[Flexradio] 2016 with the Flex 6700 (so far)

[n4hy]

I've realized that I've been speaking regularly but only to the alpha test 
group.
First,  N4HY is alive and well and speaks to, works with,  advises,  looks for 
opportunities for Flex Radio. I'm actively demonstrating the latest efforts all 
over the place. On occasion there are missteps that have cost us valuable 
opportunities and I had my first one recently. But overall the opportunity to 
show off Flex and brag about all that has been accomplished since 2003 has gone 
super well.
My first foray back into the world with Flex was at Friedrichshafen last summer 
and this quiet but there continued until Dayton when I came out full throated 
and with Flex and even though I'm a director of AMSAT I mostly associated with 
Flex at Dayton. I attended Contest University.
Going around with a radio with your signature affixed to the bottom of the 
radio as a person involved in the architecture of the radio, a contributor to 
the software and firmware through actually writing code in the first few days 
of the life of the 6000 series or to contribute regularly to the design of the 
firmware and software. I've played a much quieter and smaller role in the grunt 
work department but a continuing role in advice and I've never ever stopped 
promoting Flex. But that is getting a lot easier now. As I've left my former 
life, moved to Virginia Tech, and continued my association with Flex, and with 
6000 series maturing rapidly, my efforts at cheerleading and marketing of the 
radios have begun to gain real traction.
On the Flex 6000 series,  I took it to a talk at the Frankford Radio Club, my 
old contest club. Since I'm known as the technical geek contester who likes to 
help the stars contest with better technical things, I continued that role 
after a ingrid hiatus to all contesters and not just to my old friend W2GD.
I emphasized the technical accomplishments of Flex and listened to concerns and 
answered them at the FRC meeting and that has set the tone of future speeches.
I'm now a member of PVRC,  and I'm about to start contesting again personally. 
I'm going to not jump in at the deep end, but I'll contest alone as I rebuild 
my skills except for contesting with close personal friends W5ZN and W2GD.
I went to Dayton with Flex. I interacted nonstop with my old contesting friends 
at Contest University and answered a thousand questions but I dare not brag 
about the radio contesting and DXing at events where K9CT, 4O3A, W0GJ, N2TU 
were already doing this. I answered technical questions by contesters who know 
me and assured many that I was alive and well after a long time away from 
contesting and that I was returning to contesting life. I spoke to many about 
beginning to join DXpeditions as a technical operator while my operating skills 
with modern techniques and software improve.  At Contest stations, I'm a 
problem solver that contests and I'm going to concentrate on improving my 
contesting skills mostly alone.
Now to recent efforts to promote Flex 6000:
I intended to take the Flex 6700 to my friend's tiny station where a couple of 
unknowns come to a gathering every summer: the friend's tiny station W3LPL was 
recently hit by a tornado which has damaged his "tiny station" and made it 
tinier.  It definitely took out one of his tiny towers, the 200 foot tower with 
his ten meter antennas and more and it most assuredly will have done damage 
that is not yet known.  I'm thinking of volunteering my limited time to help 
Frank recover.   The oopsy moment for me this summer was I was going to the 
large PVRC gathering at Frank's  and demonstrate the Flex 6700 and allow 
contesters from everywhere to play on it hooked to Frank's "tiny antennas" 
right before they became tinier by weather. This was NOT successful. I'm an 
alpha tester and rapid changes are happening with Maestro and Flex 6700 and I 
wanted the latest. I updated the software and poof, it bricked the radio. Flex 
overnighted a replacement SDHC but I will not do last minute upgrades to alpha 
software before a major event again unless the current alpha has a major fault 
that would already preclude success.
My latest event was Field Day at N4NRV. I live in the New River Valley in 
Virginia.  This is a lightweight, fun only Field Day where they don't even try 
for publicity and they conduct a hobo operation for the locals. One person 
brought satellite antennas and didn't even hook them up.  I normally make half 
or more of all the QSO'S by doing all nighter, don't get out of my chair 
operation but not this year.
This year I went with the motivation to do "Maestro bar with a single bar 
stool" after seeing the success of Maestro bar at Dayton. It worked. While all 
the old guys were awake my wife and family napped,  flew quad copter,  etc. 
Then after most went to bed, I operated for two hours and ma

Re: [Flexradio] NR Settings

[n4hy]

I usually find a combination of AGC-T and NR produces best results. 

Bob



Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE Smartphone

 Original message 
From: Terry Maurice  
Date: 04/21/2013  10:34 AM  (GMT-05:00) 
To: Bob McGwier  
Cc: W8BYA ,"" 
 
Subject: Re: [Flexradio] NR Settings 
 
Hi Bob

I tried the settings you suggested but the sound was very distorted.  Is there 
some other setting that I should be using in conjunction with your suggested 
settings?

Terry


On 21/04/2013 09:32, Bob McGwier wrote:
Try these

Taps 64
Delay, the largest you can set it to
Start gain 10
Start leakage 1


Sent from my iPad

On Apr 20, 2013, at 10:43 AM, "W8BYA"  wrote:

I was playing around with the NR function on my 5000A (V2.5.3) for the first 
time trying different settings of Taps, Gain, Delay, & Leak.  I was not having 
much luck blindly running numbers up and down.  I was wondering if anyone had a 
source of information that they could point to that talked about what those 
various parameters were and how they might affect the overall NR function etc?  
Or possibly if someone has found a set of numbers that worked well for them in 
certain noisy instances that would be interesting to discussTU es 73

Gedas, W8BYA
Gallery at http://gedas.cc
Light travels faster than sound...
This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
___
FlexRadio Systems Mailing List
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/
Knowledge Base: http://kc.flexradio.com/  Homepage: http://www.flexradio.com/
___
FlexRadio Systems Mailing List
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/
Knowledge Base: http://kc.flexradio.com/  Homepage: http://www.flexradio.com/


-- 
VE3XTM EN93un 

"May the propagation be with you."
___
FlexRadio Systems Mailing List
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/
Knowledge Base: http://kc.flexradio.com/  Homepage: http://www.flexradio.com/

Re: [Flexradio] Strange Software behavior

[Bob McGwier N4HY]

Jerry:

I have been a developer on this project since the earliest days of the 
public sales of the SDR-1000.   I cannot tell you how many times I was 
ready to pull both remaining hairs off the top of my head just to wind 
up finding a cable unplugged or a power supply turned off.

Gad you got it going.

73's
Bob
N4HY

Gerald Capodieci wrote:

>I'm a brand new Flexer. I returned from a hard off-road weekend to find  my 
>SDR behaving so strangely that I was glad I saved the shipping box. I clicked 
>the standby button and heard lots of noise but no signal on any band. I then 
>clicked the standby button and the MON and MOX buttons were both automatically 
>depressed and the standby button flashed red then yellow rapidly. I even 
>thought I heard the relays. Then HIGH SWR flashed in my amber colored monitor 
>area. My SWR meter showed no power being applied. The antenna was connected 
>and all cables had continuity. I thought that I had made too many changes to 
>the settings so I completely uninstalled the software and deleted the 
>Flex-radio system folders. After a standard install and rebooting, the same 
>strange behavior continued. I feared that the transmitter had failed. I then 
>began to turn my SDR off by reaching under my table where it silently sits on 
>a small shelf, and it was already off. I copied my database back in and
> everything works great now. 
>  (no more hard off road weekends for a while) 
>  Jerry - KD6ET
>
>  
>


-- 
Robert W. McGwier, Ph.D.
Center for Communications Research
805 Bunn Drive
Princeton, NJ 08540
(609)-924-4600
(This sig required by my employer)



___
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] 70 cm Transverter

[Bob McGwier N4HY]

Let me add that it is pretty hard to beat these things as a receive 
system in combination with the SDR-1000.  Steve uses high livel mixers 
with good IP3's.  I like the 0 dB gain models and then I put what NF and 
gain I want in front of it depending on my application.  After you add 
enough gain to make a fractional dB noise figure front end (say EME 
style),  you still have a positive system input IP3.  This is important 
in areas where you have strong signals such as all over the northeast or 
the signal of the ham neighbor down the street you have to talk to.

Bob



Bob McGwier N4HY wrote:

>On the other hand I use the QRP output for my 222 MHz,  70cm,  902/3 MHz 
>transverters from DEMI and they work perfectly.
>
>Bob
>
>
>
>
>  
>


-- 
Robert W. McGwier, Ph.D.
Center for Communications Research
805 Bunn Drive
Princeton, NJ 08540
(609)-924-4600
(This sig required by my employer)


___
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

Re: [Flexradio] Serial ports

[Bob McGwier N4HY]

Simon:

By the time I figured out the 30-th or was it 40-th value to put into a 
struct member to use this routine,  I decided to stick with what we 
have.  I know you have a wicked sense of humor but I missed the humor 
here altogether  :-P .  We can modify what we have on the try/catch 
approach to parse the error to tell if it is nonexistent or in use and 
the somehow color or grey or whatever the ones that are in use.

Bob




Simon Brown (HB9DRV) wrote:

>There is no magic way to determine the list of COM ports configured on your 
>system. Registry information is optional; the *only* sure way to determine 
>the available COM ports without disrupting any running software is to use 
>GetDefaultCommConfig() for COM1 to COM255. If GetDefaultCommConfig() returns 
>non-zero then the COM port exists. GetDefaultCommConfig() is very fast.
>
>I very strongly recommend that all COM ports are listed, even if they are 
>currently held open by another program, otherwise you'll have some very 
>confused users who will get frustrated because they can't see a COM port 
>listed which they know they have on their computer.
>
>If a COM port is held open by another program you'll get the 'Access Denied' 
>error when opening the port - tell the user that the port is opened by 
>another program, for example a PDA, GSM or whatever. This is preferable to 
>not listing the COM port.
>
>I haven't yet found a simple way of determining which program has a COM port 
>open - I know it can be done though.
>
>Simon Brown
>---
>http://blog.hb9drv.ch/
>
>"There are two major products that came out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We 
>don't believe this to be a coincidence."
>- Jeremy S. Anderson
>
>- Original Message - 
>From: "Jim Lux" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>  
>
>>there is also a Windows API call (exposed as a VB method) that returns
>>available ports. There's an example in one of the serial port example
>>programs on MSDN.
>>
>>
>>
>
>___
>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
>
>  
>


-- 
Robert W. McGwier, Ph.D.
Center for Communications Research
805 Bunn Drive
Princeton, NJ 08540
(609)-924-4600
(This sig required by my employer)


___
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

Re: [Flexradio] 70 cm Transverter

[Bob McGwier N4HY]

On the other hand I use the QRP output for my 222 MHz,  70cm,  902/3 MHz 
transverters from DEMI and they work perfectly.

Bob




[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

>Hi Larry,
>
>Here are your answers:
>
>Question 1:  Down East Microwave
>
>Question 2:  No
>
>73,
>Dan  KB5MY
>
>
>  
>
>>Hello all:
>>
>>I have a question about the 2M transverter offered by Flex for the
>>SDR-1000: Who makes it, and is there a physically compatible (i.e. same
>>size, connectors, etc.) 70 cm model that would fit into the SDR-1000?
>>
>>Thanks,
>>--
>>Larry Gadallah, VE6VQ/W7
>>lgadallah AT gmail DOT com
>>-- next part --
>>An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
>>URL:
>>/pipermail/flexradio_flex-radio.biz/attachments/20060530/56b8c67d/attachment.html
>> ___
>>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
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>___
>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
>
>  
>


-- 
Robert W. McGwier, Ph.D.
Center for Communications Research
805 Bunn Drive
Princeton, NJ 08540
(609)-924-4600
(This sig required by my employer)


___
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

Re: [Flexradio] Six Meters

[Bob McGwier N4HY]

The MDS is six meters is no better than it is on the lower bands (~128 
dBm on 20 meters) and is probably a little bit worse.Six meter rigs 
with any serious intent need to have an MDS about 20 dB better than 
this.   This system is clearly intended to be used with external stuff, 
both an amplifier and a preamp.  On the other hand,  after I put the 
preamp in front of this rig,  it is the only I have used with a positive 
IP3!

