog code and many other FPGA4 Fun things. If you ARE NOT on the CC-List above and want to hear the plans Please E-mail me at: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To get on the list, this IS fun! I did hear that the source of boards is ‘out of stock’ till February!!! Eric2
Re: [Flexradio] New Noise Blanker and Console Size
Greg Already been suggested – Coming – Yep. Internet connectivity is definitely a part of SDR, as is a lot of ham radio these days! January 1’st is a NEW BUDGET YEAR! (smile) Eric From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of ab7r Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 7:52 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; 'Dave & Nancy Ridge'; FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] New Noise Blanker and Console Size I just had a good idea I think. May be the last one of the year though...hihi. Ready "E"? For use with contesting and logging programs to ease up on the screen clutter.how about making the panadapter (or whatever mode chosen) detachable from the rest of the console. When in Search and pounce, I mainly used that for tuning and go back and forth between that and the logger. So make your settings and detach the display and minimize the rest of the console. Maybe the same for the meters too. This would be great! IMHO. Greg AB7R -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Eric Wachsmann - FlexRadio Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 11:23 AM To: 'Dave & Nancy Ridge'; FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] New Noise Blanker and Console Size I can speak to the second question. The PowerSDR console was designed so that the whole console could be seen when running in an 800x600 resolution. This was mainly to help those with vision impairments, but this was also the standard until only a year or two ago. Today, 1024x768 is more of the standard, and even that is becoming small for many users today. We have tried playing with the console to make it resizable, but initial testing proved that the built in .NET features for resizing a control were somewhat lacking. The work involved in getting a single control to look correct at various resolution/size/DPI was astounding. For this reason, we have left the PowerSDR at the locked original size. Clearly going forward, a larger display (among other form related features) will be considered in future designs. Eric Wachsmann FlexRadio Systems -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Dave & Nancy Ridge Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 12:49 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] New Noise Blanker and Console Size The present Noise Blanker works great. I had read many weeks ago that Alex had a "killer" noise blanker in the "Rocky" software. My question is, will it be added to the PowerSDR software sometime in the future? Also, this may have been asked and answered sometime in the past but, why is the PowerSDR console size not able to be made full screen size? Again thanks for a great radio. It "just keeps getting better!" Dave, W9DR, Punta Gorda, Florida
Re: [Flexradio] New Noise Blanker and Console Size
Phil/Lyle "Who ate my Cheese?" Folks: It don't get better! (smile)... Or does it! Where's the manual? Errr... If you need a manual gess you're not really into ham radio: You have become a slave to the appliance you purchased. (and will purchase again and again, when they add a knob!) Phil/Lyle It is a pleasure to have you and so many others who want to "steal the cheese". Eric2 errr where is my 7800? It don't change! Live Large! -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Philip Covington Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 7:01 PM To: Lyle Johnson Cc: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] New Noise Blanker and Console Size On 12/6/05, Lyle Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Whatever you do, please don't assume we can dedicate the machine to the > > SDR console. We already aren't. > > Why not? > > Just to play Devil's advocate, let's assume you were using a traditional > radio with a front panel, knobs and controls. It has a PC interface, > and you run your MixW, logger, DX spotter, whatever on the PC. > > Life is good. > > You add the SDR-1000 to the mix, the PC display is crowded. > > But what if you tried to add the logger, MixW etc. onto your old radio's > front panel and not use the PC display? Make the radio display all the > PC screen information? It wouldn't fit! Even if the radio is an > FTdx9000 or IC-7800. > > The problem is that the PC is now a *part* of the radio, and the > SDR-1000 is *part* the radio. Many people think of the SDR-1000 as > being the radio; it's not. It's only half of the radio. > > To be fair, you should be using a *dedicated* PC for the SDR-1000. > > Most folks don't, and leverage an existing PC into being the radio as > well as the PC. Or buy a new PC for the SDR-1000 and leverage it into > being their "shack" computer as well. > > Something has to give. > > Modifying the SDR-1000 occupied screen real estate is a possible > solution, but I bet there are as many opinions as to what should be kept > and what shouldn't, as there are SDR-1000 owners. > > However, many PCs have video cards with two display connectors, or can > accept such a video card. You can easily and inexpensively double your > effective screen pixel count. > > I put two screens on my desktop PC because I needed the pixels. I had > to replace the existing video card with a new one for $39 so it would > accommodate two screens. I added a pair of 1600x1200 LCD displays, only > because I could not find 1920x1200 displays for less than several > hundred dollars each. > > If you use a desktop PC, you can add a second, usable LCD display for > under $200 these days. If a laptop, most in the last few years have > allowed the use of an external display that extends the desktop over > both displays, so you can have the extra pixels work for you. It's no > longer either/or. > > My next desktop PC (I keep telling myself) will have two physical video > cards that can each drive two physical monitors, and I'll end up with > four active displays. > > And wish I had more... > > Enjoy! > > Lyle KK7P My thoughts exactly, when reading this! With people shelling out the bux for a SDR-1000 w/ antenna tuner, 100 watt amp, transverters, $150 D44 sound card, 12 Volt power supply, etc... there should not be any squealing about purchasing an extra LCD monitor and video card for under $300. Imagine the Panadapter display when you can take advantage of ALL of a 1280x1024 (or larger) display... Phil N8VB ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] Master's Thesis Defense
Jon A hearty hip hip Congratulations! The 'everything radio!' Eric2 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jon Beckwith Sent: Monday, December 05, 2005 5:26 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] Master's Thesis Defense Hey folks, just wanted to let everyone know that my digital comm/SDR project is nearly complete! Thanks for all the help along the way. Master's Thesis Defense A MATLAB AND SOFTWARE DEFINED RADIO APPROACH TO TEACHING DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS Jonathan A. Beckwith Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Friday, 9 December 2005, 1:00PM-3:00PM 301 Morse Hall Increasing complexity of communication protocols, especially modulations, requires expensive signal generation and demodulation equipment for meaningful lab experiences in communication engineering courses. Pure software simulation can simulate most real-world modulations and impairments, but it still lacks the .feel. of real hardware and channel impairments. Software radio, which uses hardware for analog and software for baseband processing of the signal, is attracting lots of attention in commercial as well as military circles. Using a software radio platform, one can achieve control of the simulation with real hardware, while maintaining flexibility for many environments. To this end, a series of digital communication lab exercises is presented which is based on the principles in software radio and uses an open Matlab code suite and a commercial RF front end, the FlexRadio Systems SDR-1000 transceiver. The lab exercises include realistic implementations of synchronization sections as well as modulation and demodulation subsystems. The flexibility of the SDR allows for not only labs for current EE 757 and EE 758 classes, but also future ones, which have different modulation requirements. As the system has not yet been implemented, a complete evaluation of its effectiveness has yet to be completed. Only the students using it can provide a complete assessment and evaluation of the SDR Teaching System. This will be done in the semester following its completion. Dr. M. Carter, Thesis Advisor Dr. Thomas Miller Dr. Jianqiu Zhang -- * Jon Beckwith -KB1KBB- B.S.E.E. UNH InterOperability Lab R&D Fast & Gigabit Ethernet Consortiums 121 Technology Drive, Suite 2 Durham, NH 03824-3525 (603) 862-4534 * ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] OT: Xylo 24.576 Mhz Oscillators - quick replies needed
Bill I'll take 20 oscillators, and sockets. Take a look at the 8971. Knew I wasn't looking at the 8951 when we were talking this morning. Eric -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bill Tracey Sent: Sunday, December 04, 2005 9:49 PM To: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] OT: Xylo 24.576 Mhz Oscillators - quick replies needed Folks -- off doing a Mouser order for some 24.576 MHz Oscillators ( http://www.mouser.com/index.cfm?handler=displayproduct&lstdispproductid=5631 01 ) to be mounted on the Xylog board to use for clocking the Wolfson 8785 .. and when divided by two in the FPGA will clock an 8951. Figured I'd get some sockets ( http://www.mouser.com/index.cfm?handler=displayproduct&lstdispproductid=2628 53&e_categoryid=608&e_pcodeid=53500 ) to go with them as well. Currently planning on ordering 10 of each - I'll use 1 or 2 myself and send 1 to VK Phil -- wondering how many other folks are interested in these. The Osc price break is @ 10 and 50, the sockets break at 25 and 100.If there's sufficient interest I'll order more and send them to folks at cost+shipping.At quantity 10 the Osc goes for $1.63 and the socket goes for $0.60 If you're interested send me an email (no need to clutter the forum). I'll be submitting the order at 2pm CST Monday Dec 5. Regards, Bill (kd5tfd) ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
[Flexradio] Teamspeak Audio - 12-03-05 - Just too many fun things going on
Floks I have to work this weekend so can’t make a detailed excerpt. Record 35 check in’s (Thanks Ken – N9VV!) Xylo-Phreaks unite… others jumping on chip. Prototype board possible in future. Many comments Gerald fills in with Software progress and answers many questions before having to go wash the dishes. Dale’s hamsdr.com website to host SVN for PowerSDR,Linux-SDR-1000 and Xylo board development as well as new SDR-1000 forum (thanks Dale) Comments on UCB and “Poor Man’s UCB” Discussions on just about everything. http://flex-radio-friends.net/AVI/tsforums/tsforumaudio-12-03-05.mp3 Thanks CU on Teamspeak!
Re: [Flexradio] Xylo Update
Chris Ah yes… mentioned to some….. and by others. I’ll recreate it and all the Teamspeak forum links in the near future! News later. Time is 8:00 Eastern Standard Time. Sub about 4 hrs! I will publish the audio Chris! Thanks Eric2 From: Christopher T. Day [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 02, 2005 4:36 PM To: ecellison; Jeff Anderson; flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: RE: [Flexradio] Xylo Update Ah. One of the things gone with the Forums is the TeamSpeak link. Remind me when the get-together is tonight? Chris AE6VK From: ecellison [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 02, 2005 12:20 PM To: 'Jeff Anderson'; flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Xylo Update Jeff, Lyle, Steve, Phillip and others Thanks for the wonderful comments. IT IS FUN! Will discuss on Teamspeak tonight also. I know PhilH will be there and give us an update on the work he was doing yesterday. Xylo-Phreaks don’t miss it, more to come….. Here are some of the references which came off Phil Covington’s – N8VB’s blog: 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 Also check out Opencores, Which is basically ‘free hardware’, with a public domain buss between cores called Wishbone. http://www.opencores.org/ C U later Eric2 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Jeff Anderson Sent: Friday, December 02, 2005 2:04 PM To: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Xylo Update Hi Bob (& others), Once you get into it, you'll probably find that FPGA programming is not that difficult, and, given the power of the tools, can be much less frustrating than straight digital design. I was dragged into the Verilog world a few years ago for work, and have been using the Altera tools exclusively (initially MaxPlusII, and now Quartus). I'll admit that I'm not expert on the tools, but the Quartus environment supplies me with all I need, and I haven't had the need (yet) to learn other tools or techniques (including Test Benches). You'll find that being able to simulate your designs on the computer (with Quartus) is a huge plus. Functional simulations are timing-diagram driven - you "draw" your inputs, press a "button", and the tool will plot the outputs you've selected. Makes the debug process *much* faster. And Altera's SignalTapII feature, which allows you to "create" a logic analyzer within a part that's powered-up and running so that you can monitor its internal operation, is invaluable when working with BGA parts & buried traces. However - it requires a JTAG interface to the part and a special interface module (I'm using Altera's "USB-Blaster). But if you aren't working with a BGA part, you don't have to use SignalTap. In the past, when I didn't have SignalTap to use, I'd write special code to route "selected" internal signals to unused (or seldomly-used) I/O pins so that I could monitor them with test equipment. Anyway - please consider me a resource as you start to work on your projects. Again, I'm no expert (not by any stretch of the imagination), but I have written Verilog code for a few projects, and I have used the Altera tools (which can be obscure at times), so I might be able to lend a hand if someone runs into a stumbling block. (By the way - Quartus has an "archive" feature that allows convenient passing of a Project from one person to another). 73, - Jeff, WA6AHL Steve Nance <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Lyle, Speaking for all us newbie's, thanks for the FPGA overview and run down on resources. Looks like we have a lot of reading/research to do to learn about the FPGAs and related hardware and software. As you mentioned my background was also in discrete TTL logic hardware designs and I can see a different mindset is required for today's devices. Looks like a lot of work, but what fun. 73, Steve - K5FR
Re: [Flexradio] Xylo Update
Jeff, Lyle, Steve, Phillip and others Thanks for the wonderful comments. IT IS FUN! Will discuss on Teamspeak tonight also. I know PhilH will be there and give us an update on the work he was doing yesterday. Xylo-Phreaks don’t miss it, more to come….. Here are some of the references which came off Phil Covington’s – N8VB’s blog: 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 Also check out Opencores, Which is basically ‘free hardware’, with a public domain buss between cores called Wishbone. http://www.opencores.org/ C U later Eric2 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Jeff Anderson Sent: Friday, December 02, 2005 2:04 PM To: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Xylo Update Hi Bob (& others), Once you get into it, you'll probably find that FPGA programming is not that difficult, and, given the power of the tools, can be much less frustrating than straight digital design. I was dragged into the Verilog world a few years ago for work, and have been using the Altera tools exclusively (initially MaxPlusII, and now Quartus). I'll admit that I'm not expert on the tools, but the Quartus environment supplies me with all I need, and I haven't had the need (yet) to learn other tools or techniques (including Test Benches). You'll find that being able to simulate your designs on the computer (with Quartus) is a huge plus. Functional simulations are timing-diagram driven - you "draw" your inputs, press a "button", and the tool will plot the outputs you've selected. Makes the debug process *much* faster. And Altera's SignalTapII feature, which allows you to "create" a logic analyzer within a part that's powered-up and running so that you can monitor its internal operation, is invaluable when working with BGA parts & buried traces. However - it requires a JTAG interface to the part and a special interface module (I'm using Altera's "USB-Blaster). But if you aren't working with a BGA part, you don't have to use SignalTap. In the past, when I didn't have SignalTap to use, I'd write special code to route "selected" internal signals to unused (or seldomly-used) I/O pins so that I could monitor them with test equipment. Anyway - please consider me a resource as you start to work on your projects. Again, I'm no expert (not by any stretch of the imagination), but I have written Verilog code for a few projects, and I have used the Altera tools (which can be obscure at times), so I might be able to lend a hand if someone runs into a stumbling block. (By the way - Quartus has an "archive" feature that allows convenient passing of a Project from one person to another). 73, - Jeff, WA6AHL Steve Nance <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Lyle, Speaking for all us newbie's, thanks for the FPGA overview and run down on resources. Looks like we have a lot of reading/research to do to learn about the FPGAs and related hardware and software. As you mentioned my background was also in discrete TTL logic hardware designs and I can see a different mindset is required for today's devices. Looks like a lot of work, but what fun. 73, Steve - K5FR
Re: [Flexradio] Another Xylo fiddler