Bob


Dale Richardson wrote:

>Scott,
>I take back my last comments. I just tried your experiment and got the 
>same results. Listening to beacons there is a significant difference 
>between my FT-920 and the SDR. The FT-920 registers an S4-S5 while the 
>SDR is around -120dbm and barely audible in the noise. Same antenna 
>(6M7JHV at 66 ft). The SDR is almost deaf. One signal that was extremely 
>strong (S9 +10) was barely an S7 on the SDR. I tried several versions of 
>the SDR with same results. I had to run the AGC Max Gain gain up to 100 
>and then the signals are still weak.
>73,
>Dale AA5XE
>
>
>Scott Gordon wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Question I was just tuning around on 6 meters since I see there is a
>>opening.  I have a coax switch where I can switch between my SDR and
>>Yaesu 857D.  I am hearing signals much better on my Yaesu then on the
>>SDR?  I mean maybe S6 on the yaesu and just barely hearing in the noise
>>on the SDR.
>>
>>Do I have something set up incorrectly?  Even though it is 1 watt on
>>transmit I would think the receiver would match the Yaesu?
>>
>>Scott Gordon
>>KQ8RP
>>
>>
>>  
>>
>>


-- 
Robert W. McGwier, Ph.D.
Center for Communications Research
805 Bunn Drive
Princeton, NJ 08540
(609)-924-4600
(This sig required by my employer)


___
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

Re: [Flexradio] Image rejection?

[Bob McGwier N4HY]

David:

We have an impulse generator we have been moving at a glacial space 
towards utilizing.  This impulse generator will back out the entire 
chain, front end through A/D's with a few simple measurements since we 
can directly measure the impulse response.

It will come but not until after Dayton and some AMSAT stuff I am very 
late in delivering.

Bob



Eric Wachsmann - FlexRadio wrote:

>David,
>
>Image rejection of 80dB+ is possible for a single point.  As you noted,
>the rejection will be best at that single point and will roll off away
>from that point.  I don't have any data for average image rejection at a
>given frequency away from the calibration point.  60dB sounds about
>right off the top of my head.
>
>
>Eric Wachsmann
>FlexRadio Systems
>
>  
>


-- 
Robert W. McGwier, Ph.D.
Center for Communications Research
805 Bunn Drive
Princeton, NJ 08540
(609)-924-4600
(This sig required by my employer)


___
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

[Flexradio] Tortoise SVN and Putty don't always make beautiful music together

[Bob McGwier N4HY]

If you are one of those poor souls who gets "Invalid Putty Port"  when 
attempting to use TortoiseSVN (which has made my productivity level from 
my office just about zero) the fix is beyond simple.  I finally whined 
in enough places that the correct answer was retrieved (in my opinion A 
BUG that needs fixing).


You may review the whining that got me the answer:

http://www.svnforum.org/2017/viewtopic.php?p=3619#3619


or

Right click,  TortoiseSVN, setting, network and REMOVE the entire 
contents of the line that sets putty as the ssh.  When you do this,  
TortoisePlink will run instead of using the putty interface and all will 
be well.  We have become very paranoid here as only SSH gets in and out 
and only if all of the permissions are set on the remote end to protect 
the keys, etc.



Sigh of relief,
Bob

--
Robert W. McGwier, Ph.D.
Center for Communications Research
805 Bunn Drive
Princeton, NJ 08540
(609)-924-4600
(This sig required by my employer)

Re: [Flexradio] ASIO 2.7b3

[Bob McGwier N4HY]

FYI.  Eugene Muzychenko is the author of VAC.

Bob



Sergey Kuzmin wrote:


Hello

New beta 3
http://www.asio4all.com/
 a.. Add intersection checking. Thanks to Eugene Muzychenko once again for 
having me have another look into this and figuring out how it _might_ work. 
As a matter of fact, it seems to completely work now, but I'm still puzzled 
why it works the way it works and not the way it _should_ have worked to 
begin with - probably one of the mysteries within the Microsoft(r) 
Universe(tm). What this means to you as the user ist that this just _might_ 
magically resolve a number of issues with sound cards that employ "jack 
sharing" and stuff like that. In fact, it just _might_ resolve some more 
issues with other devices as well.


 b.. Fix: ReWuschel now also works with ASIO buffer sizes that are not a 
multiple of 64 samples. This sometimes was mis-perceived as having to up the 
buffer size if using ReWuschel when normally you should not have to. Also, 
the manual has been updated with some information on using ReWuschel.


 c.. Add dynamic buffer stragegy switching. This is experimental and mainly 
meant to just _maybe_ prevent one or the other occasional crackle from 
occuring. Even if you don't notice a difference, trust me: in _theory_, it 
absolutely makes sense!


73!

Serge, RV3APM


 



--
Robert W. McGwier, Ph.D.
Center for Communications Research
805 Bunn Drive
Princeton, NJ 08540
(609)-924-4600
(This sig required by my employer)

[Flexradio] SVN repository organization

[Bob McGwier N4HY]

Upon release of 1.6.0  on the web site, we contemporaneously reorganized 
the SVN structure.  It was basically a "blow up and start over" 
operation and was undertaken using Tortoise/SVN sledge hammers.  After 
consulting with Eric and receiving advice from others we made the 
changes, and then made further changes upon learning we had move things 
around using the wrong "svn tool".  To you the user,  it would almost 
appear that nothing happened on the last step, but never mind, the first 
step was probably a bit traumatic and the last one was a blip in 
comparison.  I did it incorrectly on the first step and fixed it in step 
two.


Let me explan what we have done and how I understand we will be using 
the SVN repository.  This is subject to change at the behest of Flex 
Radio now that I have set this up in cooperation with Eric and Dale and 
is managed by Flex Radio and its employees (I am not one).


A "typical" svn repository has a trunk, tags, and branches and though 
there are no hard rules,  we believe our use of the svn repository is 
now "standard".   I will explain by example.


The moment of release on the web site of the next release (say 1.6.1), 
the frozen copy of the code/docs/executables involved in 1.6.1 will be 
"thin copied"  from the trunk to a tag in the repository.  The tag will 
be 1.6.1 and will preserve the state of 1.6.1 in perpetuity.  All 
ongoing work will be done in trunk and branches.  Releases will be in 
tags.  If you are a developer with write access to the repository and 
you attempt to modify code in a tag at the repository, tortoise svn will 
send out a shout to you in a error/dialog box on the screen telling you 
this is nonstandard and will ruin the structure but go ahead if you insist.


Let us suppose that the Bill/Phil effort towards a sound card free 
widget comes into the project.  They will get there own branch.  Suppose 
Jeff wants to do a console and maintain it.  He can get his own branch.  
When and if everyone agrees on the merger,   they will be merged into 
the trunk and it will be revert to what is clearly an "alpha" status.


In every svn project I participate in,  everything in the trunk after 
release (and thus preserved in a tag) is the ALPHA version of the next 
release.  It becomes as it stabilizes, BUT REMAINS IN THE TRUNK,  I 
guess you could call beta.  When the developers are satisfied that the 
bugs out and that it is stable,  a release is built and the process 
repeats.  The Alpha, Beta bit is clearly muddied by the use of svn.  
This is standard operating procedure,  However, in many projects (alsa,  
jack,  python,  wxwidgets,  wxpython, fftw, and MANY more), a tar ball 
is made of the "prerelease" code and put up for normal browser or ftp 
download.   Everyone is requested to beat it up for a short period 
before the "final" comes out and the final release date is published 
when the release candidate is proposed.


Should anyone have an alternative point of view on this about our 
interpretation of standard usage of svn, please send a note to Eric.  He 
is the official Flex maintainer.


Bob


Robert W. McGwier, Ph.D.
Center for Communications Research
805 Bunn Drive
Princeton, NJ 08540
(609)-924-4600
(This sig is required by my employer)

Re: [Flexradio] Question About VOX and Other Stuff

[Bob McGwier N4HY]

It can be implemented in hardware and it should be along with the proper 
keyer and sidetone where they both belong.  We should be taking the CW 
sidetone and doing demod/remod.


Thank you for being gentle with out ineptitude.

Bob
N4HY





Mark Ericksen wrote:


Hello everyone, I am a soon to be SDR-1000 user (it's on order).  I have been 
following the threads on this forum with great interest and have even been 
reading a C# book when time permits (and I'm going to need a lot of time).

There has been some discussion lately about latency when using VOX.  My 
question is why does VOX have to be implemented totally in software?  Wouldn't 
it be feasible to implement a hardware/software solution?  Couldn't a small 
circuit board be attached to the back of the microphone connector that could be 
managed by the parallel port and would that solve the any question of latency?

Just asking  ... be gentle ... I'm new.

Mark Ericksen
AD4MA






___
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

 

Re: [Flexradio] [SDRLUG] Expanding the Scope a Little

[n4hy]

If Portaudio turns out to be the universal panacea it appears to be on 
the way to becoming,  we should certainly make every attempt to include 
them.  Both the java and Qt code will run on the Mac.  I know from my 
WSJT development experience the *BSD's will run the c, p-threads,  
python stuff without a lot of hacking.


Bob



Frank Brickle wrote:


All,

Just wondering. Is it a good idea to expand the group to take in BSD and 
Mac OSX potential users?


73
Frank
AB2KT


___
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

 

Re: [Flexradio] Satellite Work

[n4hy]

Jeff:

The SDR-1000 is not capable of operating in full duplex mode because of 
the single IF path.  I use two for these purposes.  I hope the SDR-2000 
(if it comes) will have separate IF's! 


Bob
N4HY

Jeffrey Robert Kaufman wrote:


Hello all:

   I am a Ham in San Diego and getting back in to the hobby after about 20
years.  



   I am really interested in Satellite work both digital and voice.  As
such, I am looking to buy a radio.

   I have been disappointed with the sat radios on the market such as the
Kenwood and the Icom sat radios.  The Kenwood appears to have a lot of
features and a lot of bang for the buck but I am concerned about the
quality, filtering, etc.

   I am looking for a radio that forms a solid platform for building upon
for sat and HF work.   I have been looking at the SDR radio for that
purpose.

   Has anyone used this radio for satellite work by coupling it to various
transverters, etc?  How does it work?

   Could the radio be modified, via software, to perform full duplex for
voice satellite work.  (i.e. Xmit on 2m on the uplink and simultaneously
receive on 70cm on the downlink).

   Any guidance from the experts on this reflector would be greatly
appreciated!

Thank you all!

Jeff
KA9UAG



___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz

 

Re: [Flexradio] BSD occurred while changing frequencies using BSR w/ 1.4.5p7

[n4hy]

Let me add my thanks to both Phil and Tim.  So far as I am able to 
tell,  VAC 3.11 is completely and totally solid.  I have not had a Blue 
Screen of Microsoft Hades since I installed it.  In addition,  it seems 
to be handling "other things going on" on the computer in a much better 
manner.  It is much more robust is the best way to put it.


Thanks to you both,
Bob
N4HY



Tim Ellison wrote:


The error codes and mini dumps have been forwarded to Eugene (author of
VAC).  I'll keep everyone informed of the progress of getting this
resolved.

A big thanks to Phil for analyzing the mini dump and pointing me in the
right direction.

-Tim
---
Tim Ellison ( [EMAIL PROTECTED] )
Integrated Technical Services ( http://www.itsco.com )


-Original Message-
From: Philip Covington [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2005 9:30 AM

To: Tim Ellison
Cc: flexRadio@flex-radio.biz
Subject: Re: [Flexradio] BSD occurred while changing frequencies using
BSR w/ 1.4.5p7

Tim,

The BSOD was caused by vackmd.sys which is the VAC driver.  It tried
to perform an operation at a restricted IRQ level (looks like in the
IRQ Cancel routine).  This is a bug in the VAC driver and it should be
reported to the author.  He should then request the dump file to
analyze the exact cause.  Since the version of vackmd.sys on your
system is not a debug build with symbols, I cannot tell you the exact
cause within the VAC driver code.  Only the author can do this since
he has the source code.

73 de Phil N8VB

 

Re: [Flexradio] Useful FPGA development board

[n4hy]

Phil:

Thanks to you, Phil H,  Eric, and Bill for your comments.  I have a good 
picture of what you need and want now.  Thanks to all for taking the 
time to answer my questions.


Bob



Philip Covington wrote:


One design mistake with the USRP, IMO, is having the 64 MSPS A/D and
125 MSPS D/As (AD9862s) on the same board as the FPGA and I/O
sections.  This locks you into the 12 bit A/Ds and 14 bit D/As chosen
when that was the best available.  Now Analog Devices has a 16 bit 100
MSPS part (AD9446) available, for example.  The board will not upgrade
to new A/D and D/A devices without redesign.  I prefer to separate the
USB/FPGA I/O (going a little overkill on the FPGA size) and the data
acquisition devices into separate modules so the latter can be
upgraded as new parts are available.  This may not be an optimal
solution, but I think it is reasonable.

This does not answer the question in regards to the Xylo board vs
USRP... but the USRP is not the optimal solution for everything
either.

73 de Phil N8VB


On 11/27/05, Robert McGwier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
 


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

   




--
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

 

[Flexradio] VAC READ NOW!!!!!!

[n4hy]

Virtual Audio Cable is not a free package.  You can expect the free 
download version to work for about 30 minutes and then it is useless.


You will experience drop outs,  female voices,  noise or other 
interruptions.  The author is forcing you to buy it.


Please do NOT post queries here that consume lots of debug time if you 
have NOT purchased the full version.  This is my fault in this case.  It 
should have been my very first question in doing the diagnosis.


Bob

Re: [Flexradio] Feature request - white noise generator for receiveEQ

[n4hy]

It is what it wants to be.  You want equal power per Hz.  When you 
adjust our equalizer filters on TX,  you will see the entire response 
floor of the filter rise and fall in the power spectral display.Bill 
is correct that since each filter is wider than the last, the total 
energy that goes through the later filter is larger but we do not 
provide an "energy in that filter" measurement.  We give you a visual 
aid so you can tune the filter up and down for transmit.  When you "see" 
the noise floor from that filter at the right place,  you will have it 
adjusted correctly.  There is no visual aid for receive yet because are 
not yet doing the power spectrum calculation on the audio.


I am working on the polyphase FFT now for  us, GnuRadio, etc.  When that 
is done  I will show you a few pixel wide line for a good CW tone in 
the1000 Hz display and then the audio display will make sense.


Bob


Eric Wachsmann - FlexRadio wrote:


The internal generator does white noise.  This could probably be
modified to easily add pink noise though.


Eric Wachsmann
FlexRadio Systems

 


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
radio.biz] On Behalf Of Bill Guyger
Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 3:16 PM
To: flexRadio@flex-radio.biz; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Feature request - white noise generator for
receiveEQ

OK I've actually slept simce my rock and roll days, but IF I remember
correctly, white noise has equal energy per hertz which means that it
   


has
 


a rising frequency responce plot as frequency rises. Sound systems are
more properly equalized with "pink" noise which is white noise
   


filtered to
 


yield equal energy per octive or a flat frequency response.

If you set up EQ with white noise you will have a "hotter" high end
   


than
 


you might want. Does the internal generator create pink or white
   


noise?
 


Bill AD5OL

   


"Tim Ellison" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 11/15/05 11:47AM >>>
 


I was setting the receive EQ this morning and had an idea that I
   


wanted
 


to share with the Flex-Radio virtual neighborhood.

Back many moons ago when I was much younger, I played in a rock band
(for all the reasons you would join a rock band) and one of my jobs
   


was
 


to help the sound man set the final EQ specific to the speakers we
   


were
 


using and the geometry of the venue we were playing.  We did this with
   


a
 


white noise generator and an audio spectrum analyzer.

My thought was we have most of those components already in the
   


PowerSDR
 


application.  If you added a white noise generator you could direct
   


the
 


output to your speakers and while using your microphone to measure the
output, you manually (or with an automatic software routine) adjust
   


the
 


receive EQ until you flat line the response.  This would allow you to
compensate for room acoustics and non-linear speaker response.

Wadda ya think?

-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


___
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] Feature request - white noise generator for receive EQ

[n4hy]

To be fair,  it is NOT documented in the manual.  That was added since 
1.4.4 and manuals are not updated more often than full releases.


Bob



n4hy wrote:


GREAT IDEA.

Go to the Setup tab,  TEST, and turn on the white noise generator

;-)

Bob




 



___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz

 

Re: [Flexradio] Feature request - white noise generator for receive EQ

[n4hy]

GREAT IDEA.

Go to the Setup tab,  TEST, and turn on the white noise generator

;-)

Bob



Tim Ellison wrote:


I was setting the receive EQ this morning and had an idea that I wanted
to share with the Flex-Radio virtual neighborhood.

Back many moons ago when I was much younger, I played in a rock band
(for all the reasons you would join a rock band) and one of my jobs was
to help the sound man set the final EQ specific to the speakers we were
using and the geometry of the venue we were playing.  We did this with a
white noise generator and an audio spectrum analyzer.

My thought was we have most of those components already in the PowerSDR
application.  If you added a white noise generator you could direct the
output to your speakers and while using your microphone to measure the
output, you manually (or with an automatic software routine) adjust the
receive EQ until you flat line the response.  This would allow you to
compensate for room acoustics and non-linear speaker response.

Wadda ya think? 


-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

 

Re: [Flexradio] Fixed AGC setting results in no audio

[n4hy]

Tim:

There is audio output, you just can't hear it!

Go to Setup->DSP->AGC/ALC

Turn the fixed agc gain up until you hear the noise.  CAREFUL, you can 
lose an ear drum or a speaker.


Bob



Tim Ellison wrote:


With PowerSDR 1.5.5 p5 if I change the AGC to the FIXD (fixed) setting
there is no audio output.  All other AGC settings work fine.

-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

 

Re: [Flexradio] Number of SDR-1000's

[n4hy]

Hundreds.  It was over 500 before Dayton.

Bob



Larry W8ER wrote:

Does anybody know approximately how many SDR-1000's are out? There are 
a lot of Yaewoodcoms, but the surprise is that the SDR's are popping 
up. The other surprise is that as soon as you say that you are running 
one, the interest level goes up like a skyrocket and you end up 
answering questions for the rest of the QSO about the SDR. Just curious.
 
--Larry W8ER




___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
 

Re: [Flexradio] BSD with VSYS.com

[n4hy]

Phil:

Thanks.  ALL of my machines at home where SDR is practiced are SMP 
(Athlon MP) or 1.5 SMP (hyperthread).I apologize for not being able 
to take the time to allow the dump to finish.  What I will do is this.  
I will start PowerSDR, HRD, and MixW tonight and allow it to crash and dump.


I could not allow it to finish because I noticed it as I was heading out 
the door and I needed to send some code from that machine to work.  
BTW,  the C# Serial code from you is heaven sent.


Bob



Philip Covington wrote:


Hi Bob,

Was this running on your SMP machine?  The vCOM driver needs more
testing on SMP and Hyperthreaded machines (Windows treats the
Hyperthreaded machine as having two CPUs).  I suspect it _does_ have
something to do with having left HRD and MixW running without PowerSDR
running.  There may be a problem with accessing the FIFOs when they
are full on multiprocessor machines.  Any which way it needs to be
fixed.  If it happens again please email me the crash dump file and I
will see what caused it.

73 de Phil N8VB

On 9/21/05, Robert McGwier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
 


This morning I was greeted with a Blue Screen of Death (don't you just
love Windows?)  and it was blaming VSYS.com.  It was busily dumping a
huge file and I didn't have time to wait.  I reset,  started in safe
mode,  removed the multiport driver,  ran chkdsk /f and all now seems
well.  I reloaded vsys.com with fewer virtual ports (3 rather than 6).
Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon.  I am not necessarily
blaming the driver, thought Windows did.  I left HRD and MixW talking to
the virtual ends without PowerSDR running.I don't know if something
about that causes bad behavior.  I am very much dependent on the N8VB
vsys.com and I want to help diagnose the issue, if there is one.

Bob


___
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] Windows ME

[n4hy]

Heh!

I wouldn't run Win ME on anything except in the protection of something 
like VMWare.  It is just so nasty as to be beyond belief it ever got out 
the door.


Bob



Philip Covington wrote:


Hi Bill,

I tried installing and running PowerSDR in ME in VMWare.  PowerSDR
stops at the splash screen "Initializing DSP".  I would guess that the
differences in threading between NT and Win9X is the problem.   I am
not sure if the pthread code is compatible with Win9x...  Looking at
the PowerSDR process it appears that the code is blocked on thread
start up.

Thank goodness for VMWare...

73 de Phil N8VB

 

Re: [Flexradio] Addressing some questions, documentation needs

[n4hy]

REALLY easy.Grab the source code and add it. We will use it.  Eric 
will have to maintain that functionality, coordinate with him.


[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Bob



Terry Gerdes wrote:


Bob and all,

I am a newbie to SDR but have been developing software for many 
years.  I have been working with C# since it was in alpha bits and 
have consulted to several companies helping convert them over to the 
.Net architecture.   I have looked at the SDR-1000 software is in 
pretty decent shape considering its a 1.4 release.


The top level definition that you put together is a great starting 
point and most experienced developers just need a way to get down to a 
particular section of the code and don't have to be as concerned about 
the big picture. A lot of the sections can be treated as black boxes 
with defined inputs and outputs where we generally do not care about 
what's going on inside the box. There was a great discussion about 
this on team-speak last Friday night.


One area that I could certainly help is the integration into the 
DX-Spotting network.   I'm the author of AR-Cluster and have also 
contributed to the N1MM Logger development.   Is anyone working on 
functionality to integrate the SDR into the DX clusters?   What is the 
process for signing up to help with needed functionality?


Thanks,

73 Terry - AB5K

www.ab5k.net

[Flexradio] Addressing some questions, documentation needs

[n4hy]

Let me address some code questions heard in various places.  This is to 
save some people time and set others aright while they are struggling.  
It is somewhat surprising to me that these things need to be stated but 
my surprise is the reason they have not heretofore been stated, except 
at Dayton in the SDR evening forum, and even there in limited form.



Ignore the following:  PortTalk, PortAudio, FFTW, Pthread except insofar 
as how we use them.  You do not need to know their guts and I know I 
certainly DO NOT.


<> do not know what fn_1, fn_2, ... are.  I can't believe someone 
cares, thus my surprise. Here is what you should care about.  Those 
things in FFTW allow us to compute fft's and inverse fft's.  The API is 
straightforward, and this can be seen in DttSP in several places.  To 
use fftw,  you create a plan of action, and suprisingly enough, they 
call it a plan :-) .  Its purpose is very similar (identical) to Frank's 
tx, rx, uni, etc. structs (classes) in DttSP, defined in sdrexport.h and 
constructed in setup_tx and setup_rx and main or winmain.  It allows you 
to pass a HUGE set of configuration data around by passing a single 
pointer.  If my life depended on it,  outside of two or three things, I 
could not tell you what is in that plan struct.  I could make a good 
guess.  The point is, forget about.  fn_1 is a mold spore, on the tree, 
that is in the forest, and you need to look at the forest.  Outside of 
that,   FFTW IS MAGIC.  Use it and be grateful we have it.  It was done 
by people more talented in the extreme at computing than I am.