Larry et.al. Well, I think we have about 8 Xylo-Phreaks at the moment who have jumped into the swim. That may be enough to get beyond the 'playing' stage for some further planning. It is a fairly inexpensive fun gadget to play with in any event, and if you have any electronics and logic hardware experience it is a 'hardware magic slate', as well as CPU and memory, which is VERY FAST and POWERFUL in the first place. If you are such a person, I'd highly recommend the $120 dollar investment just to play. Drag out your old TTL-DTL schematics and past them into a core. I think Phil has just about proven that he can interface the Wolfson via I2S to the High Speed USB device on the Xylo. SO? Where do we go from there? Phil alluded to it in his original message re the Xylo and what he was trying to do, (and if we all can manage to do it): If we assume that the objective is to replace the PIO board. The parallel port (and hole(s) it leaves) are replaced with: Line-In Line-Out Key-In Speaker-Out USB I/O Ethernet I/O (perhaps one or two other high level inputs) The hardware on the FPGA does all the heavy lifting! PowerSDR has FAR less hardware to poll and not miss any events. USB at 480 kbs/sec and even Ethernet at greater speeds give it I/Q and control FAST. So fast in fact, that the designers of modules will probably have to check for race situations. If that is a case CW and sidetone monitor will be a snap, with it's own PID. IMHO Now we need a CVS and a Blog. Are any of you Flexers annoyed by the open discussion on the Reflector? Get Gates! http://www.fpga4fun.com/ Actually they have a pretty fair 100 msps Dual Trace digital oscilloscope too! http://www.fpga4fun.com/digitalscope.html Eric2 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2005 3:05 PM To: John Denson Cc: ecellison; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; 'FlexRadio Reflector' Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Another Xylo fiddler > Eric - Yes, in my humble opinion CW is the one weak spot for the SDR that > I would sure like to see resolved. A USB connection sounds like a GREAT > possibility! > > John Denson I think the fundamental problem is inserting software into the path. What I would like to see (my better can correct me) is something like this: A new CW mode: 1. The key would be attached to the rig as now. 2. It would NOT be fed back to the software. 3. In this mode, the software puts out a true continuous wave at the frequency of interest. 4. Some clever bit of software or a dedicated PIC either feeds the wave values as they come (if the key is currently depressed) or feeds zero/resets T/R if the key is not depressed. I'm not sure how easy this would be to program (one would presumably need a send and receive thread, in this instance, and they'd have to cooperate on when to listen and when to write data, including the "futile" moments for the transmit side of it). The other alternative, with a hefty enough PIC on the other side, would be to write a number, representing the frequency offset, and have the PIC provide the CW stream when the switch is on, perhaps including, the element shaping. This would seem entirely plausible as it could presumably all be precomputed at some relevant level for Morse Code sine waves. If any of this really works, it would eliminate all the headaches that come from having Windows as an intermediary to a real time system. I can tell you that no matter how good a job we've done, there's always glitches and while they are much, much better, they still seem to exist. The latest preview 7 is actually a bit behind the previous levels of the keyer, in fact, as there seems to be the occassional "stuck on" bits where the wave continues after the key is actually off (not connected). At some point, we need a real hardware solution to this one, I think. Or, at least a Windows-free pathway. Larry WO0Z
Re: [Flexradio] Website
Phil Lee et al. I am also sad to see the website go and do enjoy reading Larry's exploits etc. I am especially sad at the loss of content which probably could have been served up in another way. It is not only a chronologic historic record of the radios revolution, but also still had a good deal of useful content. Ah Well! Eric2 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Lee A Crocker Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2005 6:03 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] Website Larry Why don't you set up a regular blog at one of the blogsites like "blogger", and include the url in a signature file. I am interested in your 80M exploits, and the blog would be a more natural method of recording them as opposed to a series of reflected emails. Blogger is trivial to set up and its free. 73 Lee W9OY ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] Website
Phil This probably would be a good solution for zylo-phreaks as well. Eric -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Philip Covington Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2005 5:47 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Website Larry, How about getting a free blog over at blogspot.com Here is mine: http://pcovington.blogspot.com/ That way you don't upset anyone who would rather not receive it on the list and people can choose whether to tune in or not. Phil N8VB On 12/1/05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hmmm. > > The disappearance of the website creates a small dilemma for me. > > The question is, do I continue the blogging of my 80m DxCC experiences or > not in this mailing list? > > On the old forum, it's easy, because if you don't care for what I'm > writing about, it's easy to ignore. If you care (and the reference count > suggests some do), you go there on your own. Easy. > > Here, the mail comes whether you like it or not. You're subscribed, so on > it comes. > > Moreover, while they aren't big, I do drop in the odd picture now and > then. It's a bit more offputting to many (not everyone has high speed > dialup) if I start putting up e-mail postings here that include pictures. > There'd probably be a maximum of 100K each and probably not every posting, > but still. . .a big annoyance on dialup to download 100K that you simply > then delete. Ok, maybe 40 or 50K usually, but still. . . > > So, before I simply plow on and impose what might be a burden on some, I'd > like some private e-mail on this, pro and con. > > > Larry WO0Z > > > ___ > FlexRadio mailing list > FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz > http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz > -- Philip A Covington http://www.philcovington.com ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] Another Xylo fiddler
Chris Another thought occurred to me on ‘simple’ things to do would be to program a keyer on the chip. Just needs two debounced inputs and one output for testing. Eventually the keying ‘stream’ would be sent back through the USB control fifo conntection. I can still remember the old DTL and TTL keyers I built early on. CW remains one of those ‘shaky’ areas in the radio, and there is almost nothing we can’t do with high speed USB. Eric From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Christopher T. Day Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2005 12:35 AM To: FlexRadio Reflector Subject: [Flexradio] Another Xylo fiddler Ok, I'm hooked as well. My Xylo arrived today - they're just down the road - but there's no time for me to get the Wolfson chips. I leave for the South Pole on Monday and the Xylo is going with me for playing with in my "copious spare time". Right. Anyway, if I manage not to blow it out with the horrendous static down there, I'll see if I can get some simple VHDL going. If anyone has suggestions of simple things to try out, I'd appreciate it. I'm pretty good with computing languages, but haven't done any of this mushy form of hardware before. Thanks. Chris AE6VK
Re: [Flexradio] Another Xylo fiddler
Chris and Steve Phil – VK6APH is looking into getting a supply of these chips. I think he will be getting them. Looks like price will be in the $7.00 area. I also have a small supply of 16 bit Microchip I2C I/O (DIP) chips for fooling around with. Right now I’m trying to figure out what I need for prototyping externally. There are quite a few resources around. I’m still a bit confused, but reading a little every day. I guess projects obviously will be A/D-D/A with Woffson and PWM. Also I see doing the high Accuracy Oscillator network with GPS 1pps or 10 khz on Jupiter board. Obviously if we are going to ‘replace’ the PIO board switching is part of the equation. More Later – Have a great trip. Mebbe we could all have a Teamspeak session. The more we have working on this ‘project group’ the better. Phil is making good progress with Wolfson. Eric2 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Christopher T. Day Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2005 12:35 AM To: FlexRadio Reflector Subject: [Flexradio] Another Xylo fiddler Ok, I'm hooked as well. My Xylo arrived today - they're just down the road - but there's no time for me to get the Wolfson chips. I leave for the South Pole on Monday and the Xylo is going with me for playing with in my "copious spare time". Right. Anyway, if I manage not to blow it out with the horrendous static down there, I'll see if I can get some simple VHDL going. If anyone has suggestions of simple things to try out, I'd appreciate it. I'm pretty good with computing languages, but haven't done any of this mushy form of hardware before. Thanks. Chris AE6VK
Re: [Flexradio] Frequency stability and calibration
Tom First let me say thanks for this message. I have already spent many hours following and reading much of the stuff on the links, you have provided with great enjoyment. I really like the cursor follower clock! Where can I get it for my local machine! Also thanks to you, Rick Hamby, Bob – N4HY TvB, Frank Brickle and quite a few others for giving of your richness of knowledge and skill! It is a thrill to read! I wish I had been there for your presentations! I especially enjoyed the inspired design of the pic slaved to the 10 mhz time source! In a word Elegant! I am having trouble with your 2. below. I can’t locate the files to defeat the calibration signals on the Jupiter. Where are they on gpstime.com? Thanks Eric2 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Tom Clark, W3IWI Sent: Thursday, November 24, 2005 1:30 AM To: Jim Lux Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Frequency stability and calibration Jim Lux wrote: There ARE actually sources with better close in phase noise than a quartz crystal, just in case you see one at a hamfest or surplus place (or, you're wealthy enough). A hydrogen maser, for instance (that's what we use at work, JPL, when we're concerned about such things.. but then we have an infrastructure to distribute the maser signal around, and a budget for the support staff). Actually, all H-Maser I know rely on a really high quality xtal for their short-term stability (and hence intrinsic phase noise); by high quality, I mean BVA xtal units costing in the $5k range. The transition from the BVA xtal to the maser is typically done at times ~30-100 seconds or so (see the AVARs in my tutorials I mention later, or http://www.leapsecond.com/museum/manyadev.gif to see that the BVA performance is better than the Maser up to ~30 seconds. The goal is to "hand off " from one oscillator to the next when their Allen deviation is equal). BTW -- we actually have a couple of "amateurs" that have both passive & active H-Masers in their basements. One is Tom vanBaak (no call) whose efforts can be viewed at http://leapsecond.com/ and another is Jim Jaeger (K8RQ) (see http://www.clockvault.com/ if you can stand the music!). TvB offered a review paper on amateur timekeeping at the 2003 PTTI meeting, which can be fetched at http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/ptti/ptti2003/paper35.pdf. Also be sure to note TvB's "Most Accurate WristWatch" when you log onto leapsecond.com. I've said it before, and I'll repeat it now -- you are better off thinking in the frequency (and phase noise) domain when you are considering oscillators on time scales shorter than tens of seconds, and in the time domain for minutes and longer. If you are interested in these topics, you might want to fetch one of my "Timing for VLBI" tutorials at http://gpstime.com/ . In my past incarnation I ran NASA's Geodetic VLBI program and was responsible for H-masers as time and frequency standards. While I am on here making comments on this thread, I note that Alberto, I2PHD is using a circuit similar to the one I developed for locking an xtal to the 10 kHz output from the Connexant/Navman Jupiter-T receiver. A couple of notes on what I found: My initial effort also used 74HC390 dividers as a ripple counter to get from 10 MHz -> 10 kHz. But I found that the propagation delay thru these dividers varied strongly with temperature, amounting to a couple of hundred nsec in a day. I fixed this problem by using a simple, but elegant circuit developed by Tom van Baak (see http://www.leapsecond.com/tools/ppsdiv.zip) which uses a PIC with its clock input driven by the 10 MHz signal and a finite state machine that executes a fixed number of instructions to generate lower frequencies. Not only is it a very stable synchronous divider, but also it need only a couple of $$ worth of parts. I did a lot of work to optimize loop time constants to try to achieve performance at the couple of nsec levels. Most of the time, the Jupiter-T steered the oscillator very well, but about once per hour, the 10 kpps (and 1pps) output sawtooth goes thru a zero-beat, with a fixed bias error spanning intervals of 10s of seconds. You can see some of these sawtooth "hanging bridges" that really screw up the locking in my tutorials on gpstime.com. And you can see the fix that Rick (W2GPS) is using in his latest CNS clock using the M12+ in the latest of the gpstime.com tutorials. 73, Tom
[Flexradio] UCB - Group Buy - Project Teaser
Folks I just got off the Teamspeak line with Tony, Terry, and Mike discussing, mods based on experience with the alpha boards which people are using. A number of modifications were suggested (in several sessions) and more or less finalized in this session. We will probably offer the kit with an enclosure and without a prepunched enclosure. I am talking with Gerald about using the SDR 1000 enclosure, customized for the UCB and silkscreened. Board Modificatons: Board is slightly larger to allow for some modifications. All indicator LED’s for relay, status, and address lines will be right angle led blocks mounted on the short edge of the board so they will protrude through the front panel of an enclosure, or be viewed through a window probably different colors for different functions. (onboard leds go away) More space for the PIC. (Tentative) Spare lines on the PIC brought out to header for access and future expansion (LCD Display, etc?) Additional 12 V power headers mounted on board for supply to other devices. Additional X2 line brought out on board for addressing a second 16 relay board for expansion HF bands etc. X2 – 10 PTT line brought out for a connection to a foot switch to back panel in non UCB mode. X2 – 7 going to additional relay for Amplifier (or other) keying in non UCB mode. 12 volt pot – fan speed control. This is really just a modification of the existing successful design to allow for future development and ease of packaging. The kit has not been priced out, but in keeping with the spirit of all Flex-Radio-Friends projects it will not include any ‘mark up’ or profit. Also no guarantee! (smile). Stay posted, news whenever it happens. BTW: Thanks Tony for the fine work and dedication to SDR! Eric2 – AA4SW – V31SR.
Re: [Flexradio] Useful FPGA development board
Bob Well, I must admit that I had not considered the USRP although I have looked at it over the past year or two, as well as listened to conversations about it on Teamspeak. I did also see Bill's response and your responses. Aside from price there are a couple of other things favoring the Xylo for fun and development: 1. Very small size and powered from the USB port on the computer. Allowing a carry anywhere, plug and go, programming tool. 2. On board interfaces and drivers/code for VGA, JTAG, USB, I2C, LCD interface, mounts for second oscillator daughter board (an offered option), Plethora of I/O, power, etc on headers for testing external stuff. 3. For the price, if you were developing code for say the FPGA on the USRP, it could be easily tried on this board, on a business trip, (or at Thanksgiving dinner with the family (I'm still in trouble(smile))) then included in the USRP project. Although I only have a couple of days working and studying the software and Verilog etc. It appears that Verilog and and the tools offered by Altera they are very flexible towards porting code to other FPGA devices. For $120 (forget the other connectors) the developers of the USRP might just use this to develop code. I think that is what Phil Covington is using it for. 4. I guess for us non-programmers, non-experts, this is a modest priced, just for fun learning project, which might yield something as serious as the USRP in the end. It allows hobbyists to get involved at the cost of a blinkey. Also it could be mounted as a controller board in a final product, with a buss to carry the I/O and control. Eric2 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Robert McGwier Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2005 7:54 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; FlexRadio; Software Radio Subject: [Flexradio] Useful FPGA development board I am having a hugely hard time figuring out what the Xylo board will do for me that the GnuRadio USRP does not already do and the USRP with GnuRadio has a bloody HUGE software base with it already (all open source). In addition, the GnuRadio USRP has all sorts of hardware plug on modules to turn it into all sorts of things. Could some please inform me? The difference in price is about $300 but adding all things up side by side, I just don't see it. Fix my ignorance please. http://ettus.com http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/ Bob -- Laziness is the number one inspiration for ingenuity. Guilty as charged! ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] Teamspeak Audio Forum - Flex-Radio-Friends - 11-26-05Happy Thanksgiving & Holidays!