PortTalk is the necessary magic to talk to the ports on our PC's 
directly under the heavily protected devices under Win NT and follow 
on's (2000, XP).   It opens the virtual copies of those ports to us in 
user space.  This allows many threads to talk to and write those ports 
and not step all over each other to some extent.  If you have two 
different threads writing contradictory settings to external hardware 
being controlled by this port,  it will happily do that.   For us,   we 
are reading and writing a couple of bits to do things that are not 
necessarily the (say) DDS settings and this stuff helps magically 
arbitrate all of that at the kernel level and appear virtually in user 
space.  Think of it as write-through cache, if nothing changes,  then 
nothing is actually written to the port until such time as something 
does change.


PortAudio is a bit of magic that allows us to have one single interface 
to all the sound hosts (except the one we really want: wdm-ks) on 
Windows.  It appears that SOMEDAY, you will be able to use PortAudio on 
a Mac,  Linux machine, Windows, etc.  I do not see it easily displacing 
jack on Linux but time will tell.


pthread is a bit of wonderful coding that brings a standard 
multithreading library into being under Windows(Win32).  It is another 
in an amazing collection of fantastic work by cygnus and has been 
co-opted by RedHat and continued.  It is a FANTASTIC piece of work.  It 
is what allows us to schedule the various dsp signal processing, 
control, error reporting, etc. threads.


Outside of this,  all you need to know is what the api calls are and how 
do they work.   I suggest you do exactly what we did.  We went online, 
we googled, we found the FFTW, Pthreads-win32, PortAudio, and PortTalk 
online documentation and while it was in our browser,  we hacked the 
lines that call the libraries.   I could not even begin to tell you what 
was inside all of those hundreds of little functions in FFTW, Pthreads, 
etc.  I know the hand full of lines of code that interface the 
libraries.   That is all I need to know since it works.  I am too busy 
to care about the guts so long as it works.  One day, when something 
stops working or does not work as expected,  I will care.


DttSP uses and makes calls to pthread, and fftw

Console application uses, and makes calls to PortTalk, PortAudio, and DttSP.

If you expect more documentation on these individual libraries that 
Console and DttSP make use of,  it will not be forthcoming from the very 
busy people I know are doing code.  But how we use them in Console and 
DttSP is a valid question.  That we can and would love to document.   WE 
MAY do so, most likely we will not.  What would be most helpful would be 
someone who can write technical documentation to volunteer to work with 
us while we do the coding and produce the widgets.  Some level of 
documentation by us is required for us to work together but that can be 
very terse indeed and usually consists of "Go to this URL and click on 
this",  followed by "follow your nose".  Eric sends me


"see:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/USUALLY_UNREADABLE_JUNK.htm "

almost every day.

May I suggest that doing this documentation would be an ideal way to 
learn what is happening.  This is not laziness.  Anyone that has seen me 
work 18 hours a day, read an hour, and then go to sleep will not be 
calling me lazy.  Th

Re: [Flexradio] In a sentimental mood

[n4hy]

No need to disagree gently.  You should hear it when we disagree in not 
a gentle manner.  It can be heard for two counties.


Something has been misunderstood.  Frank has been the leading proponent 
of the rapid movement to modularity and has been everyone's adviser on 
matters related to the GPL.  Frank has spent 35+ years doing computer 
generated music, having studied synthesis since he was an undergraduate 
at Princeton.  I think you misintepreted something he said.


Bob
N4HY


[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


Unless I've missed the point, I have to gently disagree with Frank on the
modularity issue in that I think it has very real practical benefit.

You've only got to check out the music software scene to see how fruitful
and mutually beneficial Steinberg's VST modular 'plug-in' technology has
been. Fair enough, the quality varies enormously, but the rich variety of
work out there would never have happened otherwise. This utility has
extended far beyond the original authors' ideas, I'm sure. The end result
is that musicians now have an enormous number of instruments and effects
freely available for use. The dross gets discarded and the good stuff
perpetuates.

The VST interface is very well defined and there is an SDK which provides
an empty 'plug-in ' project and plenty of examples to provide guidance for
budding programmers.

I'm not saying that VST is directly applicable - but why not this concept
on a modest scale with SDR? We haven't really begun to see the diverse
applications people will put this kind of radio to, given the right
interfaces are present.

Does it  all boil down as to whether this degree of open architecture is a
commercial benefit or not? From the experimenter's point of view it would
certainly seem to be a good thing in order to widen the application of the
radio.

What do you think?

Cheers, Bob G4BBY



___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz

 

Re: [Flexradio] In a sentimental mood

[n4hy]

Mon Ami!

Merci Beaucoup.

Mai chaque jour semblent comme un bol de cerises!

(May every day seem like a bowl of cherries).

Bob
N4HY



José Dumoulin wrote:


Hi Friends

This is one of my favoured songs. I have been reading the last posts 
from some of you, guys (Ahti, Bob, Eric1, Eric2, Frank, Gerald, Jim, 
Sami - /alphabetical order/) :'(
I was afraid of seeing this epistolary correspondence degenerate into 
a brawl. The positive side is that I learned a few new words.
Remember this sentence that you could read in the saloons : *Don't 
shoot the pianist down*. :-) 
Then, as a sort of calmness after the storm, Phil, N8VB, came and 
informed us of his progress with SharDSP and other stuff.


Many thanks to Phil, Sami, Jim, Gerald, Frank, Eric2, Eric1, Bob, Ahti.

73 - José




___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
 

Re: [Flexradio] A plea to SDR software developers

[n4hy]

MODULARITY FIRST.   1.5 will be modular from the outset before it sees 
the light of day.  We are completely agreed on that.  Frank and I and 
others who develop cannot be the only developers forever.  It is not 
healthy for Flex or this group.  The monolithic nature of the current 
PowerSDR and the impossibility of easily documenting what it is, what it 
does, is directly attributable to the nearly haphazard way it was 
constructed.Frank hollered at us for months while we just plodded 
along.  We are all on the same page now.


Bob



Ahti Aintila wrote:

Very well said, Bob! The full modularity is also my main interest. That is 
worth waiting, but may I suggest that after implementing and debugging the 
all promised goodies in version 1.5 FlexRadio would freeze it for a while 
and concentrate in rewriting everything in fully modular way.


Many thanks and 73,
Ahti OH2RZ


 

Re: [Flexradio] Step size adjustment?

[n4hy]

Middle button/wheel PUSH (not  rotate) changes the stepping rate when 
you are outside of the VFO.


Bob


Dale Boresz wrote:


Larry,

You can momentarily reduce the step size of the mouse wheel by an 
order of magnitude by holding down the 'Shift' key on the keyboard 
while tuning with the mouse wheel.


In case you're not aware of it, you can change the tuning step size 
(for both keyboard and mouse) by using the CTRL key and either the 
RIGHT or LEFT arrow keys. CTRL + RIGHT decreases the step size by a 
factor of 10, and CTRL + LEFT increases the step size by a factor of 
10. The current step size is viewable in a small area just below the 
"VFO A" label to the left of the main frequency display.


Regardless of the current step size, the SHIFT key will always reduce 
it by a factor of 10 (unless you're already at a step size of 1 Hz of 
course).


73, Dale WA8SRA

Larry W8ER wrote:

When using the mouse wheel to tune the SDR1000, is there a way to 
adjust the step size? It seems that it's fixed at 1 khz. Especially 
in the case of SSB, it is sometimes nice to move in smaller steps.
 
Thanks,

--Larry W8ER





___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
 

Re: [Flexradio] Display error?

[n4hy]

This is correct.  Our algorithm for the display is dumb except it should 
have a capital D.  If you look closely enough,  especially on AM signals 
such as SW broadcast or WWV,  you can sometimes see multiple peaks 
around the largest peak.  These can be interpreted to give a very 
accurate frequency offset, much more accurate than now.This is in 
the category of  "We knew it should be done and one of these days . . . 
".  As it stands,  you are limited to about 10 Hz accuracy in the freq. 
calibration based on the display.  This can and will be corrected.


Bob




Jerald Jones wrote:

This is not really a freq change, it is a display change and a change 
in the right hand lower display, numerical freq indicator.  The VFO 
does not change or the signal audio.   Tune in WWV with the WWV mode 
and then watch the carrier curve shift in the display and the 
numerical readout at the right bottom of the display change as you 
change from 100 to 50 Hz filter bandwidth.


WK0J Jerry

- Original Message ----- From: "n4hy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Jerald Jones" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, August 12, 2005 1:46 PM
Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Display error?


There is no mechanism that I am aware of that would cause a frequency 
change when you change filters.


Bob
N4HY



Jerald Jones wrote:

This may tie into the error which I see when changing filters.  The 
freq changes by 6 cycles when I change from 50 Hz to 100 H filter 
width.

 WK0JJerry

Re: [Flexradio] Thank you audiophiles

[n4hy]

The transmitter is flat until you apply the TXEQ.  We made a mistake.  
It will all be moved to the audio chain as a tap point in the audio 
input to the dsp.  This will make it extremely versatile.  You can drop 
in the supplied routines if you like or you will be able to use external 
programs through a virtual sound interface.  That is not ready and it 
will be a process to get there.  So it makes sense for us to delay this 
until the 1.5 development branch starts and this is incorporated.


Bob



Larry W8ER wrote:

Hi Bob N4HY. 
 
>The thing the

> audiophiles hate most about the sound is the flat response of that
> filter and the inability to shape it adequately.   We need to be able to
> provide arbitrary filter shapes on the transmit audio before it becomes
> "RF" in the transmitter filtering.
 
A transmitter SHOULD be flat! If you wish to do your own audio thing, 
fine, do it external to the Flex transmitter and allow the transmitter 
to repeat it faithfully. I agree with Dave W9AD that the Flex radio 
transmitter should not be "shaping" any part of the audio.
 
In case you are a doubting soul, listen to what can be done with a 
flat FLEX transmitter as it is:
 
http://w8er.com/audio/w9ad.mp3
 
Sounds pretty darn good to me!
 
--Larry W8ER
 

[Flexradio] AGC

[n4hy]

I want to thank Phil for his fantastic analysis.   The dual detector was 
what my mind was missing.  It is the right question and the right 
solution.His block diagram is perfect.  I have asked him for his VB 
code and will look to implement this.


Bob

Re: [Flexradio] Linux, pyhw(2) broken

[n4hy]

YOOO DA MAN!


Frank Brickle wrote:


Robert W McGwier wrote:


... The floating point rb's are really quite a bit
better for our application and I see no reason not to use them in 
jsdr...



They've been incorporated and running in all the apps (jsdr, keyers, 
pyjacket) for a couple of days now, and will be showing up in CVS as 
soon as the last Windows mods and the Linux sources are reconciled.


Frank

[Flexradio] AUDIO (was a few bugs found)

[n4hy]

Let me expand on this after first agreeing with everything expressed here.

Phil, N8VB, is working on the ideal solution for us.  With (say) two of 
his proposed virtual sound cards we can do the following:


1)  audio processing such as microphone audio processing will be doable 
by ANY program you want.  You can take your favorite
   cheap free program or your favorite professional program and tweak 
audio to your hearts content.  That will be the audio that
   goes through the audio chain in a pristine fashion.  We will build,  
to be called by the console,  some rudimentary graphic
  equalizer functions,  etc.  NOTHING we are doing now in the code can 
be said to be anything but a stopgap while we get

  the professional sound program "tap in" done.

2) audio processing on the output can be sent anywhere to any other 
program.   with another virtual tap,  we can hook up all sound
  card programs up to the radio.  MixW, MMTTY, MMSSTV,  Winwarbler,  
Writelog, etc.  can all hook here.


not using N8VB necessarily but we could:

3) we are building in a tap for "RF" processing in the frequency 
domain.   We will have a tap before and after the filter has been

  applied.  What can be done there is going to amaze you.

The ring buffer stalls are fixed (high volume noise, screeches, pops, 
and grinds).


the CPDR has been modified to produce up to 105% max on peaks.

On the Linux side,  these facilities being provide by Phil are native to 
jack.


The TX audio chain is now in a very primitive state with basically a 
clipper and it is otherwise
linear unless you engage the COMP or CPDR.  We are working to provide 
the perfect adaptation facility.


Bob






Frank Brickle wrote:

The move to 1.4 and beyond carried along with it some significant 
changes that didn't receive a lot of attention at the time. In 
particular, the decision was made to move all voice and speech 
processing (except compression and compansion) out of the DSP core 
altogether.


What this means is that processing like EQ or split-band compression 
will be on the "console" side.


A number of factors played in this decision. One of them is that there 
is already a smorgasbord of facilities for this kind of outboard 
processing in Linux, and it seemed undesirable to reinvent the wheel.


Another consideration is that the audio chain is likely to be a 
favorite area for experimentation. Since audio processing is 
relatively independent of other aspects of the DSP, it seemed most 
reasonable to put the audio out where people could play with it and 
program for it most easily. Thus the decision to put it out where much 
of the experimentation and independent development has been taking 
place already.


Nevertheless: as far as the existing EQ is concerned, there is no 
technical limitation preventing the kind of shaping that Alan is 
asking for. The facility exists to apply spectral shaping through an 
abitrary curve expressed as finely as the DSP blocksize will allow. As 
with many features of the radio -- in fact, as with most reasonably 
interesting technology -- the current limitations are practical 
consequences of making a comprehensible user interface. Going beyond 
those limitations is really an adventure in interface design.


73
Frank
AB2KT

[Flexradio] Keyer, ACPI 1.0

[n4hy]

The keyer is back into 1.4.1.  Major improvements in several areas 
accomplished. ACPI 1.0 works as well.
We can strobe Gerald's 2.0 Ghz Celeron  for keystrokes at  500 per 
second and it generates good CW to
30 wpm.  We are working other big issues but we made a big time break 
through today.   These other big
issues are all related to stability of the console to users doing other 
things with their computer (some they

probably don't even know they are doing).



Bob

Re: [Flexradio] Mic setting

[n4hy]

On the TX meter,  use Microphone Modulation meter (Mic).  You are 
attempting to hover around 100%
on voice peaks.  If you hit 120%,  you are overdriving and it is being 
clipped.  The clipped signal is heavily
filtered but there is still distortion.  There will be an improved 
clipper tested soon.


Bob


k5nu wrote:

I have the 1.4.0 version running and need the proper procedure for 
setting mic gain and comp level.  Without the ALC metering, what 
should be the method for these settings?  Any assist will be appreciated.


73, Mike K5NU


___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz

Re: [Flexradio] Status of vSOUND and vCOM drivers

[n4hy]

I have said it elsewhere (Team Speak and talks), I just don't think many 
know what a great thing this is.  I would not wish this work on my worst 
computer enemy. Windows device driver development is something akin to 
seeing Charon rowing sad folks across the River Styx into Hades (the 
Windows kernel) and your being alive while not having either a coin or 
the golden bough to get you out of Hades.


Thank you Phil, we are deeply in your debt.

Bob



Philip Covington wrote:


Hi Eric,

No, that is how I lost my mind and started doing Windows device drivers :-)

73 de Phil N8VB

 

Re: [Flexradio] Weak Signal 6 Meters

[n4hy]

Dave:

N2CEI, Steve Costro, owner of Down East Microwave is using the SDR-1000 
on 6 meters. His comment was  something to the effect that before these 
noise blankers,  he was never interested in 6 meters at home.  He blamed 
me for costing him the time to build a 1500w amplifier! The features 
that all VHF - Microwave types like are the panadapter and the noise 
blankers. Steve commented to me that the noise reduction and notch 
filtering are both great plusses to his 6 meter work as well.  The 
panadapter appears to make it really easy to find weak signals that are 
off frequency because the power spectrum in the 20 Khz (soon will be 
wider) panadapter is so sensitive.  I do not know what he is using for 
the intermediate amplifier but I am certain it is homebrew.


Bob
N4HY



Dave & Nancy Ridge wrote:

Are there any weak signal 6 meter folks that have experience with the 
SDR? Do you need or use a receiver pre-amp? Also, is there any 6 meter 
RF amps that will take the 1/2 watt 6 meter output of the SDR to 
50-100 watts? Thanks, Dave, W9DR




___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
 

Re: [Flexradio] Motorboat Part II

[n4hy]

YEAH.  What he said.  Sorry.  We look at this issue so rarely, I forgot 
about the

change.



Eric wrote:


Just for clarification, we used portIO.sys in the VB version.  The C#
PowerSDR software uses an a program called PortTalk.  However, this does
not change the issue.  ;)

Eric


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jim Lux
Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2005 10:32 AM
To: n4hy; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Biz
Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Motorboat Part II

At 08:14 AM 7/7/2005, n4hy wrote:


 


-snip-

   

We have to access the port via portIO.sys to even get access to 
 


these virtual ports under Windows NT,2000,XP
   




 

Re: [Flexradio] Motorboat Part II

[n4hy]

Jim Lux wrote:

 snip -

On the input side (the status lines on the parallel port), they're not 
latched on the PC side (in that there's no external strobe), so it's 
up to the software to debounce them.  The pathway from external 
device, through it's cable, to SDR, across its board, through the 
74HC14 Schmitt with an input filter, through the parallel cable, to 
the PC parallel port is hardly a great way to handle fast edges.  In any

James Lux, P.E.



-snip-

Would that this were true.  In its infinite wisdom,  Windows does not 
provide direct access to these ports.  It provides access to them  
through a virtual copy.  We are almost completely reliant on the Windows 
debounce if there is any. If Windows sees multiple events, it sets 
changes.  We have to access the port via portIO.sys to even get access 
to these virtual ports under Windows NT,2000,XP
We read the parallel port at a certain rate, I think this rate is 
adequate for all properly installed and operating parallel ports and 
given the rate of traffic on this parallel port,  a debounce algorithm 
might be a bit expensive but we can certainly look into it.  In the new 
keyer we did.   There is a debounce buffer set up and it does work but 
that is operating at a much slower rate than the parallel port status 
lines are working.




Spacecraft Radio Frequency Subsystems Group
Flight Communications Systems Section
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Mail Stop 161-213
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena CA 91109
tel: (818)354-2075
fax: (818)393-6875


___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz



Bob

Re: [Flexradio] Virtual Sound Cards

[n4hy]

Phil:

I suspect that for our purposes the second approach is definitely 
better. Let me say
that I believe for commercial purposes,  there is a significant market 
for approach

#1. Since that would allow two arbitrary sound card programs to communicate.
That said,  what would prevent John Q Software genius from writing a middle
man  and gluing two together at the ioctl interface.  It will be more 
overhead but
we could have a complete patchpanel, jack facility with that.I am 
certain that
with a file like interface and ioctl control, we will be a load 
happier.  Inside that
ioctl interface, we can resample, all sorts of stuff.  I will gladly 
give you the
polyphase resampler so you can set the radio to one setting and the 
"card" can be

set to the user program request.

WHATEVER you do,  we will use it.

Bob



Philip Covington wrote:


Hi all,

In the notes for June 30, 2005 on my webpage I discuss two possible
approaches to writing the virtual sound card driver for use with
PowerSDR.  Please take a look when you can if you are interested. 
Comments, suggestions, other approaches are welcome...


http://www.philcovington.com/SDR.html

73 de Phil N8VB

___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz

 

Re: [Flexradio] Keyer Operation with 100 watt PA

[n4hy]

Well,  I got that wrong.

It is in and does the right thing and will stay in.

It reads the DSP for peak voltage setting since it cannot read the
amplifier peaks directly.

Bob


n4hy wrote:


Hi Bob:

I don't think you mean 4 watts on a peak reading meter.  You mean 
forward right?
With the amplifier, I don't think the peak meter in the PowerSDR 
functions. If so,
it is not reading the actual amplifier.  It is basically meaningless 
for the 100w amp.
We should probably read the DSP peak and clearly point out that this 
is an
estimate of the peak.  We are putting out the right voltage to make 
the peak be

100w but we are definitely NOT sensing it directly from the amp.

We are working on the compressors, etc.  Expect that to all get better 
while we

insist on controlling the bandwidth and linear operation of the ampifier.

Thanks for your comments.

Bob

Re: [Flexradio] Keyer Operation with 100 watt PA

[n4hy]

Hi Bob:

I don't think you mean 4 watts on a peak reading meter.  You mean 
forward right?
With the amplifier, I don't think the peak meter in the PowerSDR 
functions. If so,
it is not reading the actual amplifier.  It is basically meaningless for 
the 100w amp.

We should probably read the DSP peak and clearly point out that this is an
estimate of the peak.  We are putting out the right voltage to make the 
peak be

100w but we are definitely NOT sensing it directly from the amp.

We are working on the compressors, etc.  Expect that to all get better 
while we

insist on controlling the bandwidth and linear operation of the ampifier.

Thanks for your comments.

Bob



Bob Fish K6GGO wrote:


Hi Guys,
I am trying to test my keyer with 1.3.12 and I can't seem to get 
repeatable test results. What I mean by that is at first I could not 
get the keyer to work at all, then I read a post by Bob that said that 
the DMA buffers ( in my case I guess that means the asio4all buffers) 
have to be < or = to the audio buffers. I made that adjustment and the 
keyer started working, but I had fuzzy receive audio (motorboating) so 
I adjusted buffer sizes again, receive audio improved but the keyer 
stopped working. I attempted to find a happy middle ground where both 
would work and I was never able to get the keyer to work again 
regardless of where i set any of the buffers. Then yesterday, I read a 
post from Bob where he suspected that the keyer and the PA may have a 
conflict (fighting over the parallel port). So I thought, this would 
explain what I was seeing. So I turned the PA off and voila the keyer 
worked again. Then, to verify, I turned the PA back on and the keyer 
stopped working. I thought "now we are getting somewhere". Just to 
make sure, I turned off the PA again but this time the keyer did not 
come alive. So it seems as though when the keyer goes into a failed 
state, it doesn't recover. Not right away anyway. Please forgive my 
oversimplification.
Also with regard to the power meter issues that some were discussing, 
my peak reading power meter has not worked properly since the last 
official release. I have Power SDR 1.2.0 on my desktop as well as 
1.3.12 so it is easy to close one and open the other for testing . 
When I run 1.2.0 with the PA set for 90 watts I get the expected peaks 
of about 75 or 80 watss on sideband. But on all of the beta releases 
since it would read very little if any power on peaks (4Watts or 
something).
Another thing I noticed is with the "new keyer"  deselected on the dsp 
tab the dit paddle still keys the xmtr, no dits just keys the xmtr 
like hitting the mox button. Oddly enough, the dah paddle does nothing 
in this mode. I hope this all makes sense. If it seems random and 
confusing and leaves you shaking your head, welcome to my world!


I hope this is helpfull,

Bob K6GGO

SDR-1000 w/100watt PA  No antenna tuner
AMD 2.2 GHZ processor  512 MB RAM
Turtle Beach sound card   asio4all  2.6
ASIO4ALL buffers  512 Samples
Audio 1024
DSP  1024

P.S.I am off work today if you want me to perform a more 
scientific rather than anecdotal test I would be happy to help.







___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz

Re: FW: [Flexradio] v1.3.12 Audible clicking with NR and ANF on

[n4hy]

Joe sent me a wave file of his clicking and I analyzed it.  I answered 
Joe on AIM but his AIM connection through the ISP is a little flakey (I 
regularly send him AIM text and it closes the window saying he has 
disconnected only to be told he has reconnected three seconds later).  I 
should have answered him via email.  My apologies.