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 pu
Re: [Flexradio] ebay 10MHz-OCXO-
Alberto Although you might not be a specialist, you do make it understandable. My question regarding this unit was not as stand alone, but being 'managed' or corrected by either the 10 khz signal from Jupiter or 1 pps, or perhaps some more elegant way. Just the heart, not the beat! (smile) Thanks Eric -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alberto I2PHD Sent: Saturday, November 26, 2005 4:23 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] ebay 10MHz-OCXO- ecellison wrote: > Alberto et.al. > > What do you think about this part? It is about $17 new. > > http://www.cmac.com/mt/news/cfpt-125.html > > Thanks > Eric2 > Eric, as always, it all depends on what you want to do and how you plan to do it. For a lab grade frequency standard, what you want is that the frequency variation is ideally zero, which is not possible of course to achieve in practice, so you want it as low as possible. If you look at how a GPSDO works, you can make a parallel with a heavy flywheel (the quartz oscillator), whose angular speed (which you want to keep as constant as possible) is checked and corrected every few seconds (30 in the Shera design, more frequently in other designs). You can easily see that between corrections the flywheel must keep its angular velocity unaided, and this imposes stringent requirements on its construction and characteristics. So, a GPSDO cannot be built using a cheap oscillator, you must start with a very high quality one, otherwise the risk is that the loop doesn't lock. The correction done every few seconds is just a very small and gentle nudge to the oscillator. If the frequency offset of the oscillator is too great to be corrected by this nudge, the lock is lost. I am not a specialist of this field, so take my assertions with a big grain of salt, but, IMHO, the stability of 9 parts on 10^7 specified for the oscillator you mention is a bit on the low side. You need something better, at least with a design similar to Shera's. If you are willing to accept a greater phase noise and a worse short term stability, then you could use some other designs for the GPSDO, like that that uses the 10 kHz from the Jupiter GPS unit. Probably the C-MAX MicroTechnology TCVCXO can work well in that circuit. Of course all of this is pure academy if all what you want is not to build a lab grade frequency standard, but just a stable oscillator for your HF radio. Commercial TCXOs with a stability of 0.1 ppm are more than enough for this purpose. Things start to be a bit different if what you want to do is coherent demodulation of a signal at 24 GHz 73 Alberto I2PHD ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] ebay 10MHz-OCXO-
Alberto et.al. What do you think about this part? It is about $17 new. http://www.cmac.com/mt/news/cfpt-125.html Thanks Eric2 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alberto I2PHD Sent: Saturday, November 26, 2005 10:58 AM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] ebay 10MHz-OCXO- Ray J wrote: > with all the talk of frequency stuff lately found this on ebay while > looking around.. > don't know if its useful to any of the experimenters out there > > Isotemp model OCXO134-10 10.00MHz OCXO $75 > > http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Isotemp-10MHz-OCXO-1PPB-EFC-For-GPS-Discipline-12V_W 0QQitemZ5833990844QQ Hmmm, I bought one of those OCXO three years ago. I paid 25 USD (one third of that price) and used it to build a GPSDO. It works, but you cannot do better than a few parts (2 or 3) over 10^11, which can be a superb result, depending on your goals... The problem with that OCXO is that its oven regulation has a periodic temperature change of about 0.2 degrees Celsius peak-to-peak, with a period of about 6 or 7 minutes. That period is too fast for the PI controller implemented in the Atmel AVR, which, after the initial transient period, has time constants in the order of more than one hour. So the frequency change caused by that variation in temperature goes almost uncorrected, causing that 2 or 3 part over 10^11 of frequency "pendulum" I have graphed it, you can see it here : http://sundry.i2phd.com/Lock3be.gif Of course, it could be that only my specific Isotemp OCXO had this problem, and other units work well. Anyway, my next GPSDO will make use of a double oven 10811... I found one brand new, still in its box...: 73 Alberto I2PHD ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
[Flexradio] Teamspeak Audio Forum - Flex-Radio-Friends - 11-26-05 Happy 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
Re: [Flexradio] ping
Response from Eric2 - Average time 354 ms. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of richard allen Sent: Thursday, November 24, 2005 8:34 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] ping ping ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] Frequency stability and calibration
Tom Really neat stuff. Would love to hear you give the 2005 PPT presentation. What did happen on 09/07/02? Looks to my naked eye, that raw data from GPS is plenty accurate for our purposes as you pose in one of the slides. The ‘flying’ cursor clock and nixies on gpstime.com is the neatest thing I’ve seen in a long time! <-pun Thanks for the links. I don’t understand all of it but is enjoyable to try to figure it all out! Bob mentioned using pic slaved to the osc, the other night on Teamspeak. REALLY clever idea.! Eric From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Tom Clark, W3IWI Sent: Thursday, November 24, 2005 1:30 AM To: Jim Lux Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Frequency stability and calibration Jim Lux wrote: There ARE actually sources with better close in phase noise than a quartz crystal, just in case you see one at a hamfest or surplus place (or, you're wealthy enough). A hydrogen maser, for instance (that's what we use at work, JPL, when we're concerned about such things.. but then we have an infrastructure to distribute the maser signal around, and a budget for the support staff). Actually, all H-Maser I know rely on a really high quality xtal for their short-term stability (and hence intrinsic phase noise); by high quality, I mean BVA xtal units costing in the $5k range. The transition from the BVA xtal to the maser is typically done at times ~30-100 seconds or so (see the AVARs in my tutorials I mention later, or http://www.leapsecond.com/museum/manyadev.gif to see that the BVA performance is better than the Maser up to ~30 seconds. The goal is to "hand off " from one oscillator to the next when their Allen deviation is equal). BTW -- we actually have a couple of "amateurs" that have both passive & active H-Masers in their basements. One is Tom vanBaak (no call) whose efforts can be viewed at http://leapsecond.com/ and another is Jim Jaeger (K8RQ) (see http://www.clockvault.com/ if you can stand the music!). TvB offered a review paper on amateur timekeeping at the 2003 PTTI meeting, which can be fetched at http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/ptti/ptti2003/paper35.pdf. Also be sure to note TvB's "Most Accurate WristWatch" when you log onto leapsecond.com. I've said it before, and I'll repeat it now -- you are better off thinking in the frequency (and phase noise) domain when you are considering oscillators on time scales shorter than tens of seconds, and in the time domain for minutes and longer. If you are interested in these topics, you might want to fetch one of my "Timing for VLBI" tutorials at http://gpstime.com/ . In my past incarnation I ran NASA's Geodetic VLBI program and was responsible for H-masers as time and frequency standards. While I am on here making comments on this thread, I note that Alberto, I2PHD is using a circuit similar to the one I developed for locking an xtal to the 10 kHz output from the Connexant/Navman Jupiter-T receiver. A couple of notes on what I found: My initial effort also used 74HC390 dividers as a ripple counter to get from 10 MHz -> 10 kHz. But I found that the propagation delay thru these dividers varied strongly with temperature, amounting to a couple of hundred nsec in a day. I fixed this problem by using a simple, but elegant circuit developed by Tom van Baak (see http://www.leapsecond.com/tools/ppsdiv.zip) which uses a PIC with its clock input driven by the 10 MHz signal and a finite state machine that executes a fixed number of instructions to generate lower frequencies. Not only is it a very stable synchronous divider, but also it need only a couple of $$ worth of parts. I did a lot of work to optimize loop time constants to try to achieve performance at the couple of nsec levels. Most of the time, the Jupiter-T steered the oscillator very well, but about once per hour, the 10 kpps (and 1pps) output sawtooth goes thru a zero-beat, with a fixed bias error spanning intervals of 10s of seconds. You can see some of these sawtooth "hanging bridges" that really screw up the locking in my tutorials on gpstime.com. And you can see the fix that Rick (W2GPS) is using in his latest CNS clock using the M12+ in the latest of the gpstime.com tutorials. 73, Tom
Re: [Flexradio] Frequency stability and calibration
Tom I ran across TvB on one of my ‘time forays’ off the FlexRadio Forum last year. This guy is amazing! I probably spent 8 hours reading about his ‘shack’ and what he has done to get many stabilized time sources, and wandering around these websites. Talk about dedication to one hobby and becoming a master! WOW. All of this is worth the read folks! If just to marvel at the work and dedication. Eric From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Tom Clark, W3IWI Sent: Thursday, November 24, 2005 1:30 AM To: Jim Lux Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Frequency stability and calibration Jim Lux wrote: There ARE actually sources with better close in phase noise than a quartz crystal, just in case you see one at a hamfest or surplus place (or, you're wealthy enough). A hydrogen maser, for instance (that's what we use at work, JPL, when we're concerned about such things.. but then we have an infrastructure to distribute the maser signal around, and a budget for the support staff). Actually, all H-Maser I know rely on a really high quality xtal for their short-term stability (and hence intrinsic phase noise); by high quality, I mean BVA xtal units costing in the $5k range. The transition from the BVA xtal to the maser is typically done at times ~30-100 seconds or so (see the AVARs in my tutorials I mention later, or http://www.leapsecond.com/museum/manyadev.gif to see that the BVA performance is better than the Maser up to ~30 seconds. The goal is to "hand off " from one oscillator to the next when their Allen deviation is equal). BTW -- we actually have a couple of "amateurs" that have both passive & active H-Masers in their basements. One is Tom vanBaak (no call) whose efforts can be viewed at http://leapsecond.com/ and another is Jim Jaeger (K8RQ) (see http://www.clockvault.com/ if you can stand the music!). TvB offered a review paper on amateur timekeeping at the 2003 PTTI meeting, which can be fetched at http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/ptti/ptti2003/paper35.pdf. Also be sure to note TvB's "Most Accurate WristWatch" when you log onto leapsecond.com. I've said it before, and I'll repeat it now -- you are better off thinking in the frequency (and phase noise) domain when you are considering oscillators on time scales shorter than tens of seconds, and in the time domain for minutes and longer. If you are interested in these topics, you might want to fetch one of my "Timing for VLBI" tutorials at http://gpstime.com/ . In my past incarnation I ran NASA's Geodetic VLBI program and was responsible for H-masers as time and frequency standards. While I am on here making comments on this thread, I note that Alberto, I2PHD is using a circuit similar to the one I developed for locking an xtal to the 10 kHz output from the Connexant/Navman Jupiter-T receiver. A couple of notes on what I found: My initial effort also used 74HC390 dividers as a ripple counter to get from 10 MHz -> 10 kHz. But I found that the propagation delay thru these dividers varied strongly with temperature, amounting to a couple of hundred nsec in a day. I fixed this problem by using a simple, but elegant circuit developed by Tom van Baak (see http://www.leapsecond.com/tools/ppsdiv.zip) which uses a PIC with its clock input driven by the 10 MHz signal and a finite state machine that executes a fixed number of instructions to generate lower frequencies. Not only is it a very stable synchronous divider, but also it need only a couple of $$ worth of parts. I did a lot of work to optimize loop time constants to try to achieve performance at the couple of nsec levels. Most of the time, the Jupiter-T steered the oscillator very well, but about once per hour, the 10 kpps (and 1pps) output sawtooth goes thru a zero-beat, with a fixed bias error spanning intervals of 10s of seconds. You can see some of these sawtooth "hanging bridges" that really screw up the locking in my tutorials on gpstime.com. And you can see the fix that Rick (W2GPS) is using in his latest CNS clock using the M12+ in the latest of the gpstime.com tutorials. 73, Tom
Re: [Flexradio] GPL C program for windows
Guys Thanks for the comments all. Will checkemout today! Eric -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Robert McGwier Sent: Thursday, November 24, 2005 1:11 AM To: Dave Cc: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] GPL C program for windows And even and IDE: http://visual-mingw.sourceforge.net We do not have to be slaves to the BEAST in Redmond. Bob Dave wrote: >There is also Eclipse; see in particular the CDT. > >http://www.eclipse.org/ > >http://www.eclipse.org/cdt/ > >73, > >Dave, AA6YQ > >-Original Message- >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Robert McGwier >Sent: Thursday, November 24, 2005 0:49 AM >To: richard allen >Cc: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz >Subject: Re: [Flexradio] GPL C program for windows > > >Actually, your reply was very useful. > >http://www.cygwin.com and >http://www.mingw.org > >both allow the use of Linux, gcc, X, emacs, xemacs, etc. tools on >windows. YOU CAN develop fully fleshed out GUI, etc. programs that run >on Windows using these environments. > >Bob > > >richard allen wrote: > > > >>Eric, >> >>My earlier reply was probably not too useful. I've not used any free >>C for windoze but there is one that runs under dos called djgpp. see >>http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/ >> >>http://clio.rice.edu/djgpp/win2k/main.htm talks about a late version >>that will evidently rununder2000 and xp. >> >>Others here that are currently using one will hopefully reply. Richard >>W5SXD >> >>"ecellison" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>(11/23/2005 18:09) >> >> >> >> >> >>>Folks >>> >>> >>> >>>I could probably search, but is there a C or "Visual" C compiler for >>>Windows in GPL? Like the SharpDevelop program is for C#? >>> >>> >>> >>>Got my Xylo board up and running and would like to compile some of the >>>samples to get a feel. I would rather not tackle the MS VS products at >>>this point! The SDR is killin' the budget this year! >>> >>> >>> >>>Thanks >>> >>>Eric2 >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>___ >>FlexRadio mailing list >>FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz >>http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz >> >> >> >> >> > > > > -- Laziness is the number one inspiration for ingenuity. Guilty as charged! ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] GPL C program for windows
Richard Thanks will look at that also, some folks have mentioned that MS gives some of thiers away free. Eric -Original Message- From: richard allen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 11:18 PM To: ecellison Cc: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] GPL C program for windows see http://gcc.gnu.org They invented GPL :>) Richard W5SXD "ecellison" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: (11/23/2005 18:09) >Folks > > > >I could probably search, but is there a C or "Visual" C compiler for Windows >in GPL? Like the SharpDevelop program is for C#? > > > >Got my Xylo board up and running and would like to compile some of the >samples to get a feel. I would rather not tackle the MS VS products at this >point! The SDR is killin' the budget this year! > > > >Thanks > >Eric2 > >
[Flexradio] TCVCXO hearts
Folks Would this part be suitable for our rock? Newark has them single quantity for about 16 bux. http://www.cmac.com/mt/news/cfpt-125.html Thanks Happy Turkey! Eric2
[Flexradio] GPL C program for windows
Folks I could probably search, but is there a C or “Visual” C compiler for Windows in GPL? Like the SharpDevelop program is for C#? Got my Xylo board up and running and would like to compile some of the samples to get a feel. I would rather not tackle the MS VS products at this point! The SDR is killin’ the budget this year! Thanks Eric2
Re: [Flexradio] frequency calibration etc
Jim Could we just not divide at all using the 1 pps gate and just use the variance of the last 2 or three digits, and make the assumption that it was accurate 200,000,xxx? I wouldn't think we would want to make any correction in software more frequently than one second. Or perhaps we could store a running average of the last three digits in an accumulator for the comparison against the 'rock'. Eric2 -Original Message- From: Jim Lux [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 5:44 PM To: ecellison Cc: '[EMAIL PROTECTED] Biz' Subject: RE: [Flexradio] frequency calibration etc At 02:15 PM 11/23/2005, ecellison wrote: >Lyle > >Thanks. Well not too difficult to divide the 200 by 10 externally and >perhaps provide buffering for the 200 mhz sig coming out of the SDR. > >Eric2 Even better, if you don't want to give up the resolution (dividing by 10 does that) is divide by 10 and run that in one pin. Divide by 11 and run that in another pin. Now you can actually get the full resolution. Jim, 'rmk
Re: [Flexradio] frequency calibration etc
Lyle Thanks. Well not too difficult to divide the 200 by 10 externally and perhaps provide buffering for the 200 mhz sig coming out of the SDR. Eric2 -Original Message- From: Lyle Johnson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 5:11 PM To: ecellison Cc: 'Jeff Anderson'; 'Jim Lux'; '[EMAIL PROTECTED] Biz' Subject: Re: [Flexradio] frequency calibration etc > Can an FPGA > pin actually accept a 10 mhz or 200 mhz signal so that the LE's could be > configured to divide it down? 10 MHz is no problem. 200 MHz! Many FPGAs can handle this frequency, some go faster, many can't go quite this fast. 73, Lyle KK7P
Re: [Flexradio] frequency calibration etc
Folks I have a stupid question which I should be able to look up. Can an FPGA pin actually accept a 10 mhz or 200 mhz signal so that the LE’s could be configured to divide it down? I really do like Bob’s example and suggestion. Have 1 10 mhz tcvcxo interfaced to the GPS and stabilized. Divide the 200 mhz signal down to say 10 meg compare the reference sig to the LO and tell the software to correct for variance in the 200 mhz LO. Am I understanding this correctly. (forget whether it is a PIC or FPGA or discrete hardware). I need a block diag to follow all this (smile). It’s fun tho! Eric From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Jeff Anderson Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 12:04 PM To: Jim Lux; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] frequency calibration etc Hi Jim, Jim Lux <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Or, use a fixed oscillator, and run an NCO in the FPGA to create an offset frequency, which you then mix with the fixed oscillator to create your locked output. [This is what we are doing in an experimental deep space transponder.. where phase noise is of obssessive concern] [WA6AHL] : I like your idea. But let me see if I understand it...in an app such as, say, a general-purpose way of generating a stable frequency using the Jupiter 1pps as reference, are you saying that the NCO (with an external, stable, oscillator as its clock source) would, in essence, be the digital version of the preiously mentioned VCO? Phase comparison between the NCO's output and the reference 1pps is done within the FPGA and the error used to "steer" the NCO and proved an output that's locked to the ref? Is one of the tradeoffs low phase-noise vs. frequency-step "quantization" of the NCO? (E.g. the NCO might never be *exactly* on frequency). In an application specific to the SDR1K, per Bob's example, you don't need the NCO. Instead, feed the error sig back to the SDR1K and let s/w handle frequency correction... > Or...you could even attempt loop >filtering within the fpga and generate the VCO control voltage a number of >ways - drive a dac, for example (similar to Shera's design - which I use >here to drive an HP 106B, by the way). But no matter which route is >followed, much attention needs to be paid to ground & power routing, layout, >etc, >to ensure that minimal noise is added to the VCO control voltage from >external sources. Which is precisly why I like the idea of measuring the offset and compensating in other ways, rather than steering the oscillator itself. Then, you can work on getting the best possible performance from the oscillator, which can be highly isolated from the outside world. [WA6AHL] Agreed. Of course, depending upon how sensitive to noise your application is, good layout & bypassing techniques still apply even for the NCO technique. Given finite slew-rates of digital signals, ground bounce or supply sag can increase switching-threshold uncertainty, resulting in jitter in the digital domain. Jim Lux <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: At 05:14 AM 11/23/2005, Jeff Anderson wrote: >Hi Eric - > >To your earlier post regarding implementing within an FPGA the circuitry >Alberto pointed to. Yes, this is easily done. In fact, I'd think you could >improve upon the design, too. For example, in the schematic you really >don't want the 43K resistor across the 470 uF cap - it, in series with the >15k resistor, will continually discharge the cap, meaning that the VCO >control voltage (and thus frequency) will continually vary as the cap >discharges and the phase-comparator pumps it back up to regain phase-lock. >Ideally, if you're in lock, you would like the control voltage to be an >unvarying DC level. Turning the first order loop into a second order loop. A first order loop will always have some small phase error, but it will be reasonably constant (frequency dependent, possibly). >Anyway - you could certainly implement all the digital circuitry as well as >a '4046-style phase comparator within the fpga and drive an external loop >filter, similar to shown in the schematic. Or, use a fixed oscillator, and run an NCO in the FPGA to create an offset frequency, which you then mix with the fixed oscillator to create your locked output. [This is what we are doing in an experimental deep space transponder.. where phase noise is of obssessive concern] > Or...you could even attempt loop >filtering within the fpga and generate the VCO control voltage a number of >ways - drive a dac, for example (similar to Shera's design - which I use >here to drive an HP 106B, by the way). But no matter which route is >followed, much attention needs to be paid to ground & power routing, layout, >etc, >to ensure that minimal noise is added to the VCO control voltage from >external sources. Which is precisly why I like the idea of measuring the offset and compensating in other ways, rather than steering the oscillat