I used to have exactly this problem.  It is identical to what was 
happening here at work and it drove me crazy for weeks.  In the file Joe 
sent me the "repetition rate" for the ticks is MUCH too slow to have 
anything to do with AGC.  The Max AGC setting in 1.3.12 is COMPLETELY 
nonfunctional. This is fixed in 1.3.13.  What was being changed with the 
MaxAGC was a wrong variable in the digitalagc and it was being set very 
low.  This resulted in low audio output.  MEA CULPA.


I finally noticed one day that my ticks were gone.  They simply weren't 
there. I looked at the console and asked myself what was different.  The 
display was OFF.


I turned on the display to spectrum and the ticks started immediately.  
I changed the display rate and the ticks changed with display rate.


I worked for two weeks to find the problem cord and connection and got 
rid of it (coming from Nvidia to LCD) with an EMI bulletproof cable.


I do not believe that anything in Joe's test file he sent me has a thing 
to do with the DSP.  I cannot find a "time constant" or "rep-rate" in 
anything we are doing that corresponds.  But I leave the best evidence 
for last SINCE IT IS INCONTROVERTIBLE PROOF that is has nothing to do 
with the DSP.


Joe sent me an IQ file.  This IQ file has the tick in it.  I have 
analyzed this my snd editor.  The ticks are present in the IQ file.


THIS IS RAW DATA.  IT HAS NEVER GONE THROUGH THE DSP, THE TICKS ARE 
COMING FROM THE RADIO and are most likely EMI of some type.


If you can capture an IQ file with ticks in it,  look elsewhere than the 
dsp.  You can have a sound card /portaudio problem. That would introduce 
ticks.  I do not believe this is happening in Joe's  case because he has 
the Delta 44 and has demonsrated he knows how to set the controls.


Good luck!

Bob





-Original Message-
*From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of *Willi Reppel
*Sent:* Thursday, June 30, 2005 2:47 AM
*To:* Joe - AB1DO; FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
*Subject:* Re: [Flexradio] v1.3.12 Audible clicking with NR and ANF on

Joe,
 
This type of audible clicks have been described many times in many

ways in the forum and I noticed as well that they disappear with
fixed AGC. Audible clicks related to AGC can be made more
pronounced and audible by listening to a strong AM broadcasting
station and reducing the filter width to 25-50 Hz. With such a
setting only the clicks remain while the AF content of the signal
is suppressed. I guess some type of peak detector is used for
AGC generation and the clicks are produced when a threshold is passed.
I got used to the clicks while waiting for the radio to get better
and better. However, observing and reporting as you did is a
condition for continuous improvements.
73 de Willi-SM6OMH

- Original Message -
*From:* Joe - AB1DO 
*To:* FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz 
*Sent:* Wednesday, June 29, 2005 8:54 PM
*Subject:* [Flexradio] v1.3.12 Audible clicking with NR and ANF on

Hi all,
 
I have noticed that the clicking that I have been hearing in

SSB up until 1.3.5 was not gone in later releases, as I
thought, but not usually audible.
 
After much testing I have the found that to hear the clicking

the following holds:
 
1.NR and ANF must be both on for maximum effect. However, some

clicking can be heard with either on.
 
2. Given a certain signal level, reducing the AGC Max

Gain below a certain level on the Setup DSP tab will result in
clicking . Usually 75 or lower will do it. Lower values yield
more frequent clicking. In fact, with only a dummy load
connected, I can reduce AGC Max Gain far enough to hear
clicking. Setting Max Gain to 100 will eliminate clicking (I
need to be careful here, as I'm not quite sure I once heard
some listening to a very strong [-60 dBm or so] station.)
However, in my system 100 is impractical, as AF settings
between 1 and 5  are then only usable.
 
3. After reducing AGC Max Gain , AF Level on the console can

be increased to compensate if sound volume becomes too low.
This has no effect on the frequency of clicks, however.
 
4. With clicking audible, increasing the preamp setting will

increase the frequency of clicks. In fact, if no clicks are
audible, an increased preamp setti

Re: [Flexradio] Still have CW transmit problems

[n4hy]

It is not the amp that is at fault probably.

It is probably the new keyer vying for the resource, that is only used in
the amp: the swr bridge and power meter.  Therefore it makes sense
to attempt Ken's test.  That will be helpful to us.

We are going to do tests tomorrow to quantify the issue.

Ken's return statement sounds really bad and probably worse than he
intended it to.  Ken bought his radio used.  I probably should say
USED with a capital U.  He sent it back once for an upgrade as well
and got an early look at some modifications we were trying out for
his last return.

Bob





James C Samuels wrote:


Hi Ken,

I hope that I mentioned it earlier in this thread, but the rig works FB
keying from the CW tab (with the internal keyer off now) - memory, key
down, type ahead. Also Tune works OK. It appears to only be related to
keying with the external paddles. If it were an amp issue, wouldn't it
fall-off with all keying?  Thanks.
/Jim, W3BG

Ken - N9VV wrote:

Jim, I wonder if you have disconnected the AMP and run QRP right out 
the other BNC jack on the back? (the jack connected directly to the 4 
board stack). That way you could tell if the problem is in the AMP or 
in the stack (or the software). If the stack is O.K. and stable (at 
say 1.5W like Tony KB9YIG) then it is definitely in the PA and you 
can send the module back to him instead of the whole rig. The PA 
comes out pretty easily. Gerald can step you through it over the 
phone if necessary.

BK de Ken N9VV (had to send mine back several times :-)

Re: [Flexradio] Still have CW transmit problems

[n4hy]

James C Samuels wrote:


Thanks Bob. My Answers are within your memo. /Jim, W3BG



/--- HOW CAN YOU DETERMINE IF IT REAL OR A FAULT? I HAVE RUN THE 
RF OUT DIRECTLY TO A 50 OHM DUMMY
LOAD WITH A VERY SHORT SECTION OF RG-8U AND SEE THE SAME RESULTS. DO 
YOU MEAN A HARDWARE OR SOFTWARE FAULT? ALSO, THE KEYER KEEPS ON KEYING 
AT LOSS OF POWER LEVELS – I CAN STILL HEAR IT IN THE MONITOR AT A MUCH 
REDUCED AUDIO LEVEL./




Okay Jim.  I do not know the answer to "hardware or software".   There 
will be testing done tomorrow with a working
amplifier and radio and to see if there are interactions between the new 
keyer and the amplifier swr reading.






/-UNFORTUNATELY OR FORTUNATELY, I AM STILL WITHIN THE 45 WPM 
LIMIT. I USUALLY RUN BETWEEN 25 AND 35 WPM ///




This will be eliminated by adding comport paddle sensing, etc.  That
will come but not right this minute.



Bob

[Flexradio] 2nd sound card

[n4hy]

Is there anyone actually using 2nd sound card at this point?  I would 
really like to dump it
completely.  It is a hazard to our health because we are forced to use 
MME to support
it rather than ASIO (since ASIO will open one device).  I don't believe 
it will ever be
completely functional for CW.  It is out of our control until we can get 
native WDM KS
drivers going.  MME takes so long to fill after we turn it on that 
sometimes the ring

buffers reset twice!

Bob

Re: [Flexradio] AM, FM, DSB, etc.

[n4hy]

Thanks Mike.  This kind of stuff is very helpful.  We are having an
all up calibration and fix regressions day tomorrow.

Bob


Mike Naruta wrote:


Hi Bob,

I pulled J1 from the BPF board, pulled the control
cable off the PA, and told Setup that I did not
have a PA, connected load to QRP BNC.

I turned the Console power up to 100%

I ran Audio Test and came up with 1.025 RMS on the scope
and 1.005 RMS on the DVM.  Left the setting at 0.98.

Here's the P-P measurements on the tip:

Tune:  0.88

USB:  1.2  (with 1 KHz just at start of
flat top) 0.25 W indicated

LSB:  1.34  0.2 W indicated

DSB:  2.35  0.5 W indicated

AM:  1.4  0.31 W indicated no modulation on I or Q even
though it's indicated on the Panadapter

FMN:  1.28  0.25 W indicated

CWL:  Keydown 2.75  0.0 W indicated, ~0.75 W measured; my
lowest Bird slug for HF is 50 W, had to use a Daiwa.

CWU:  also 0.0 W indicated, ~0.75W measured; but output
disappears about a tenth of a second after the dot or
dash starts.

Mike   AA8K


Robert McGwier wrote:

I do not have the amplifier.  As such,  it would help if people that 
DO have the
amplifier would test AM, FM, and DSB w/the amplifier out of line 
(deselected on

the setup general tab).

I ask this because I am listening to the SDR-1000 make perfect LSB, USB,
DSB, FM, and AM  on my Elecraft K2 sitting right next to it.  With 
the Delta
44,  my opposite sideband, with no image adjustment,  is down a lot.  
I am

using the K2 S meter and at S9+20  on the K2,  the opposite sideband is
down at S5.  This is a two tone test.  That is  44 dB if you believe 
the S meter

(it was calibrated with an 8640B is the Elecraft S meter is quite good).

I am at a loss to explain the problems you are seeing.  I need more 
details to

solve this problem. I am going to begin comparing the output powers with
older versions and the current version to bring them into line when 
and if I

find differences.

Bob




___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz

Re: [Flexradio] Still have CW transmit problems

[n4hy]

There is an automatic fall-off of power if the SWR sensor sees high 
SWR.  Though

you did not say (IT IS IMPORTANT TO TELL US EVERYTHING) I suspect
you have the amplifier.  This sounds exactly like SWR backoff.

We need to find out if this is real or a fault that you are reading high 
SWR.


As I wrote earlier, and measured by Dale WA8SRA.  The keyer and the power
amplifier fight for control of the parallel port.  We have been backing 
off keyer
requests to maintain the power amplifier requests.  The ultimate price 
is that this

reduces the high end speed of the keyer.   It tops out now at about 45 wpm.

This will be eliminated by adding comport paddle sensing, etc.  That 
will come

but not right this minute.

Bob



Bob Tracy wrote:


Jim,
 
This may be a shot in the dark but I don't see it mentioned in your 
post:  Have you eliminated any power supply problem(s)?
 
For whatever it's worth,
 
Bob K5KDN


 




___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
 

Re: [Flexradio] Console running out of room?

[n4hy]

I like it.  Neater too.   I would suggest adding a number someplace on 
the variable
tab to let you know which one you are fiddling with.   Another thought 
would be

to have Fixed filter tabs based on mode setting.

Philip Covington wrote:


Hi All,

I posted a couple of screenshots of a modification that I quickly made
to the console to try to get some more real estate...  It is no big
deal... just playing around...

see notes June 24, 2005 on http://www.philcovington.com/SDR.html  if
you are bored sometime.  Comments?

73 de Phil N8VB

___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz

 

Re: [Flexradio] low amp drive, SSB punch, processing, etc. LONG POST

[n4hy]

E, uuh,  yeah, what you said.

;-)

Makes sense.  I will play with speech signals and the function using 
capture and matlab to see what
makes sense but my guess is you are pretty close to right.  I was indeed 
thinking Gaussian noise

filling the envelope curve.  You caught me again trying to cheat.

Bob


Frank Brickle wrote:




n4hy wrote:

...I am going to figure out the best regression line at the place of 
maximum slope on this compression curve.  That slope will tell you 
how much gain is being applied at that  agnitude.  If it is 10 dB, I 
am going to call it "10 dB of compression"...



The only problem I have with this is that it's sensible for gaussian 
input. In fact, you know very well it's correct for gaussian input :-)


However, since it's applied almost exclusively to speech input, the 
signal isn't gaussian in the time intervals where it matters most. I 
kind of suspect a better measure is the integral in some window around 
the average input RMS.


So I'd speculate a better empirical guess would be based on the 
convolution of the waveshaping function and two convolved gaussians. 
Too hairy for me. Why not the gain applied at the tangent where the 
slope = 1/2?


73
Frank
AB2KT

Re: [Flexradio] low amp drive, SSB punch, processing, etc. LONG POST

[n4hy]

N4CSV wrote:


Hello all,
I am in the process of building my new SDR1000 boards into a full 
blown transceiver and wanted to offer these remarks. One of the most 
remarkable things about the SDR1000 is how the composite  I believe 
this would produce a very loud and clean signal, probably better than 
anything out there at the moment. Could this be accomplished in 
software? I don't know. Is it possible to produce a software clipper 
that emulates an RF SSB clipper? Again, that I don't know. I believe a 
good starting point to all this would be to adjust the ALC time 
constants as I have outlined above. Then perhaps more could 


-- snip -
wscompand's running in the compressor mode is exactly that,  a soft 
limiter. It squares up the envelope considerably if you push

the control up to "10".

Here is what I am going to do,  I am going to figure out the best 
regression line at the place of maximum slope on this compression 
curve.  That slope will tell you how much gain is being applied at that  
agnitude.  If it is 10 dB, I am going to call it "10 dB of 
compression".  This will take a few minutes to figure out and when I 
have a few minutes, I will do it.  Don't let us forget.  Using Frank's
description of the function, almost any of you who have had a little 
calculus and remember that d(exp(f(x))/dx  is exp(f(x))* f'(x) can do 
this.  ;-)



Bob
N4HY

-- unsnip  ---



73,
Phil
N4CSV/NNN0RBC

Re: [Flexradio] NUDQ - ASIO4ALL with Delta 44

[n4hy]

Mike:

Thanks to you and all the others for putting up with our slow pace of
documentation update.  The coding is being done primarily by
one part time coder working for Flex and 7 volunteers doing it
as true "amateurs". 


Bob


Mike Naruta wrote:


Thanks Mel.  I searched the Forum and have been
reading the reflector, but wasn't sure.

The SDR documentation is a bit out of date, but
it's a small trade off for the wonderful, collaberative
effort of this group.  I haven't been so excited
about ham radio for decades!

Oh, thanks to Ken, too.  What great response on
this reflector!

73,   Mike  AA8K


Mel Whitten wrote:


Mike
The delta 44 has its own ASIO so you will not
need to install it seperately.   The SDR documentation
has a hard time keeping up with the many changes.
Keep your eye on this reflector for up to date changes.
Mel, K0PFX




___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz

Re: [Flexradio] ON AIR TEST

[n4hy]

Sorry Phil.  I am limited for the time being to 1w from the SDR-1000 on 
HF or 15w
from the Elecraft K2 on HF.  All of my VHF stuff is scattered over a lot 
of PackRats

territory.

Bob


Philip M. Lanese wrote:


Bob
Can you get on 2M from home?  I am pretty sure  you will hear me & I should be
able to hear you with 50 + Watts.  Frank was 25 db out of the noise Sunday
morning.

Phil, K3IB



___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz

 

Re: [Flexradio] v1.3.9a marked audio improvement

[n4hy]

Hope you all like the slowly converging improvements.


Joe - AB1DO wrote:


Hi all,

I only got round to downloading and installing 1.3.9a this morning. 
When I did I was stunned by the audio quality improvement. The clicks 
I have been hearing all along with especially ANF on are all gone J 
Not only that, but the preamp actually works as it should from an 
audio point of view, i.e. higher preamp setting increases audio 
volume. So much so that I have to set the AF control between 1-5 to 
not overdrive the headphone amplifier of the Behringer mixer I’m 
using. With 1.3.8 and before it needed to be set to around 75. And the 
audio no longer sounds dull with NR on, but actually nice and crisp.


I don’t know what you guys did, but whatever it was, DON’T CHANGE IT.

73’s from a much happier operator,

Joe



___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
 

Re: [Flexradio] Roadmap B list

[n4hy]

It is definitely pencilled in for the future. It will get moved to the 
2nd A list behind

full blown Linux support and the new GUI.

Bob


Trevor Smithers wrote:

Just been having a look at the Roadmap B list and wondered if the virtual soundcard 
support is still pencilled in for the future


 


Virtual Sound Card Support – This feature will allow digital mode software to 
run
without the need for a second sound card in the system.
   



With all the high level development that's going on at the moment it might well be that its 
already under development, under another name, and I've missed it. Strikes me that this 
feature would be a very useful enhancement. 


73 to all

Trevor  G0KTN

___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz

 

Re: [Flexradio] what happened to John KC5NRA?

[n4hy]

Busy at summer school taking calculus


Ken - N9VV wrote:

Anyone heard a peep out of our illustrious S-Meter builder John 
KC5NRA? Maybe he discovered "girls" and the SDR stuff just can't compete?

de Ken

___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz

Re: [Flexradio] Which way now!

[n4hy]

I have a mini-ITX at home running Linux.   It uses a Intel 3.06 Ghz HT 
and has a 533 Mhz
FSB.  It is a beautiful thing in a beautiful box that I can carry under 
my arm.  It has 160 Gb

HD, CD ROM, four USB-2.0 ports and a D44 in its 1 PCI slot.

This Mini-ITX will trivially dual boot and run XP or Linux.

http://www.bwi.com

and click on their Mini-ITX frame.  I have the LV-670 from Commell.

I love it!  I am doing all my GnuRadio work on it and my jsdr work as well.

Bob

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

If there was only one way to do everything life would be easy but 
extremely boring. I have been pondering how to fit a little bit of 
radio into a hectic life. Starting to write this I don't have a clear 
idea but when I finish writing I will have a much better idea, that is 
why I do these ramblings - not because I think anyone might be 
interested - but you never know it might strike a chord somewhere.


 

This is just my perspective although as some may realise my mind is 
never made up until I arrive somewhere. I love Linux and for me it is 
the right place to be doing the 'radio stuff', especially as I want to 
take advantage of the latest releases of both the SDR1000 DSP and 
GNU-Radio DSP blocks.


 

However, I run XP most of the time for work and home and like to be 
able to play with the radio application software when I have a few 
moments. When I have Linux booted up my wife invariably wants to do 
something, and doesn't understand this 'operating system thing' and at 
work it's virtually impossible to have Linux running. I already have a 
split system working, Linux for DSP and XP for application but it's 
far from properly integrated.


 

What am I pondering, well I kind of like the idea of separation of 
concerns so the radio concern is the hardware and DSP functions and 
probably the control functions. What I am warming to is almost a 
separate radio using a Mini-ITX form factor motherboard, possibly the 
VIA EPIA SP13000 running Linux (not entirely decided on the distro but 
it will probably be Fedora). These are not the fastest things on earth 
but they are cute (and cheap) and should be fast enough to just run 
DSP with a good bit of headroom. These boards have most everything 
required including 1 PCI slot for the Delta 44 or whatever but no 
parallel port so the USB/Parallel converter would be required.


 

First off I get the hardware up and running doing its DSP stuff and 
hopefully I won't have the hassle with ALSA this time. I then create a 
remote link from my Python console running under Windows using Pyro 
over TCP/IP (this works well XP-XP so should work equally well 
XP-Linux). This controls the DSP using a simple Python wrapper over 
the IPC on the Linux side and hooks straight into GNURadio which is 
already pythonized. I can use the HW control directly from XP 
initially and then create a similar remote function for that on Linux. 
The remaining piece is the metering and display data which can come 
across the same Pyro link. Full remoting can come later. All in all 
this is not a massive piece of work so might even get done this side 
of never! If it looks good I will have an incentive to move the 
console forward.


 

Bottom line, I love Linux for its elegance and performance and I love 
Python for its simplicity and power, and XP - well I have too much 
investment to ditch it.


 


73

Bob

 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.



___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
 

Re: [Flexradio] Rockwell - Jupiter

[n4hy]

I am a semi-expert in this area but Tom Clark, W3IWI, and Rick Hambly, 
W2GPS, both
readers of this group and SDR-1000 owners are real experts. Tom worked 
the Totally
Accurate Clock - TAC (the same as his initials Thomas A. Clark) for TAPR 
and Rick used
a lot of that work and added to it significantly and has developed a 
business


http://www.cnssys.com

around these ideas.

Both Tom and Rick did contract work for me a while back. We discovered a 
thing that
appears to have heretofore been missed. It may not have any impact 
whatsoever on your
goals since you care about large scale time events but I needed to be 
able to know the
name of everyone of the 1 pulses per second that I was distributing 
using GPS over
a few hundred square miles and to know that their edges were stable to 
within a few

nano-seconds.

These problems are related to what WILL impact you. The 1 pps output of 
GPS clocks
with the exception of the CNS systems CNS-II, can have significant error 
on the 1pps edges
called sawtooth error. This sawtooth error is indeed a zero mean process 
but it can have
large and heavily biased local excursions due to satellite 
constellations, ionospheric
events, etc. The CNS-II listens to the sawtooth error messages and in a 
truly clever

scheme, removes it down to O(nanosecond). Tom Clark idea, Rick Hambly
implementation that works.

Luis Cupido has produced a widget that I believe TAPR is going to offer. 
Steve Bible,
whom you have been communicating with can talk about this. John 
Ackemann, TAPR
prez is an SDR-1000 owner and is a time and frequency freak as well. 
Cupido's widget,
called a Reflock board (I have built four of the originals) uses this 
1pps, 1 pps,
signals to tame oscillators in frequency. The Reflock II will have 
signifiantly extended
tuning range. Ideally, we want to tame a 200 Mhz oscillator. I am not 
certain the
Reflock II is capable of 200 Mhz (it may be) but I am absolutely certain 
that it can do
100 Mhz and a doubling in the DDS will be a significant improvement on 
the factor of

20 we now use with a 10 Mhz injection.

If you want to have a real impact on the SDR-1000, it is my strongest 
possible suggestion
that we use 100 Mhz if we can't get 200 Mhz and that we tame the 
oscillator with the Reflock II

and GPS input.

I own two CNS-II clocks with the high stability Valpey-Fisher 
oscillators and with the sawtooth
removed taming signal, can get unbelieveable parts per few quadrillion 
on these clock edges.
You can get an order of magnitude worse than this with a FIVE DOLLAR 
oscillator with this

kind of taming mechanism. That is the amazing thing.

My only message is that we should not reinvent the wheel. If the 
solution already exists (such
as Reflock II) then we should use it. If TAPR needs help getting the 
Reflock-II out, then

we should help.

Bob


ecellison wrote:


Jim

Well, I am a piker at this, and have just been going on what I have 
read in the QST article about long term averaging the 1 sec clock on a 
GPS receiver. Your points are all well taken here and I would 
definitely like someone to write the specs. I would like to have it 
ALL! (smile) – Stability, extreme accuracy, and low cost! So far 
except for reading all I have researched is this GPS receiver which 
seems to fill the cost bill. TAPR want’s about $80 bux and another $32 
or $40 for the antenna. One way or another, the GPS route for finding 
the discipline, with your caveats is an inexpensive solution to 
reference (in the absence of other available calibration sources). My 
thinking was a 200 mhz VCXO in the SDR fed by the GPS with the 
upcoming Reflock 2 board from TAPR. I don’t know much about all the 
features of the Reflock 2 since it is still in design and testing 
phase by Steve Bible and and several others. Steve mentioned the 
possibility of using the Crystek cvpd-040 VCXO at 200 mhz. 
http://www.crystek.com/spec-sheets/CVPD-940.pdf. We would need a 
‘glue’ board to provide connections, power, rs232, gps antenna in, 
connections to the tcxo gps etc. However with Tony – KB9YIG’s help we 
might come up with that ‘glue’ at a nominal cost.