Re: [Flexradio] Impulse Wave file
Edson This should work too. Eric -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Edson Pereira Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 4:27 AM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Impulse Wave file Richard, Try ftp.flex-radio.friends.net 73, -- Edson, n1vtn richard allen wrote: >C:\sys>ftp ftp.flex-radio-friend.net >Unknown host ftp.flex-radio-friend.net. >ftp> bye > >C:\sys>ftp flex-radio-friend.net >Unknown host flex-radio-friend.net. >ftp> bye > >What am I doing wrong? I would like to see these. >Richard W5SXD > >Robert McGwier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >(11/22/2005 21:22) > > > >>We have an impulse generator on the RFE. And we have (currently hidden) >>code to generate a train of pulses. I generated several ten long pulse >>trains with the RFE impulse generator and made a wave file. >> >>The large pop at the end of the file is me disengaging the impulse relay. >> >>ftp.flex-radio-friend.net >>u: Friends >>p: Flex4U >> >>cd upload/N4HY >>get IQ_impulses.wav >> >> >>Bob >> >> >> >>-- >>Laziness is the number one inspiration for ingenuity. Guilty as charged! >> >> >>___ >>FlexRadio mailing list >>FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz >>http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz >> >> > > >___ >FlexRadio mailing list >FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz >http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz > > > ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] Impulse Wave file
Richard et al. Go to HTTP://Flex-Radio-Friends.net/ Click on uploads section and enter userename and password there. If you are using Firfox you will need an add in (forgot which one) Eric2 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of richard allen Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 4:03 AM To: Robert McGwier Cc: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Impulse Wave file C:\sys>ftp ftp.flex-radio-friend.net Unknown host ftp.flex-radio-friend.net. ftp> bye C:\sys>ftp flex-radio-friend.net Unknown host flex-radio-friend.net. ftp> bye What am I doing wrong? I would like to see these. Richard W5SXD Robert McGwier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: (11/22/2005 21:22) >We have an impulse generator on the RFE. And we have (currently hidden) >code to generate a train of pulses. I generated several ten long pulse >trains with the RFE impulse generator and made a wave file. > >The large pop at the end of the file is me disengaging the impulse relay. > >ftp.flex-radio-friend.net >u: Friends >p: Flex4U > >cd upload/N4HY >get IQ_impulses.wav > > >Bob > > > >-- >Laziness is the number one inspiration for ingenuity. Guilty as charged! > > >___ >FlexRadio mailing list >FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz >http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] IQ correction, future developments
Jim Just thought I'd lighten it up a bit (smile). Thanks for your contributions to the knowledge base and How To. Happy Thanksgiving all! Eric2 -Original Message- From: Jim Lux [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 1:13 AM To: ecellison; 'Mark Amos'; '[EMAIL PROTECTED] Biz' Subject: Re: [Flexradio] IQ correction, future developments At 07:35 PM 11/22/2005, ecellison wrote: >Mark > >Just remember you should always include some almost abosolute statement in >your messages so that Jim Lux can catch you! (smile) You bet... What are amateurs for if not to push the envelope when someone says something like "nobody will ever communicate across the ocean with wavelengths shorter than 200m" >Neat stuff! > >Eric2
Re: [Flexradio] IQ correction, future developments
Mark Just remember you should always include some almost abosolute statement in your messages so that Jim Lux can catch you! (smile) Neat stuff! Eric2 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Amos Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 7:37 PM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED] Biz' Subject: Re: [Flexradio] IQ correction, future developments I don't know about the rest of the lurkers on this list, but I find this kind of thing really inspiring. I hope there's something, some time, somehow that I can contribute to this process, but in the mean time, I'll have to be content to just be amazed and inspired by you guys. Mark -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Robert McGwier Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 9:56 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Biz Subject: [Flexradio] IQ correction, future developments The correct way to do IQ correction is to do it with a pseudo-inversion filter in the frequency domain and as a part of (convolved with) the bandpass filter. When we are finally done, the frequency domain computations will be a really huge thing in the radio (as if they weren't already). We will do block operations for noise reduction, notch filtering, IQ correction, etc. etc. It is going to be very loaded. I have recently made a very large improvement in the efficiency of the dsp. I managed to get SSE and floating point and version 3.0.1 of FFTW to work under WINBLOWS and Visual.NET and our code. This means that we will be using the SSE capabilities to do filtering and soon after the cordic oscillators. The code for dsp has mostly stabilized. The release of the SSE.FFTW float version of the code will be major step forward. Eric has a prototype DirectX version of the video routines running (I can run it here). With stability will come speed and optimization work. Richard Allen has already reported a large increase in the performance of the timers for the keyer. Expect all of this to be the theme for the next several months. I sent Frank and Edson a MASSIVE upgrade to the linux code, incorporating all of the new features that are in the windows code and already implementing the FFTW 3.0.1/SSE version of the code. We will test it there first. Frank and I get together next week and we hope to do a major upgrade to the version that is available via cvs on sourceforge. As Willi is fond of saying, every time you download it is a new radio. I know that some are not accustomed to this and INCORRECTLY view this (IMHO) as "it isn't ready". Bull. It is never going to be "ready" if what you mean by that is it will stabilize and never changed. VAC is not perfect. WDM-KS is not perfect. But it is a new capability and it will get better. We will like replace VAC since we need for that channel to support WDM-KS and we need to be able to use SSE versions of the resampling code so all of that will fly. Dale has agreed to host SVN so we can ALL contribute bits of code and not step on each other. Stay tuned. These features will be at the heart of 1.5.0 when released early next year. Bob -- Laziness is the number one inspiration for ingenuity. Guilty as charged! ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] IQ correction, future developments
Ditto -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Amos Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 7:37 PM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED] Biz' Subject: Re: [Flexradio] IQ correction, future developments I don't know about the rest of the lurkers on this list, but I find this kind of thing really inspiring. I hope there's something, some time, somehow that I can contribute to this process, but in the mean time, I'll have to be content to just be amazed and inspired by you guys. Mark -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Robert McGwier Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 9:56 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Biz Subject: [Flexradio] IQ correction, future developments The correct way to do IQ correction is to do it with a pseudo-inversion filter in the frequency domain and as a part of (convolved with) the bandpass filter. When we are finally done, the frequency domain computations will be a really huge thing in the radio (as if they weren't already). We will do block operations for noise reduction, notch filtering, IQ correction, etc. etc. It is going to be very loaded. I have recently made a very large improvement in the efficiency of the dsp. I managed to get SSE and floating point and version 3.0.1 of FFTW to work under WINBLOWS and Visual.NET and our code. This means that we will be using the SSE capabilities to do filtering and soon after the cordic oscillators. The code for dsp has mostly stabilized. The release of the SSE.FFTW float version of the code will be major step forward. Eric has a prototype DirectX version of the video routines running (I can run it here). With stability will come speed and optimization work. Richard Allen has already reported a large increase in the performance of the timers for the keyer. Expect all of this to be the theme for the next several months. I sent Frank and Edson a MASSIVE upgrade to the linux code, incorporating all of the new features that are in the windows code and already implementing the FFTW 3.0.1/SSE version of the code. We will test it there first. Frank and I get together next week and we hope to do a major upgrade to the version that is available via cvs on sourceforge. As Willi is fond of saying, every time you download it is a new radio. I know that some are not accustomed to this and INCORRECTLY view this (IMHO) as "it isn't ready". Bull. It is never going to be "ready" if what you mean by that is it will stabilize and never changed. VAC is not perfect. WDM-KS is not perfect. But it is a new capability and it will get better. We will like replace VAC since we need for that channel to support WDM-KS and we need to be able to use SSE versions of the resampling code so all of that will fly. Dale has agreed to host SVN so we can ALL contribute bits of code and not step on each other. Stay tuned. These features will be at the heart of 1.5.0 when released early next year. Bob -- Laziness is the number one inspiration for ingenuity. Guilty as charged! ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
[Flexradio] UCB Group Buy Project
Folks Mike King – KM0T and I just had a Teamspeak conversation regarding modifications to the Alpha USB Boards to make this into a complete project. Basically the discussion introduced change ideas which would make connections more easily brought on and off board, possible inclusion of an enclosure and most if not all of the connecting parts. The time frame I am now working on is proposal and decision by the end of this month. Ante up money during December and parts purchase end of December, ship January 15 or there abouts. Be patient. We will have something and perhaps some discussion choices very soon. Eric2 – AA4SW
Re: [Flexradio] RFC - Poor Man's Universal Controller Board
Larry My thinking was that worldwide folks are throwing away IBM Clones, which had a 20/40 pin floppy cable from the getgo. It provides the cables, and also mating connectors, required to use pins 1-6 with some spare pwr and ground. OTOH. (Wally are you taking notes? Comments?) If we take Wally's design and put the 1-6 Mosfets on a simple "poor man's expansion board" and make it an optional connection we have the simple : 1. Foot switch and isolated amplifier switcher on a small screw in circuit board almost capable of being packaged in a backshell. Top or bottom mounted dual in line .025 post connector. And for those who wish: 2 add another six Opto Isolated switches for other amps etc on a ribbon connector and an external board. I think a 10 pin connector would do in that case. Instead of 20 or 40. Eric2 Still in suggestion mode. -Original Message- From: Larry Loen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 11:17 AM To: ecellison Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] RFC - Poor Man's Universal Controller Board ecellison wrote: >Larry > >My thinking is that potentially everyone would like to have an inexpensive >ptt and amp interface which protects the radio. Some may like to play with >the other pins so a much lighter header could be provided to make the other >open collector pins available with a light readily available cable for >breadboarding a custom relay board with up to 6 relays, directly supported >in code. We don't want much feature creep in this one, just a compact screw >on unit. > >Again just an opinion. > >Eric2 > > > > OK, so which cable should it be -- floppy or IDE? And, should it be on the top? Neither of these questions represent feature creep (not as far as I can tell), just enough to get the design out the door and usable. But, I would hope the "other side" of the MOSFETs could take 12v or even perhaps 24v at ??? amps (presumably, not much amps). To me, half the point would be easy interfacing to the "analog world" out there, whatever it is. Common voltages are 5, 12, and 24, near as I can tell. Certainly, in my Harris Amp, I might eventually have to contend with switching all three of these, depending on how much of it I eventually decide to automate. Right now, my external antenna switch relay is running off 12v, because I didn't run out to digikey, but took what was available at Radio Shack to "just get going." That might be replaced, though, but I hate to remove working gear, however nominal the effort involved is. I'm not trying to make demands half so much as making a request to explain what the heck I will have and whether I need an added stage of buffering/amplification or not. For instance, if the system is limited to 5v, I'd need to put in a secondary circuit to move some of this stuff up from 5v to 12 or 24v perhaps. On the other hand, if this is mostly about grounding small amounts of control current (as I suspect it would be or could be) then maybe voltages aren't as big a deal. But, it would be good to know. Remember, at least one person involved in this transaction is not Mr. Electrical Engineer. As long as I can straightforwardly hook up my amp and, if I want to, also switch in a receive only beverage antenna perhaps (not my current need, but others have asked about this), we'd have a sufficiently robust design for a lot of folks to proceed to buy this thing. I know I want it regardless, but it would be nice, without dealing with feature creep, to make sure we've either got these bases covered plus explaining what supplemental circuitry these common applications are going to need. The optical isolation feature really appeals to me, however. I would much rather burn out this card than the SDR, obviously. Larry WO0Z
Re: [Flexradio] Frequency calibration etc
Alberto Yes, this is a really neat design. I think I have read it several times! Also a little embarrassed I have been calling the 10 khz Jupiter 10 MHZ. This is really pretty good short term stability for the GPS! I wonder if we could paste this into a Altera core? Eric -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Gollum Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 10:25 AM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Frequency calibration etc > Well, I think we are a ways away from a kit. I was sort of suggesting that > we try just using the Rockwell - Jupiter board and it's 10 mhz oscillator > 'naked' and just see what we get. Give a look here : http://gpsdo.i2phd.com 73 Alberto I2PHD ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] Frequency calibration etc
John Thanks for the input. I have not heard of anyone else using the external reference, and you never noted any severe adverse effects. Is the 5065a keeping the SDR dead on, which is the primary objective in this whole discussion. Do you notice variation due to the Sound card clock? Perhaps all the theory we have been gumming about is not that important in practice. If you have to measure the difference on a high quality counter.. er well. Also thanks in advance for the tests. Thanks! -Original Message- From: John Ackermann N8UR [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 8:35 AM To: ecellison Cc: 'Ross'; FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Frequency calibration etc ecellison wrote: > Ross > > > > Well, I think we are a ways away from a kit. I was sort of suggesting that > we try just using the Rockwell - Jupiter board and it's 10 mhz oscillator > 'naked' and just see what we get. In 2 lengthy arounds on this thread mostly > what we have is theory and nothing tried at this point. I think that John - > N8UR is the only one I have heard about who is using an external 10 mhz > reference to the SDR. > > > > Comment John? Anyone else using Geralds mod kit with external reference? > Results? Yes, I've been using my SDR-1000 with external reference from an HP 5065A Rubidium frequency standard. I haven't noticed any horrid phase noise problems from the 10MHz to 200MHz multiplication, but I also haven't been looking very hard for them. I hope that fairly soon -- perhaps over the Xmas holidays -- I will get temporary access to HP's latest super-duper phase noise measurement box, and one of the tests will be to compare the SDR-1000 with original crystal versus the external reference. I'll certainly post those results when I have them. 73, John
Re: [Flexradio] RFC - Poor Man's Universal Controller Board
Larry My thinking is that potentially everyone would like to have an inexpensive ptt and amp interface which protects the radio. Some may like to play with the other pins so a much lighter header could be provided to make the other open collector pins available with a light readily available cable for breadboarding a custom relay board with up to 6 relays, directly supported in code. We don't want much feature creep in this one, just a compact screw on unit. Again just an opinion. Eric2 -Original Message- From: Larry Loen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 21, 2005 6:34 PM To: ecellison Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] RFC - Poor Man's Universal Controller Board ecellison wrote: >Larry > >Thanks. I think the RCA Phono for PTT and Amp key is a done deal. Although >Larry has stated no size concerns, if we ignore size then we have the bulk >of a 15 pin through HD cable 6 ft long. That is heavy and is a monster on >the desk. The design should allow attachment directly to the radio. I >personally feel that a cold connection for PTT and a mosfet for AMP keying >and a pull up as Wally has shown in his design is all we want on the board. >Perhaps on the bottom side of the board we can place a 20 pin header for >connecting a floppy disk flat ribbon cable to breadboard or anything the >user wants to do with the rest of the pins. (Also 5V and Ground). > >Just an opinion. > >Eric2 > > > > > > I think if we have the 15 pin on the input be the opposite gender of the one on the SDR, and wire it appropriately, we can have it both ways, if we plan for it. You could mate it directly to the SDR or not. That would put some premium on size, more than I was concerned about so as not to put a lot of pressure on the card/D connector. I suppose you could rig up sme sort of case for stress relief, but you have to start planning, then, for things like the lower lip of the SDR case. Hardly impossible, but a consideration. I dont' get the 20 pin header on the bottom. If anything, it should be on the top. The other alternative still remains the D connector on the other side. Expose my ignorance here. If you're coming out with a floppy style ribbon cable, what is the difference between that and running the same kind of wires to a D shell? Or, is the stuff simply more available (e.g. read made cables at every Best Buy and Radio Shack)? But, even if we do the floppy/IDE style cable, shouldn't it be on top where gravity is on our side? Larry WO0Z PS, wouldn't standard (original) IDE be better for our purposes than a floppy cable? Does that cable have better RF properties due to its higher bandwidth? Could we simply ground extra, unused lines (interspersed, perhaps) and would that help? Won't the original IDE cable be readily available longer, if that's part of the game we're playing here? Would IDE handle less voltage and amperage than floppy? PPS, could we get the HD cable at 3 feet or are those unavailable? There are usually shorter cables around when there are larger ones, even perhaps in this application.
Re: [Flexradio] Frequency calibration etc
Ross Well, I think we are a ways away from a kit. I was sort of suggesting that we try just using the Rockwell – Jupiter board and it’s 10 mhz oscillator ‘naked’ and just see what we get. In 2 lengthy arounds on this thread mostly what we have is theory and nothing tried at this point. I think that John – N8UR is the only one I have heard about who is using an external 10 mhz reference to the SDR. Comment John? Anyone else using Geralds mod kit with external reference? Results? In the end, it looks like TAPR will have all the items we need for the reference except power and GPS. If the sound card is a big player in the variance as suggested, probably Phil1’s experiments with the Altera and Wolfson chips with a NCO is the way to go, that way we could have accurate control of both the LO and “Sound Card” oscillators. Course I have not even started getting my mind around that project. At this point, I am so confused, with all the discussion, I don’t know which way is up, and also which way to go! (smile). Somebody just needs to try the simple 10 mhz mod and see how it plays and where we need to go. I think the 10 mhz (I think sine wave) osc on the Rockwell board would be worth a shot. Eric From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Ross Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 1:00 AM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] Frequency calibration etc Eric Can you please put me down for a Reflock and other items as well. Thanks Ross ZL1WN
Re: [Flexradio] Teamspeak Forum Audio - 11-19-05 - LONG POSTING
should get that running this week, in which case the next step will be to alter the SDR1000 code and try it there. There are a couple of issues with the Xylo board. The supplier will not let you have a circuit diagram. That does not seem to be much of a problem since both Phil and I have worked out enough of the circuit to see what pins of the FX2 are connected to the FPGA. The other issue is that unlike the SDR1000 this is not an open source project so we don't have the code for the various drivers that they use. I don't see this as a problem in the short term but I may be in the long run. I expect there are enough skills lurking in this group to overcome this when need be. There are many other things we can do with as USB interface and an FPGA. We will have lots of I/O for operating external relays etc. We could use the 1 pps signal from a GPS to stabilize an oscillator. Perhaps replace the DDS with an NCO. As Phil suggested we can test PWM D/A converters for the I/Q signals and if they are not good enough then Wolfson make a great range of D/A and A/D converters (as do other companies, its just that Wolfson have been very generous with samples so far!). I have never worked with FPGAs before so am starting the VHDL learning curve. I see that the preferred HDL language in the US is Verilog whilst down here and in Europe it seems to be VHDL. There is plenty of room for others to play if interested. The slow part for me will be the FPGA coding so if anyone has those skills and would like to help out then I'll be happy to lean VHDL later on! Sorry about the long post but I didn't see that a short reply would do this exciting project justice. 73's Phil... VK6APH - Original Message - From: "Philip Covington" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "ecellison" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: Sent: Monday, November 21, 2005 1:19 AM Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Teamspeak Forum Audio - 11-19-05 Hi Eric, On the D/A part of the equation we need to look at whether we could use PWM output from the FPGA into a LPF. I have done this for audio output into a speaker (with an amp in between), but we would have to see if it would give use the dynamic range we would require for the I and Q outputs to the QSE. I think this should work... Using two pins for PWM output from the FPGA would eliminate the need for an external stereo D/A. Phil N8VB On 11/20/05, ecellison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Jeff > > > > I really need Phil - VK6APH to comment, and maybe Phil - N8VB will chime > in > on this thread. Phil was going to eliminate the DAC by using the PIC to do > the DAC for transmit. If I remember, he did have that working. I think it > was 10 bit which was enough for SSB but Digi modes were in question. The > feeling was that we could stream the digital stream back through the USB. > I > am having difficulty remembering exactly what Phil1, (here we go > again(smile)) VK6APH had proposed. Phil1 is on a trip to South Australia > so > dunno when he will be available for comment. I do know he will be very > anxious to chat with you! Hopefully we can get you and some others with > FPGA > experience to help us along! > > > > Phil Covington N8VB is designing an entire SDR around an Altera FPGA (and > other wonderful things!) > > > > http://www.philcovington.com/ > > > > See HPSDR Board picts at the top of his page. > > > > Thanks > > Eric ___ 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: 267.13.3/174 - Release Date: 17/11/2005 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.4/176 - Release Date: 20/11/2005 ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
[Flexradio] Frequency Stability - Bounced
Ross Course you could just glue one of these Rockwell-Jupiters into a box and control the temp a little. Try the slaved 10 mhz oscillator - as is - for the timebase for SDR-1000. For $39 bux you can’t go wrong, and will form the basis for a more accurate timebase, on the Refloc-2. I bought one from a different vendor, but this guy is cheaper and ships further includes active antenna. I’m waiting for someone to glue the GPS 1 pps, Reflock II and TC or TCVXO into a really fine timebase. http://cgi.ebay.ca/NIB-Rockwell-Jupiter-GPS-Receiver-12-CH-Board-antenna_W0QQitemZ5833153046QQcategoryZ4668QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem They also have several Australian vendors with different form factor board. http://search.ebay.ca/search/search.dll?from=R40&satitle=Rockwell+-+Jupiter Eric
Re: [Flexradio] Frequency stability and calibration
Title: Message Ross et.al. Also if you are tuning to WWV or some other RF standard transmission, use the phase displays, you can center the phase display right on the target. I agree with Richard, that with fairly constant shack temperatures, and letting the radio warm up for a while, drift and error are not too bad, however there are many around, including myself who will probably latch on to the Reflock-2, GPS and TC or VCXO solution in the near future. TAPR is planning an oscillator board for the SDR-1000. Otherwise, as richard says, you are into some commercial TCXO at 10 mhz at the expense of increased phase noise. Eric2 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of richard allen Sent: Monday, November 21, 2005 5:26 PM To: 'Ross'; FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Frequency stability and calibration Ross, One thing you need to remember is that the fft bin widths will greatly effect sub 20 Hz accuracy that you are looking for. Also, the pixel width in the display, indicating the cursor position, may be many Hz. Of course the sound card may be contributing as was pointed out earlier. Before I had my first unit properly heat sinked and mounted inside a case, I complained about the drift also. Any breezes about the oscillator are gonna cause it to drift. While not as tight as the $300 tcxo in my icom 756, the sdr1000 now does pretty well inside a case with all the latest heatsinks and mods. I use the auto calibrate in 10 MHz WWV. Actually the signal from my 10 MHz gps system is usually louder than WWV. The reference oscillator was selected first for its very low phase jitter, and important consideration for achieving the fantastic receiver specs. The second consideration was probably price. The best solution for your stability if you also care about the receiver specs will probably today be the Reflock II from TAPR along with a 1 pps gps receiver locking a 200 MHz osc. The lower frequency oscillators like that in the z3801 are gonna give you good stability and accuracy but at the expense of more phase noise. There is also a German company that is now producing a good 10 MHz system I believe. Regards, Richard W5SXD -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Ross Sent: Monday, November 21, 2005 12:28 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] Frequency stability and calibration Can I request that solving the stability issue of the SDR1000 be brought towards the top of the "to-do" pile. Having to recalibrate regularly is becoming a chore. Also it may be my calibrating techniques, but I notice that the calibration settings using spectrum and panadadapter are slightly different, with the spectrum calibration being 6hz lower, ie the clock offset is different, dependent on whether you use spectrum or panadapter. Thanks Ross ZL1WN
Re: [Flexradio] RFC - Poor Man's Universal Controller Board
Larry Thanks. I think the RCA Phono for PTT and Amp key is a done deal. Although Larry has stated no size concerns, if we ignore size then we have the bulk of a 15 pin through HD cable 6 ft long. That is heavy and is a monster on the desk. The design should allow attachment directly to the radio. I personally feel that a cold connection for PTT and a mosfet for AMP keying and a pull up as Wally has shown in his design is all we want on the board. Perhaps on the bottom side of the board we can place a 20 pin header for connecting a floppy disk flat ribbon cable to breadboard or anything the user wants to do with the rest of the pins. (Also 5V and Ground). Just an opinion. Eric2 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 21, 2005 4:59 PM To: Larry Loen; ecellison; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: Re: [Flexradio] RFC - Poor Man's Universal Controller Board I see that Crydom no longer makes the G2-1A03 or any of the G2 series MOSFET opto isolator SSR. Possible subs are CPClare PLA 110, NEC PS141-1A-A, or Panasonic AQV254. Connector for amp keying should be RCA as that will provide better reliability and less confusion when hooking up the rats nest. 73, Larry K2LT > > From: Larry Loen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: 2005/11/21 Mon AM 09:39:34 WET > To: ecellison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED], > FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz > Subject: Re: [Flexradio] RFC - Poor Man's Universal Controller Board > > ecellison wrote: > > >Larry > > > >I have never disagreed with the problems with the mini jacks. However, they > >are readily available, small, come in different length patch cables, come > >with rf suppression etc. > > > >We could use RCA Phono jacks which have a lot of friction and are also > >readily available. I think the amplifiers I've seen use phono jacks. They > >also come in various forms and adapter plugs. > > > >Eric > > > > > > > > > That sounds better. You're right, I've seen a lot more RCA jacks on > various gear. 1/8 inch plugs seem rare to me and I've never seen them > on anything with any serious power involved. > > Smallness is not, to me, a particular issue. This is QRO land and > AFAICT things get a little bigger anyway. I don't see me backpacking > this board. I think I want something that is hardier. We also have to > think about this board going to places like Belize (smile), so I want > something where intermittents are not a serious issue. If I have to run > some short lengths of, say, 14 or 18 gauge wire from the board to some > case, that's not a big issue. If RCA plugs can mount on the board, so > much the better. If not, as I said, not a biggie. We aren't going to > have all that many connectors anyway. At least, not for the parts that > involve the amplifier. So, a little more size for a couple of > connectors would not be, for my money, a big burden even if I got a > second PMUCB for some future remote operation that wasn't running power. > For the forseeable future, this is an SDR board, not a softrock style > board, so I think we don't have to worry about backpacking for this. It > just has to come out of the back of the trunk or truck bed. Besides, > even QRP gear uses RCA jacks, come to think of it. > > I assume the "other signals" are going to another D shell on the other > side (J4, not specified)? The D44 breakout board (I think) proved that > was a good idea. Why not replicate the input pins (except for the X2 > and AMP PTT as they were coming out of the SDR 1000 on the other side? > That would be pretty idiot proof in terms of planning. The only > question might be one of voltage, but IIRC, the old RS232 showed that > these connectors could take reasonable voltages (-12 to +12) as long as > the amperage isn't too high, which I wouldn't expect however the other > lines get used. So, it might be workable. We can get them on the board > as easily as 1/8 plugs, right? > > But, I'm the novice here. Anyone, especially with experience of > homebrew amplifiers, have a comment? > > All I know is that yesterday, W0VB was doing some things with RF > connectors I never thought to do at 100 watts specifically to avoid > intermittents. That was on the RF path, to be sure, but I certainly > wouldn't want intermittents on the _switching_ for high power, either, > especially if one ends up sequencing a couple of things, such as > transverters as well as the amplifier. A guy with a simple VHF setup > might still like this board very much, after all. > > > Larry WO0Z > > > > ___ > FlexRadio mailing list > FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz > http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz > Larry Taft K2LT T and T Measurements drakerepair.com 800-687-9161
Re: [Flexradio] RFC - Poor Man's Universal Controller Board
Larry I have never disagreed with the problems with the mini jacks. However, they are readily available, small, come in different length patch cables, come with rf suppression etc. We could use RCA Phono jacks which have a lot of friction and are also readily available. I think the amplifiers I've seen use phono jacks. They also come in various forms and adapter plugs. Eric -Original Message- From: Larry Loen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, November 20, 2005 9:36 PM To: Wallace Watson Cc: ecellison; FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Flexradio] RFC - Poor Man's Universal Controller Board Wallace Watson wrote: > Folks, > Attached is my first hack at the Poor Mans's UCB board design. Excuse > my novice approach, but I have not drawn schematics or done board > layout work for more years than I care to remember. > Also the incorrect symbol usage for the Opto-Isolator MOSFETS, but > with the ExpressPCB package I could only find a 4N25 opto-isoloator. > If anyone has additional custom component for use with the > ExpressSCH/ExpressPCB package I will substitute the correct symbol in > an update to the schematic. > > Please advise any and all suggestions for changes? > Well, I'm not very good at this sort of thing, but at least at first glance, by a novice kind of soldering kit guy, it looks pretty good. In fact, I was kinda vaguely thinking along these lines. Much more vaguely to be sure, but thinking. I have my amplifier up and running (thanks to Terry, W0VB and Bob Zellar, whose call I have momentarily forgotten at this late hour) , but it really isn't what I'm going to want long term. Today, I'm switching the amp on by hand and then transmitting. This board would be an excellent replacement for that, providing the MOSFETS can take enough current to ground a typical amplifier switching circuit. What I had in mind was probably to do a 12 v relay that, in turn, triggers the coax antenna switch that's external to my amplifier. I don't know what the current output is, but the immediate and (no doubt related) question is -- whether the MOSFETS can deal with 12v to "pick" a relay that, int turn, triggers a coax switch with a 110 v switch. The board looks good. . .though I do wonder about continued reliance on 1/8 inch plugs for everything (I'm thinking specifically of "J3 1/8 inch out"). Why not some sort of Molex plug here or just leave it to the user to attach whatever is suitable? I'm more agnostic on X-2 PTT switch in, but these do seem to be circuits potentially related to high power devices, even if they don't carry power themselves. Do we want to take on whatever troubles (e.g. intermittents) these 1/8 inchers give? I'm not necessarily excited about having the connectors right on the board as long as there is a proper "landing area" to attach wires to whatever is needful to something that can mount in the case or something. Larry WO0Z
Re: [Flexradio] Teamspeak Forum Audio - 11-19-05
Phil Yep. I think Phil did have pwm running on the PIC. He did mention in the audio on Friday that they had interfaced and configured the Wolfson A/D chip via the I2C connector on the Xylo, also had the microchip 16 i/o interfaced. How are you coming with the HPSDR? I notice you have what appears to be a bus structure for mounting daughter cards vertically from the backplane. A buss sure would make it nice for adding stuff and upgrading stuff as new parts came along! Also I2C and power buss on the backplane. Have you done anything more with the mini-itx remote doing the dsp and a PC local to do the GUI? Of course I guess all the DSP stuff could be done in your FPGA. Fascinatin' suff! Eric -Original Message- From: Philip Covington [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, November 20, 2005 12:19 PM To: ecellison Cc: Jeff Anderson; FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Teamspeak Forum Audio - 11-19-05 Hi Eric, On the D/A part of the equation we need to look at whether we could use PWM output from the FPGA into a LPF. I have done this for audio output into a speaker (with an amp in between), but we would have to see if it would give use the dynamic range we would require for the I and Q outputs to the QSE. I think this should work... Using two pins for PWM output from the FPGA would eliminate the need for an external stereo D/A. Phil N8VB On 11/20/05, ecellison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Jeff > > > > I really need Phil - VK6APH to comment, and maybe Phil - N8VB will chime in > on this thread. Phil was going to eliminate the DAC by using the PIC to do > the DAC for transmit. If I remember, he did have that working. I think it > was 10 bit which was enough for SSB but Digi modes were in question. The > feeling was that we could stream the digital stream back through the USB. I > am having difficulty remembering exactly what Phil1, (here we go > again(smile)) VK6APH had proposed. Phil1 is on a trip to South Australia so > dunno when he will be available for comment. I do know he will be very > anxious to chat with you! Hopefully we can get you and some others with FPGA > experience to help us along! > > > > Phil Covington N8VB is designing an entire SDR around an Altera FPGA (and > other wonderful things!) > > > > http://www.philcovington.com/ > > > > See HPSDR Board picts at the top of his page. > > > > Thanks > > Eric
Re: [Flexradio] Teamspeak Forum Audio - 11-19-05
Jeff I really need Phil – VK6APH to comment, and maybe Phil – N8VB will chime in on this thread. Phil was going to eliminate the DAC by using the PIC to do the DAC for transmit. If I remember, he did have that working. I think it was 10 bit which was enough for SSB but Digi modes were in question. The feeling was that we could stream the digital stream back through the USB. I am having difficulty remembering exactly what Phil1, (here we go again(smile)) VK6APH had proposed. Phil1 is on a trip to South Australia so dunno when he will be available for comment. I do know he will be very anxious to chat with you! Hopefully we can get you and some others with FPGA experience to help us along! Phil Covington N8VB is designing an entire SDR around an Altera FPGA (and other wonderful things!) http://www.philcovington.com/ See HPSDR Board picts at the top of his page. Thanks Eric From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Jeff Anderson Sent: Sunday, November 20, 2005 9:20 AM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Teamspeak Forum Audio - 11-19-05 Thanks for the reply, Eric. The Wolfson ADC looks like a nice part. Is the initial design only to be a stereo ADC-to-USB, rather than both ADCs & DACs? I have no experience connecting audio to USB, and so I'm wondering... if DACs are planned, I'm curious how one locks the DAC clocks to the incoming USB audio stream (the Altera parts have PLL's - but their utility doesn't go too far). Does the same issue exist if one only performs the ADC function? Thanks, - Jeff, WA6AHL -Original Message- From: ecellison [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2005 3:25 PM To: 'Jeff Anderson'; FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: RE: [Flexradio] Teamspeak Forum Audio - 11-19-05 Jeff Well, I know that Phil N8VB is working with an Altera and from his previous post has a Xylo board. Phil – VK6APH has also purchased a Xylo board as have I. My knowledge is minimal however, the board was inexpensive and it would appear that this kit and the sample and supporting C and HDL code would form the basis for a great ‘glue’ chip for many projects which we have collectively discussed for the SDR-1000 over the past year. Phil is designing an entire SDR based on FPGA. Early this year, we had 3 users interested in a PIC-4550 with USB, and we all bought boards, C-compilers, and protokits. but that project is stalled, for a number of reasons, none the least of which was a pretty buggy C compiler IDE from FED. Also streaming audio back through the USB port was a bit too slow in serial. A lack of good understanding of audio USB interface. Etc. I think the primary excitement last February was the prospect of eliminating the need for a sound card. We did some research and rejected almost all Codec chips at the time, and found the very inexpensive Wolfson 8785 ADC chip which has an I2S interface, for minimal parts and connections, 192, khz, 24 bit, stereo input, thd 102 SNR 111 http://www.wolfsonmicro.com/uploads/documents/WM8785.pdf They also have a nice DAC chip in the same type mold. At the same time and after, we have discussed a number of other projects which would be ideal to nail into an embedded system. High accuracy/stability time base using a 1 pps time source from GPS receiver. Integrated full function Keyer with sidetone. DDS replacement PLL or NCO. TCP/IP for remoting of the SDR-1000 Replacing the switch functions on the PIO board over USB rather than parallel port. External Main tuning knob(s) and other handy buttons for the folks who quiver and shake in “Knob Withdrawl! Complete replacement of the PIO board. I am sure I am forgetting things we discussed as potential for embedded system ‘assist’ for the SDR 1000, and haven’t thought of others. I think a project like this needs both folks (as many as we can get) who have experience with this embedded system, taking the lead, or suggesting resources methodology and code. Then others willing to support and test code etc. Thanks for speaking up! This is worthy of discussion. Eric – AA4SW From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Jeff Anderson Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2005 3:54 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Teamspeak Forum Audio - 11-19-05 Regarding Altera experience - I'm currently writing Verilog code for an Altera Cyclone II part (EP2C5) that, amongst other functions, interaces to some AKM stereo codecs. What's the planned Xylo project? - Jeff, WA6AHL -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of ecellison Sent: Friday, November 18, 2005 8:29 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] Teamspeak Forum Audio - 11-19-05 Folks (
Re: [Flexradio] Frequency stability
John Thanks! The daughterboard sounds ideal for what a lot of us want for the SDR-1000. Is the frequency error you mentioned possibly due to the introduced small error in the GPS timebases? I know that in the QST article (can't remember the name) that there was a cyclic and random error from the satellites. Although I seem to recall that it was temperature changes in the shack where he was testing. If it's predictable, probably can be eliminated in software. I really like the fact that it has an I2C interface, since there are a few of us just getting started with the Cyclone FPGA in the Xylo board. One of the ideas was to use an NCO but with I2C we can talk with the Refloc II on the same bus, and the Reflock II is a jewel in the center of the crown of getting really accurate with the SDR-1000! http://www.fpga4fun.com/board_Xylo.html I included Steve, Tim and Tom in another message, since they were major contributors in the first discussions. I think this go around should produce the ideas to glue it all together into a working device. I'm a little shaky on the fine pitch stuff myself and may wait to order the Reflock until you have an assembled kit. Thanks to you and Steve and others for this fine production from TAPR. Gess you can sit back and relax now that someone else is in the saddle! (smile) Fat chance! Eric2 -Original Message- From: John Ackermann N8UR [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, November 20, 2005 9:10 AM To: ecellison Cc: 'Guy Atkins'; FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz; Steven Bible Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Frequency stability Hi Eric -- Yes, the Reflock II is now shipping as a kit, though it requires fairly fine-pitch SMD soldering. We'll have an assembled and tested version available as soon as we can get the contract manufacturer lined up. I've done some tests of the Reflock II using a GPS 1pps steering an eBay surplus TCXO, and the performance is quite good. It's not the equal of a more sophisticated GPS disciplined oscillator like the surplus Z3801A, but it holds within parts in 10e9 (e.g., about +/-25Hz at 10GHz). The only downside is that the frequency error isn't a slow ramp, but rather looks like noise with a peak-to-peak period of a few seconds. At HF or even multiplied up to VHF, that's not going to be noticeable. But it bugs me, and we're working to see if there's a way to fix it. NOTE: I haven't measured to see if this effect occurs when using an oscillator, rather than GPS, as the reference. I strongly suspect that you won't see this when locking to an oscillator, because the loop design is very different in that case. TAPR is planning to offer a daughterboard to go along with the Reflock II that will provide a good quality 10MHz oscillator to serve as the reference, and a low jitter VCXO running at 100MHz to drive the SDR-1000. You'll be able to bypass the 10MHz oscillator and use your own, or use GPS, if you'd like. I'm not certain just when the daughterboard will be available, but I know that Steve Bible, N7HPR, has been working on it. (By the way -- the same daughterboard, with a different VCXO, will also drive the Matt Ettus USRP software radio board.) 73, John ecellison said the following on 11/20/2005 06:24 AM: > We have gone around in circles a number of times on this subject and it is > still on my 'project mentoring' list of things to design collectivly. > Depending on how much we have to spend, the best bet looks like TAPR Reflock > 2 which has finally been offered as a kit for about $110 and can be slaved > to GPS or a high accuracy 10 mhz TC(VC?)XO and produce accurate 100 - 250 > mhz standard avoiding the phase shift by multiplying up from 10 mhz. We have > not hashed this out lately. > > > > http://www.tapr.org/kits_reflock_ii.html?PHPSESSID=f42b43a04fcded6a42ced6193 > 4840545 > > > > Perhaps John N8UR can comment on a complete design using the Reflock-2, and > 1 pps GPS.
Re: [Flexradio] RFC - Poor Man's Universal Controller Board
Wally Thanks for the input, and I would definitely like to persue this as a project. Iffn you got a pencil, how about a sketch or something since you have already jumped on it and have the parts details. A kit should be pretty simple to do. How are you at ExpressPCB? Larry, sorry we don't have something for you at the moment! They do make 5 volt relays I saw them from DigiKey. Onea dem and a diode should get you in business. Eric2 -Original Message- From: Larry Loen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, November 20, 2005 4:12 AM To: Wallace Watson Cc: ecellison; FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] RFC - Poor Man's Universal Controller Board Wallace Watson wrote: >All, >I used Dale, N0XAS's, Univeral Keying Adapter for my Amp keying scheme. >This little board uses an optically isolated,MOSFET solid-state relay part ># G2-1A03 as the interface to the amplifier with the following specs; >1) Keys solid state, grid block or cathode keyed amplifiers or transmitters >up to 400V AC or DC >2) Optical isolation between rig and key input >3) Self contained and low voltage power requirement >4) Compact size ideal for integration into other equipment > >For our proposed use, the only other component required, besides the >optically isolated MOSFET chip, is a current limiting resistor in the range >of 270 - 500 ohms for use with the 5V DC power source available from the >SDR radio's X-2 connector pin 14. The optically isolated MOSFET chips >input is driven directly from X-2 pin 7. > >If we wished, we could include on the Poor Man's Universal controller board >(PMUCB) a group of these same optically isolated MOSFET chips for >protecting X-2 control lines, pins 1-6. If the isolators are not required >we could have pads or headers to bypass the optically isolated MOSFET chips >and terminate at a 6 or 10 pin Berg connector as suggested by Eric2. > >It would be my desire to utilize 1/8" phone jacks mounted on the PMUCB for >a foot switch or hand switch for keying the SDR via X-2 pin10 PTT input. > >I would like to thank Eric2 for making this proposal on the email >reflector. We had discussed this subject prior to the Belize DXpedition >trip on Teamspeak, and unfortunately he suffered an SDR radio component >failure as a result of trying to connect a relay in an amplifier directly >into the radio on x2-7 without any buffering. > >I believe now is the time for this supplemental SDR radio interface >kit. We are all pleased with the Delta-44 breakout box replacement that >Tony designed and had circuit boards manufactured for. And for which Eric2 >purchased all of the components and dry assembled the entire kit to make >available to all of us SDR-1000 radio owners. I don't know if it was ever >verbalized by the SDR Radio owners community but I wish to thank Eric2 and >Tony for a job extremely well done! > >Thanks, Wally - M0ZAZ. > >At 05:55 AM 11/20/2005 -0500, you wrote: > > I have this problem in real-time. I am, right now, trying to work out the details of keying a Harris Miltary Surplus Amplfier. It is a very interesting device, having apparently been used all over the government (military, especially) over the last 20 or 30 years. Not least of the problems is figuring out how to safely hook up a rig like the SDR 1000 to it. I'm going to have to do what I'm least good at -- a little homebrewing -- at the moment it would be most dangerous to our favorite transmitter. And, of course, I'd like to get it done before CQ WW this next weekend, so I don't have forever, at least not if I want the amp for the contest. The more obvious schemes, using readily available parts, would involve using twelve volts to trigger 110v AC relays. At least, the T/R HF switch I currently have is triggered off of 110, but obviously, I don't want to switch that directly. The most readily available scheme would be a 12v triggered AC relay which would then be hooked to the T/R antenna switch, itself switched off of 110v. But, ultimately, if I want to trigger this from the SDR itself, I'm going to need optical isolation or open collectors or something so I can translate the available voltages off the back of the SDR to the 12v that my current scheme, at least, will need. Maybe there are 5v triggered relays out there, but this is what I have for now. I'm going to get a hand from Terry, W0VB, who really understands this stuff 100 fold better than I do. But, at least at the present, this is what I'm expecting to do. A supplemental SDR interface board that made it easy to do these sorts of things, especially if it protected the rig against most errors and stupidity, would be a real boon to me, right now, today. Larry WO0Z
Re: [Flexradio] Frequency stability
Guy This is a copy of the last message in a previous go around. Tom, Steve, John, Jim: You want to throw some glue on the Reflock II & Rockwell-Jupiter and put us out of our SDR stability misery, now that the II is available!? (smile). This is still on my projects mentoring list! What’s new on the SDR-1000 accessory board mentioned? Eric – AA4SW ** All -- Just FYI, TAPR is working not only on the Reflock II, which can phase lock virtually any oscillator with a DC control voltage to either another frequency source, or to a 1pps from a GPS, but also an auxiliary board specifically designed to work with the SDR1000. It will provide a low-phse-noise 100MHz oscillator as well as an optional 10MHz TCXO to serve as reference (if you have a 1pps source, or other frequency standard, you can use that instead). The Reflock II will be shipping within a few weeks (we hope to have them for sale at the ARRL/TAPR Digital Communications Conference in Santa Ana, CA on Sep. 23-25). The SDR-1000 accessory board is just going into prototype but it's a pretty straightforward project so hopefully won't take too long to get ready for production. 73, John Jim Lux wrote: > At 05:53 PM 9/6/2005, ecellison wrote: > >> Jim >> >> I knew i could bait you! (smile). I am sort of 'gobbled up' by this >> precision thing! I do have my GPS receiver and am ready for the 1 part >> to the -13 (give or take a couple of exponents!). Can we take the 200 >> mhz standard out of the SDR 1000 as is? Actually I visit WWV >> frequently with the phase display, from 20 meters, where I been >> operating, and am actually pretty pleased with the long term accuracy >> of the radio. Course I fall asleep and leave it on. >> >> Eric > > > > You can skin that cat a number of ways. > > One way: pick off a sample of the 200 MHz and run it into a suitable > divider/counter widget (like the one Brooke Shera described a few years > back). Adjust in software > > Second way: Get a 200 MHz source that has a "steering input" and use it, > instead of the 10 MHz source in a Z8301 type unit (or Brooke Shera's > board). You could drive a divide by 20 with the 200 MHz source and use > it in a system designed for 10 MHz unchanged. > > Third way: Get a high quality 200 MHz phase locked source and lock it to > your 10 MHz source. ( you might be able to do this with an HP 8640..and > used 8640s are cheaper than brand new 200 MHz phase locked sources) > > Fourth way: Measure the DDS output frequency against the 1pps or the 10 > MHz, and calculate from there. You could either calculate a correction, > and retune the DDS (but that might screw up the spur minimization > techniques), or feed that into the IF processing in the software. > > Fifth way: Generate a comb from your stable reference, making sure that > the comb spans the frequency bands you'll tune over. In software, find > the comb, subtract it out, and use it to calibrate the rest. This is > like using a crystal marker generator to calibrate your analog dial. > > The latter is what I'm doing at work, and I'll have a publically > releasable descriptionof the details in a month or so. Suffice it to say > today that we calibrate an arbitrary number of free running SDR1Ks and > their PC sound cards to several ppb, including phase, especially if > temperatures are reasonably stable. > > >> >> James Lux, P.E. > ** From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Guy Atkins Sent: Sunday, November 20, 2005 12:45 AM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Frequency stability This site, which I've had bookmarked for a long time, offers low-priced 10 Mhz frequency standards for homebrewers: http://www.aade.com/ AADE offers nice little digital frequency displays, too, for old-tech radios. The firm is just a few miles from me, but I don't know if it's an actual storefront or a cottage industry run out of an amateur operator's home. Guy Atkins Puyallup, WA -Original Message- From: Ross [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2005 5:16 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] Frequency stability Bob, (and others) Would making up a 10mhz refence standard and using GPS based timing, improve the frequency stability of the SDR1000. If so, suggestions please as to where to obtain or build up a precision standard. Thanks Ross ZL1WN
Re: [Flexradio] Frequency stability
Guys We have gone around in circles a number of times on this subject and it is still on my ‘project mentoring’ list of things to design collectivly. Depending on how much we have to spend, the best bet looks like TAPR Reflock 2 which has finally been offered as a kit for about $110 and can be slaved to GPS or a high accuracy 10 mhz TC(VC?)XO and produce accurate 100 – 250 mhz standard avoiding the phase shift by multiplying up from 10 mhz. We have not hashed this out lately. http://www.tapr.org/kits_reflock_ii.html?PHPSESSID=f42b43a04fcded6a42ced61934840545 Perhaps John N8UR can comment on a complete design using the Reflock-2, and 1 pps GPS. Eric – AA4SW From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Guy Atkins Sent: Sunday, November 20, 2005 12:45 AM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Frequency stability This site, which I've had bookmarked for a long time, offers low-priced 10 Mhz frequency standards for homebrewers: http://www.aade.com/ AADE offers nice little digital frequency displays, too, for old-tech radios. The firm is just a few miles from me, but I don't know if it's an actual storefront or a cottage industry run out of an amateur operator's home. Guy Atkins Puyallup, WA -Original Message- From: Ross [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2005 5:16 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] Frequency stability Bob, (and others) Would making up a 10mhz refence standard and using GPS based timing, improve the frequency stability of the SDR1000. If so, suggestions please as to where to obtain or build up a precision standard. Thanks Ross ZL1WN
Re: [Flexradio] RFC - Poor Man's Universal Controller Board
Larry Thanks, I have never had and amp so really don't know the keying schemes. I would imagine that most are quite benign, however, a little relay in x2-7 would put an end to the question of spikes, voltage and current. Also 5V at 50 mils is available for the relay. Most feet switches or hand switches have all be 1/4 inch phone jacks, and although everyone hates the 1/8 inch jacks, the 1/4 is a little large to put on a self supporting mini circuit board. If a little board is proposed, it does make sense to make the other pins available on a header. Lemme know what you think. I think we can design the board ourselves, however Tony said he could whip it out. I surely would be less expensive then ruining the chip in the raid, and rival what users can do by jury rigging a 15 pin connector as I did for the foot switch. Eric -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2005 11:45 PM To: ecellison; FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] RFC - Poor Man's Universal Controller Board E^2, I'll give it a runthrough and see what should be on a "little" board to isolate the big bad world from the delicate innards of the ULN 2003. What I did for X2-7 was put a diode cross the relay coil in my Drake L-4 amp as that coil puts out over 400 V on the back voltage. The coil is driven by a 30 VDC supply and draws 50 MA when the transmit line is grounded. What else do people have in amps? Control line specs? I know there are already several widgit boxes on the market for the amp control interface. We need to have the rest of the input/outputs protected and incorporate the amp control in one plugin. 73, Larry K2LT drakerepair.com 800-687-9161 > > From: "ecellison" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: 2005/11/20 Sun AM 01:59:34 WET > To: > Subject: [Flexradio] RFC - Poor Man's Universal Controller Board > > Folks > > > > I think I blew the ULN 2003 open collector chip out of my radio during the > Belize DXpedition by trying to connect a relay in an amplifier directly into > the radio on x2-7 without any buffering. Perhaps a spike or surge. Dunno. > But it brings back to mind a project I suggested to Tony - KB9YIG who has > done a fantastic job designing and refining kits for the SDR-1000 and is > currently totally immersed in the SoftRock40 SDR. > > > > At one time I had suggested a "Poor Man's UCB" to connect dedicated and open > pins to the X2 15 pin connector. It was shelved and deemed not necessary > since users can plug just about anything into the X2 connector and > experiment. > > > > As a result of my experience, I'd like to 'throw' out an idea to create an > inexpensive PC Board to protect the X2-7 output to control Amps etc, with a > 5 v relay and provide jack for a cold switch to ground for X2-10 PTT input. > X2- pins 1 thru 6 could be brought out on a 6 or 10 pin Berg connector for > readily available ribbon cables to interface the control lines to some > external device, like a universal controller board or for experimentation by > users in a breadboard. Having a little external board connected to the X2 > connector perhaps with opto isolators would be a lot cheaper than replacing > the ULN - 2003! > > > > Anyone like to comment or tackle the design or parts for this board? Let's > kick it around a little! > > > > Eric - AA4SW > > > > > > > > >
[Flexradio] RFC - Poor Man's Universal Controller Board
Folks I think I blew the ULN 2003 open collector chip out of my radio during the Belize DXpedition by trying to connect a relay in an amplifier directly into the radio on x2-7 without any buffering. Perhaps a spike or surge. Dunno. But it brings back to mind a project I suggested to Tony – KB9YIG who has done a fantastic job designing and refining kits for the SDR-1000 and is currently totally immersed in the SoftRock40 SDR. At one time I had suggested a “Poor Man’s UCB” to connect dedicated and open pins to the X2 15 pin connector. It was shelved and deemed not necessary since users can plug just about anything into the X2 connector and experiment. As a result of my experience, I’d like to ‘throw’ out an idea to create an inexpensive PC Board to protect the X2-7 output to control Amps etc, with a 5 v relay and provide jack for a cold switch to ground for X2-10 PTT input. X2- pins 1 thru 6 could be brought out on a 6 or 10 pin Berg connector for readily available ribbon cables to interface the control lines to some external device, like a universal controller board or for experimentation by users in a breadboard. Having a little external board connected to the X2 connector perhaps with opto isolators would be a lot cheaper than replacing the ULN – 2003! Anyone like to comment or tackle the design or parts for this board? Let’s kick it around a little! Eric – AA4SW
Re: [Flexradio] Teamspeak Forum Audio - 11-19-05
Jeff Well, I know that Phil N8VB is working with an Altera and from his previous post has a Xylo board. Phil – VK6APH has also purchased a Xylo board as have I. My knowledge is minimal however, the board was inexpensive and it would appear that this kit and the sample and supporting C and HDL code would form the basis for a great ‘glue’ chip for many projects which we have collectively discussed for the SDR-1000 over the past year. Phil is designing an entire SDR based on FPGA. Early this year, we had 3 users interested in a PIC-4550 with USB, and we all bought boards, C-compilers, and protokits. but that project is stalled, for a number of reasons, none the least of which was a pretty buggy C compiler IDE from FED. Also streaming audio back through the USB port was a bit too slow in serial. A lack of good understanding of audio USB interface. Etc. I think the primary excitement last February was the prospect of eliminating the need for a sound card. We did some research and rejected almost all Codec chips at the time, and found the very inexpensive Wolfson 8785 ADC chip which has an I2S interface, for minimal parts and connections, 192, khz, 24 bit, stereo input, thd 102 SNR 111 http://www.wolfsonmicro.com/uploads/documents/WM8785.pdf They also have a nice DAC chip in the same type mold. At the same time and after, we have discussed a number of other projects which would be ideal to nail into an embedded system. High accuracy/stability time base using a 1 pps time source from GPS receiver. Integrated full function Keyer with sidetone. DDS replacement PLL or NCO. TCP/IP for remoting of the SDR-1000 Replacing the switch functions on the PIO board over USB rather than parallel port. External Main tuning knob(s) and other handy buttons for the folks who quiver and shake in “Knob Withdrawl! Complete replacement of the PIO board. I am sure I am forgetting things we discussed as potential for embedded system ‘assist’ for the SDR 1000, and haven’t thought of others. I think a project like this needs both folks (as many as we can get) who have experience with this embedded system, taking the lead, or suggesting resources methodology and code. Then others willing to support and test code etc. Thanks for speaking up! This is worthy of discussion. Eric – AA4SW From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Jeff Anderson Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2005 3:54 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Teamspeak Forum Audio - 11-19-05 Regarding Altera experience - I'm currently writing Verilog code for an Altera Cyclone II part (EP2C5) that, amongst other functions, interaces to some AKM stereo codecs. What's the planned Xylo project? - Jeff, WA6AHL -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of ecellison Sent: Friday, November 18, 2005 8:29 PM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] Teamspeak Forum Audio - 11-19-05 Folks (and Phil – N8VB) Sorry have been falling down on the job! I will post last two weeks forum audio after tonights audio. Came back from Belize thinking I was still on vacation (smile). Actually with broken radio and broken computer. The computer has all my tools for doing just about everything. Got a bit Crushed in it’s Aria enclosure, on its way back from Belize and now has an intermittent, sudden shutdown problem! In any case have fallen back to a laptop and installed the audio stuff I use for teamspeak. Tonights audio: Phil departing for South Australia (wherever that is! I thought he WAS in South Australia!!)…. Winked and blinked his green light, since he had to go. He has been working with the Xylo Altera FPGA board, and has gotten it interfaced with the Wolfson AD chip and configured. Next week he will be working on streaming stuff from the chip back through USB to the computer. Since he mentioned this project last week on the Teamspeak forum I have practically spent every spare minute reading about it. A perfect building block for the SDR, and many other things and CHEAP in this experimental implementation! He is asking that anyone with Altera – FPGA – HDL experience join up with (now us since I just ordered one)! Anyone with FPGA experience? This is it! If not just join in and learn. Bob K5KDN has completely reworked the CAT command interface class structure he originally wrote. He will be adding additional CAT commands to the SDR for the new features which have been added. Many other great conversations and some discussions about debug of the VAC. Will post previous weeks audio tomorrow. Teamspeak Audio: http://flex-radio-friends.net/AVI/tsforums/tsforum11-19-05.mp3 I hope the audio is OK since I massaged it 2 times and a new mp3 editor replaced the original. Eric AA4SW – V31SR
[Flexradio] Teamspeak Forum Audio - 11-19-05
Folks (and Phil – N8VB) Sorry have been falling down on the job! I will post last two weeks forum audio after tonights audio. Came back from Belize thinking I was still on vacation (smile). Actually with broken radio and broken computer. The computer has all my tools for doing just about everything. Got a bit Crushed in it’s Aria enclosure, on its way back from Belize and now has an intermittent, sudden shutdown problem! In any case have fallen back to a laptop and installed the audio stuff I use for teamspeak. Tonights audio: Phil departing for South Australia (wherever that is! I thought he WAS in South Australia!!)…. Winked and blinked his green light, since he had to go. He has been working with the Xylo Altera FPGA board, and has gotten it interfaced with the Wolfson AD chip and configured. Next week he will be working on streaming stuff from the chip back through USB to the computer. Since he mentioned this project last week on the Teamspeak forum I have practically spent every spare minute reading about it. A perfect building block for the SDR, and many other things and CHEAP in this experimental implementation! He is asking that anyone with Altera – FPGA – HDL experience join up with (now us since I just ordered one)! Anyone with FPGA experience? This is it! If not just join in and learn. Bob K5KDN has completely reworked the CAT command interface class structure he originally wrote. He will be adding additional CAT commands to the SDR for the new features which have been added. Many other great conversations and some discussions about debug of the VAC. Will post previous weeks audio tomorrow. Teamspeak Audio: http://flex-radio-friends.net/AVI/tsforums/tsforum11-19-05.mp3 I hope the audio is OK since I massaged it 2 times and a new mp3 editor replaced the original. Eric AA4SW – V31SR
Re: [Flexradio] PowerSDR Beta v1.4.5 Preview 7 is released.
Jose Hey! Even though I know this was directed at the other Eric (Eric1), I REALLY LIKE the term Flexers! It would be great if we could 'trademark' ourselves that way! I like Flexies, but that is the name of the award which Gerald awards to the three outstanding contributors to Hardware, Software, and General. Would be neat to refer to ourselves 'on the air as "Flexers!". Eric2 BTW: Come join us for some Turkey next week! -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of José Dumoulin Sent: Friday, November 18, 2005 5:51 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] PowerSDR Beta v1.4.5 Preview 7 is released. Happy thanksgiving to you Eric and to all US flexers. José F5JD Eric Wachsmann - FlexRadio a écrit : >Please visit the following link for detailed Release Notes: > >http://www.flex-radio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1900 > >Since this will likely be our last release before the holiday, we would >like to wish all of you a happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy > > >Eric Wachsmann >FlexRadio Systems > > >___ >FlexRadio mailing list >FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz >http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz > > > > ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] 1 kHz snap to
YEAH MAN! -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Duane - N9DG Sent: Sunday, November 13, 2005 9:15 AM To: richard allen; FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] 1 kHz snap to I've made this kind of enhancement request for the panadapter before. Taking this basic idea a few steps farther I would suggest that such a feature be user configurable for the following steps: 10, 9, 5, 1, .5, .1, .05, and, .010 kHz "snap to" increments. As you've noted a majority of the SSB QSO's do take place on the even kHz, and I'd estimate that 95% or more of the SSB QSO's you hear take place on either the .5 or 1 even kHz. Having this kind of tuning flexibility of the point and click method would be a big enhancement. Given the workload for the PowerSDR development effort I would focus the energy required for this enhancement on the new UI. You know the one that will support the Audiophile 192' full 80 kHz of sampling bandwidth (@+/- .5 dB flatness) so that the PowerSDR program can have a full 160 kHz of panadapter display (hint, hint ;)). Then along with that the ability to have 4 or 5 RX's within that same sampling passband. With those enhancements the SDR-1000 will become an even more capable DX hunter or a competition killer contest machine. Duane N9DG --- richard allen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > It would be nice to be able to instruct the cursor to only > stop at even 1 kHz positions > whilst moving around the panadaptor display. An amazingly > large number of ssb qso's > are one 1 kHz boundries so tuning with the cursor would be > a nice 'snap to' operation. > > Richard W5SXD __ Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click. http://farechase.yahoo.com ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] USB port deactivated when MOX is depressed
Ernie This is the same symptom we experienced in Belize. In our case it was probably related to high SWR and radiation in the shack. I think the error message was "USB not installed", or similar. USB is unchecked in setup after the error. Solutions were everything from a simple power down of the console re-checking the usb in setup - to - having to press the power button on the computer to end a lock up condition of the powersdr.exe, then re-installing the USB device. We did not figure it out. Can also be caused by bad ground loop. Eric2 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of ERNEST LEONE Sent: Sunday, November 13, 2005 12:08 AM To: FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] USB port deactivated when MOX is depressed I am using 1.4.5 beta preview 5, and when I depress the MOX, I get a USP port error. I checked several times and the USB adapter is checked in the setup menu, but after the error occurs the box is unchecked. Same problem with preview 4. I tried uninstalling, and then reinstalling 1.4.4, but now I get high a SWR message, even into a dummy load, the only difference here is that the USB port remains activated. I have been using the radio successfully for the last two weeks, and this problem just started today Could it be a hardware problem? Thanks, Ernie NY1N ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] Shiny new unstable branch
Phil Well, my 'hijacked' comment was not intended to be controversial. Hard to hijack anything which is right out there for the taking or modification, by anyone. (smile). My comment at the time, was the UI portion, however, I think you had re-written the underlying code in C#, if I'm not mistaken. Although CVS or SVN is an organized group effort without the necessity of having anyone 'in charge', so far, you as the originator of the 'shiny' concept and Bill as the only other 'first responder' are the only programmers to have commented. I think if you 'build it' they will come. Obviously you have written some or most of the underlying elemet(s) to get to the point where a GUI or some control panel, can be created. I have never given up on your original concept of a 'teaching' version in C# code and the hope that it could be done in an free IDE and other free tools. I know from Teamspeak that there are many others interested in the learning side of that equation. This would be a great venue for realizing that for many, including myself. My initial interest in the radio was to perhaps program some small part of it, learn, and get a sense of accomplishment. As I got more involved it just seemed natural to explore all areas of the concept. You certainly can 'jumpstart' this 'shiny new' option, with some plans, baselines, objectives modules, and code. I'm ready, anyone else 'on board'? Eric - AA4SW -Original Message----- From: Philip Covington [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2005 12:23 PM To: ecellison Cc: Bill Tracey; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Shiny new unstable branch Hi Eric, I don't think anyone needs to be "in charge" of the CVS or SVN version. Anyone who wants to be a developer would have developer access to the code. Once changes are made and debugged in the SVN or CVS version, Flex Eric can whether to incorporate those changes into the official version. It would make it much easier for everyone involved. The whole idea of the "shiny new code" branch would be for developers outside of Flex to add/test features with the intention of them eventually being incorporated into the official console - so the official console code would not be "hijacked" at all. 73 de Phil
Re: [Flexradio] SDR-1000 working good!
John SSB: Sunday 19:00 hrs 14.313 Mc.<-smile Eric2 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of W2AGN Sent: Friday, November 11, 2005 1:59 PM To: Flex Radio Subject: [Flexradio] SDR-1000 working good! Today I set up VCOM and VAC. I got Ham Radio Deluxe working FB with the SDR, and even worked TU5JM on PSK31 with it, at just 10 watts out! Also got N1MM Logger working with it. It has been much easier to set up than I thought. Now if I can just find where I put that mike, I might try SSB -- _ _ _ _ _ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ John L. Sielke ( W ) ( 2 ) ( A ) ( G ) ( N ) http://w2agn.net \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ "CRUSTY OLD CURMUDGEON - AND PROUD OF IT!" ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] Shiny new unstable branch
Phil Absolutely! It might actually expedite development. That's what beta-versus-stable is supposed to do anyway. But, if we come to a major parting of the ways, dependency-wise, and maybe functionally, something more extreme might be called for. Technically, we might be able to manage both branches within a single CVS tree, but that's for the team to decide. Larry WO0Z If it is truly a ‘shiny new branch’ Larry wrote a really good white paper in concept of the ‘radio’ on the forum. (couldn’t find it) Perhaps it would be best to revisit that thread for a great foundation. Larry has gotten permission from his employer (as I understand it) to write code for this project… Yet er --- Have not seen more than words from him on the reflector! (smile) Eric – AA4SW From: Philip Covington [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, November 11, 2005 11:31 AM To: ecellison Cc: Bill Tracey; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Shiny new unstable branch How about http://developer.berlios.de/? They host open source SVN projects. Anybody have any experience with them? Phil N8VB On 11/10/05, ecellison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Bill & Phil Moved and Seconded! Vote? Eric2 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Bill Tracey Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 7:36 PM To: Philip Covington Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Shiny new unstable branch Hear hear (or is that here here?) -- we need the "shiny new unstable I promise to wear a hard hat and safety glasses when running" branch. It seems the pace of improvements and feature additions over the past few months has fallen off - think some of this is due to the current focus on stabilizing 1.4.x.I know I've not done any major work on the code in the last few months in part because there's no route to the masses for it with the focus on stabilization. Maybe a library system (CVS, Subversion, what have you) to manage development of the 'shiny new unstable' branch to try and take some of the workload of Eric and Flex in managing two branches. Regards, Bill (kd5tfd) At 05:36 PM 11/10/2005, Phil (N8VB) wrote: >How about we have at least two branches then - "shiny new unstable code" >and "scared hand-wringing old woman code"... LOL... > >Phil N8VB ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz -- Philip A Covington http://www.philcovington.com
Re: [Flexradio] OK, I was doing well until....
John and all I am sorry for this oversight in that original document. I think the document was corrected but dunno. The Ins 3-4 both have path and can be jumpered. Look at the schematic and diagram carefully. Ins 4 must be jumpered. Sorry Eric - AA4SW -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of w2agn Sent: Friday, November 11, 2005 4:23 PM To: FlexRadio Reflector Subject: [Flexradio] OK, I was doing well until I tried SSB. Had no problems getting VCOM and VAC to work, and made a nice couple QSOs on PSK31. But now, I can't figure this out. Talk about dumb questions! I am using the AA4SW Interface card. It says in its instructions that the MIC IN on the card is not used. OK, so where do I plug the cable from back of the SDR "To Mike In"? I know I missed something simple. John W2AGN ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] Shiny new unstable branch
Phil I have not done any of the ‘check-out’ code management systems but may try. However, I thought I’d comment a bit more on the implications of the proposal. Which at this point I am in favor of. About 5 months ago I thought you were the first to, as I call it, “Hijack” the console. And a brilliant production it was! At the same time I visited, and polled, every corner of the arena since I am an “SDR-1000 busybody” Since that time, the Linux source has been in CVS and Gerald made the PowerSDR more readily available, to any author. At the same time code contributions from various coders continued to be incorporated into the “Hand Wringing” console, and incorporated by Bob or by Eric. This method and focus, including the focus on Microsoft Windows XP, up to this point probably has kept the SDR-1000 hardware viable and growing in sales rather than leveling of and possibly dieing. What we as users, and purchasers of the hardware have in our best interest is not to have too many splinters of development efforts. Linux (I fear) will always suffer this way because of the myriad of distros etc. The CVS version does NOT lack for brilliant programmers, yet I have not seen a version that is complete enough to test. I do like the concept of the ‘shiny new’ open (Windows), version, especially if you take the lead on that version which you brilliantly did originally. It would be really nice if it was done totally in SharpDevelop if all the core parts of DSP have been done. Keeping the tools in the ‘free’ area will allow some of us pikers to afford some development effort. Obviously from what we have seen of your really impressive efforts in the past you will be responsible for the core, which I think you have already done, I have not seen any#one else who appears to be capable of doing it except you. I think any one of us owners would be glad to participate. Also I can’t see that the hardware or Flex interests would be compromised since it is open source and they can easily incorporate in the “hand wringing”, console. Keeping this a two pronged effort will allow everything to survive, if it ‘radiates’ to a pitchfork of prongs it will divide the group too much. I have always thoroughly enjoyed and marveled at your productions, you are perhaps the most gifted amongst the truly gifted programmers in the effort, AND a fantastic contributor to helping us get the stuff you have produced working. (I wouldn’t mind playing around with your ActiveX GE 9030 series stuff either Wink!) I’m ready to be a beta tester of both branches. “Call the ball” and “Let’s GO!” Eric – AA4SW From: Philip Covington [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, November 11, 2005 11:31 AM To: ecellison Cc: Bill Tracey; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Shiny new unstable branch How about http://developer.berlios.de/? They host open source SVN projects. Anybody have any experience with them? Phil N8VB On 11/10/05, ecellison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Bill & Phil Moved and Seconded! Vote? Eric2 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Bill Tracey Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 7:36 PM To: Philip Covington Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Shiny new unstable branch Hear hear (or is that here here?) -- we need the "shiny new unstable I promise to wear a hard hat and safety glasses when running" branch. It seems the pace of improvements and feature additions over the past few months has fallen off - think some of this is due to the current focus on stabilizing 1.4.x.I know I've not done any major work on the code in the last few months in part because there's no route to the masses for it with the focus on stabilization. Maybe a library system (CVS, Subversion, what have you) to manage development of the 'shiny new unstable' branch to try and take some of the workload of Eric and Flex in managing two branches. Regards, Bill (kd5tfd) At 05:36 PM 11/10/2005, Phil (N8VB) wrote: >How about we have at least two branches then - "shiny new unstable code" >and "scared hand-wringing old woman code"... LOL... > >Phil N8VB ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz -- Philip A Covington http://www.philcovington.com
Re: [Flexradio] Scanner groups and modes addition
Ignacio Let's form a subgroup and get on it! Let Eric1 give us some starting parameters and calls to the external MDB and work with the free office product. We can handle the 'memory' functions of the radio in a free open as in gpl database and leverage the value of the hardware. Make it a very well defined separation from the radio backend (coming). Gerald has often mentioned a 'team effort' and it has worked wonderfully with some of the hardware and software contributions. Let the Flex-radio-Friends group handle the "Memory and Scan" functions with a 'hook' into the radio! Watsa? Eric - AA4SW -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ignacio Cembreros Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 7:44 PM To: 'FlexRadio' Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Scanner groups and modes addition Hi Eric, I strongly agree!! 73 de Ignacio, EB4APL --- ecellison escribió: >Mike and Ignacio (anyone else) > >I have not followed this thread, in its' entirety. I have a number of times >commented about MSAccess database as used in the PowerSDR over the last 1.5 >years. (Backups etc). I consider myself a fairly proficient Access >programmer. (Ego?) In the future when the radio and console are separated, >it would be fun to write the whole console in Access! (smile) I have been >tempted to try it, but there are so many fun things to do with this radio! >Like going to Belize! I'm pretty good at the 'tune up' also. 15 minutes >before the contest started: With a XG-2 and 100 watt dummy load and WWV I >swapped 2 radios and tuned them to the existing database! > >I hope that the 'database' as Flex is using it is translated into XML or >some other form for storing the variables in the radio. or . it is >externally addressed in a multi-user environment so users and the radio can >change Constants (dangerous). > >Barring that I think that Flex has only given a 'lick and a prayer' to the >memory functions of the radio. That whole section of memory, scan, etc on >the front of the console is (IMHO) pretty much a POC. It is my opinion that >the Memory section of the radio should be externally addressed in MDB >format. A simple 'internal' interface could be developed with an option to >address an external MDB. Working closely with Flex, the Access programmers >amongst us could develop a wonderful tightly integrated database to allow >virtually any frequency change, scan database, capable of importing other >frequency data! (this inspired by some of the wonderful features of N1MM >Logger) > >Eric - AA4SW > > > > > ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] Shiny new unstable branch
Bill & Phil Moved and Seconded! Vote? Eric2 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bill Tracey Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 7:36 PM To: Philip Covington Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Shiny new unstable branch Hear hear (or is that here here?) -- we need the "shiny new unstable I promise to wear a hard hat and safety glasses when running" branch. It seems the pace of improvements and feature additions over the past few months has fallen off - think some of this is due to the current focus on stabilizing 1.4.x.I know I've not done any major work on the code in the last few months in part because there's no route to the masses for it with the focus on stabilization. Maybe a library system (CVS, Subversion, what have you) to manage development of the 'shiny new unstable' branch to try and take some of the workload of Eric and Flex in managing two branches. Regards, Bill (kd5tfd) At 05:36 PM 11/10/2005, Phil (N8VB) wrote: >How about we have at least two branches then - "shiny new unstable code" >and "scared hand-wringing old woman code"... LOL... > >Phil N8VB ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] Some ideas
Guys - guess we keep missing each others messages. Of course! That is the point of the behind the scenes separation of console and 'guts' which Flex is working on. Future efforts, say with the N1MM programmers, or for that matter the Shuttle pro are activated directly by the third party programmers. The 'Guts' of the radio are directly started by 3 rd party. Simple... err??? Eric1? Eric2 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jiri Sanda Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 6:54 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] Some ideas This would be it ! 73 ! Jiri OK1RI >> Interesting would be if the two USB GADGETS Griffin+PowerMate would be >> living not through the keyboard driver i.e. WINDOWS need to have that >> window active but somehow ?!? directly ? Than one can controll SDR through >> those gadgets and have LOGGING win active all the time. Is it realistic >> >> > > Probably. It's all software, in the end. Running out of the tray may > make this a bit easier to do, perhaps. The devices, after all, could > still be owned by the PowerSDR software. > > > > Larry WO0Z V31LL > ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