I’m not sure that we can achieve ppB performance for a nominal cost, 
however I would love to see the experts contributions, on this! Since 
the SDR is ‘software’ it might also be possible to periodically check 
an external offset reference via serial cable, to keep the existing LO 
on frequency. Also was impressed with Jim Millers simple stuff. Which 
appears fairly inexpensive if we want to go the 10 mhz reference way.


http://www.jrmiller.demon.co.uk/projects/ministd/frqstd.htm

Dunno?

Anyone else want to jump in here and spec out what we might require to 
meet the need of: GPS Discipline, High Accuracy, Low phase noise, and 
modest cost?


Also see embedded comments below.

Eric – AA4SW



*From:* Jim Lux [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
*Sent:* Sunday, June 19, 2005 1:5

Re: [Flexradio] FW: Yikes, I got Spikes

[n4hy]

Before I had the picture blocked. I got a copy. This has nothing to do 
with the INA

but is a horrible DC noise problem.
LOOK FOR GROUND LOOPS>

Bob


Joe - AB1DO wrote:


Hi all,

I am noticing a “strange” phenomenon, visible in all of the console 
versions I have, i.e. from 1.3.4 on. On the far left hand side of the 
panadapter display, and _only when preamp is off_ I see the noise 
floor rise to a peak. To focus in on this more, I used SPEC to center 
what turned out to be an approx 3kHz wide central peak with many 
harmonic spikes:


In the above, the rig is connected to a dummy load. When the preamp 
setting is increased, this peak gets smaller, to virtually disappear 
at a preamp setting of med or higher. The preamp is the ONLY 
adjustment I can make that seems to influence it at all. If I turn the 
power to the SDR box off (after having turned the console on with it 
powered on), the central peak remains visible, but the harmonic spikes 
reduce greatly in value. When tuning up or down, the peak remains on 
frequency until it reaches about + or – 1.5kHz, at which point it 
flips to the other side, that is from –1.5kHz to +1.5kHz and v.v. It 
is also visible on every single band, at every single frequency. Also 
the peak value of –110dBm is absolute, that is if I calibrate the 
console to show a noise level of say –90dBm, it is not visible.


Before I go tearing the whole shack apart here in search of the 
interfering source, I’d like to know if anyone else has experienced 
this, if it is something inherent in the S/W or hardware, or if it has 
something to do with my settings (I recalibrated everything using 
Elecraft’s XG1 signal generator, but to no avail). If none of these, 
I’d appreciate a clue as to what I should be looking for.


My setup uses the Delta 44 and USB adapter.

Thanks,

Joe



___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
 

[Flexradio] Forgotten release note in 1.3.8

[n4hy]

In 1.3.8,  on the Setup->TX tab,  I added a check box.  This check box 
enables
or disables (checked/unchecked respectively) a DC blocking (High Pass) 
filter.
It is an order 6 butterworth.  Use this if you have junk at DC coming 
into the
sound card.  It will be the first thing in the door of your microphone 
and will

help prevent that junk from capturing the compressor and limiter.

Bob

Re: [Flexradio] FW: Yikes, I got Spikes

[n4hy]

Joe and others:

This is the power spectrum of the noise of the INA's when they have 0 dB 
gain. I really do
dislike these amplifiers immensely and I am guessing that Gerald will 
not use them in
future products! In addition, some of this noise can be coming from the 
power supplies
that are quite poor switchers (NMA1215S) which provide the rail voltages 
for the
INA's. BLECH! My quietest nicest receiver is the SDR with a well 
designed external
supply giving me +/- 12V (15 V is massive overkill), and a different 
front end that has
lower gain and higher IP3. I find the "Low" and "Off" settings not to my 
liking and

never use them.

I will write up all of my radio modifications and get Gerald to put them 
on his web site
or on the friends site. This will take me about two weeks to do since I 
need to take
digital photographs, etc. I have W3IWI's and W2GPS's radios. I will use 
them as the

photograph radios.

Bob


Joe - AB1DO wrote:


Hi all,

I am noticing a “strange” phenomenon, visible in all of the console 
versions I have, i.e. from 1.3.4 on. On the far left hand side of the 
panadapter display, and _only when preamp is off_ I see the noise 
floor rise to a peak. To focus in on this more, I used SPEC to center 
what turned out to be an approx 3kHz wide central peak with many 
harmonic spikes:


In the above, the rig is connected to a dummy load. When the preamp 
setting is increased, this peak gets smaller, to virtually disappear 
at a preamp setting of med or higher. The preamp is the ONLY 
adjustment I can make that seems to influence it at all. If I turn the 
power to the SDR box off (after having turned the console on with it 
powered on), the central peak remains visible, but the harmonic spikes 
reduce greatly in value. When tuning up or down, the peak remains on 
frequency until it reaches about + or – 1.5kHz, at which point it 
flips to the other side, that is from –1.5kHz to +1.5kHz and v.v. It 
is also visible on every single band, at every single frequency. Also 
the peak value of –110dBm is absolute, that is if I calibrate the 
console to show a noise level of say –90dBm, it is not visible.


Before I go tearing the whole shack apart here in search of the 
interfering source, I’d like to know if anyone else has experienced 
this, if it is something inherent in the S/W or hardware, or if it has 
something to do with my settings (I recalibrated everything using 
Elecraft’s XG1 signal generator, but to no avail). If none of these, 
I’d appreciate a clue as to what I should be looking for.


My setup uses the Delta 44 and USB adapter.

Thanks,

Joe



___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
 

[Flexradio] 1.3.7 bugs

[n4hy]

Thanks to everyone for reports about the 1.3.7 bugs.  As you were 
warned, they are numerous.  Eric and I spent
many hours testing and you still found bugs we did not find.  Thank you 
all for your help.


Resolved:


1) Compressor/ MOX causing blow up
2) "pop" on TX <-> RX
3) blow up "sometimes" in USB if MOX.
4) power on meter for QRP version is the same no
   matter what the power setting

Al of the problems: 1,2,4, were caused by "reset_meters and 
reset_counters" in run_swch

state in the processing.  This routine changes over from TX to RX and back.

Problem 3 was caused by partial integration/testing  "droppings" from 
the new keyer code. 

Still unresolved is why the SAME ALGORITHM is giving 0.81 watts for peak 
power in

the QRP version and 1.0 watts in the older code.

It is coming together.  Frank and I have a major piece of work to do to 
resize the
dsp so that it remembers ALL of your previous settings.  It would be oh 
so much easier
if we could just stomp on the old stuff and remake it but we need to 
preserve settings,

and allow for this operation to eventually be remoted.

Once the resize is done,  the keyer will be almost instantaneous.   In 
the beginning, you
will probably lose the keyboard entry but you regain it with superior 
code of Frank's
construction. 


Thanks for your patience and allowing us this incremental approach.

Bob

Re: [Flexradio] Multiple Virtual Comm Ports

[n4hy]

This is a misreading of both GPL and Flex policy.  Flex currently uses 
proprietary code that
it cannot distribute source for.  The EZ USB code for the Ahti/Sami 
device is handled this way

and it is delivered separately from the console.

You may certainly install and use this utility in your computer and Flex 
radio and its policies
have nothing to say on the matter.  What must be open source is your 
code inside the console

that talks to it.

That said,  I much prefer Phil's code/approach because we can extend it 
AND we have
access to the software and we have an "interested" developer combined 
with early

adopter.

Bob



Bob Tracy wrote:


Stan,

Looks like a very interesting utility, unfortunately (after reading the
legal stuff on their website) it is proprietary code and doesn't fit in with
the open source philosophy of the SDR-1000.  Wish it were different since it
looks like exactly what I need for a current project.


73,

Bob K5KDN



___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz

 

[Flexradio] test ignore

[n4hy]

testing settings, please ignore

[Flexradio] NEW AGC (was RE: Soft clicking when NR and ANF are on)

[n4hy]

Joe, others:

There are many issues with the old digitalagc.  It has been replaced in 
the next release with
a complete rewrite by Frank and I but we can and should go further.  
Alex, VE3NEA, has
proposed a very interesting and complex structure with high 
computational complexity that
I am considering.  It is based on attempting to maintain a set SNR to 
relieve fatigue.  I
make a living by taking things of high computational complexity and 
finding good approximations
at much reduced computational complexity but ideas are needed before I 
jump headlong

into this.

We are in the midst of doing our best to "perfect" this agc.  It is at 
the heart of what makes this
radio so different in that it cannot be captured by strong out of 
passband signals.


Bob

Joe - AB1DO wrote:

I have investigated this clicking further and discovered that the 
clicking disappears when I set the AGC to fixed (both NR and ANF still 
on). With the AGC set to fixed, I then went to the SDR setup DSP tab 
and increased the fixed gain using the little up/down arrows to the 
right of the list box. With each increase I heard the same click, 
which became louder as the AGC gain increased. If I adjusted any other 
list box I heard nothing. To me this would seem to indicate that with 
the AGC on any other setting other than fixed, as the AGC adjusts the 
gain value, a click is audible.


 


I hope this useful to anyone to help me solve this issue.

 


Joe

 

 


Hi All,

 

On SSB *receive*, I am experiencing soft clicking sounds when *both* 
the NR and ANF are on. I have played with many combinations of DSP 
settings and audio sample sizes, but nothing seems to help, nor does 
cycling power on/standby. CPU usage is around 10%. Does anyone have 
any ideas?


 

My setup is as follows: Dell dimension 3000 computer (P4 HT 3GHz, 1Gb 
RAM, XP Home SP2), the Delta-44 sound card with HOSA cable set and 
audio run through a Behringer UB802 mixer (mic preamp and headphone 
amp). I have not adjusted either the card line-in gain (20) or the 
output voltage (.98) in the SDR setup audio tab.


 


73 de Joe, AB1DO

 




___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
 

Re: [Flexradio] FW: v1.3.5 error when switching bands while comp is on

[n4hy]

Joe:

Thank you very much for this bug report.   This led to the discovery of 
two NASTY
errors.  One in the speechprocessor (reading/writing junk past the end 
of a buffer) and

one in the deletion of allocated buffers.

I am unable to duplicate the clicking here since I worked on EMI/RFI 
issues.  If you
could capture a couple of minutes of IQ data with the click, I would be 
happy to look at

it.

Bob


Joe - AB1DO wrote:


Bob,

As requested:
http://www.flex-radio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1685&sid=e26ff96b42e9b004f9f
6f9e049840123

Joe

P.S. Any further ideas on the clicking sounds I still hear?

-Original Message-
From: Robert W McGwier [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: 03 June 2005 12:40
To: Joe - AB1DO
Cc: Flexradio Reflector
Subject: Re: [Flexradio] FW: v1.3.5 error when switching bands while comp is
on

Joe:

Some of the developers no longer visit the forum for any reason.
Please send a link to the actual forum message or copy and paste.

Thanks,
Bob


Joe - AB1DO wrote:
 


Hi all,

I also posted this on the forum, so please forgive the duplicity - not
quite sure where possible bugs should be reported these days...

Following a transmission in SSB with compression on, changing the band
leads to an error (the detailed error report can be found on the forum
- I didn't want to hang up everyone's email by copying it all here).
This does not happen if the band change occurs without transmitting
irrespective of comp on or off. It also does not happen when
transmitting twice without changing bands.

The compression level is set at 6dB. Transmissions occurred with dummy
load attached at 75W.

Joe



___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz

   




 

[Flexradio] New Delta 44 driver

[n4hy]

Dated May 5

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=support.drivers

Re: [Flexradio] Soft clicking when NR and ANF are on

[n4hy]

Joe:

Do the following.   Fix the console so that you have the soft clicking 
going on.

The change the spectrum display mode from spectrum or panadapter, etc.
to OFF.  Tell me if the click goes away.   It does here on the development
system in my lab.

Bob



Joe - AB1DO wrote:


Ken,

Based on your response, I checked out my USB devices. They are the SDR USB
to parallel adapter, the Griffin PowerMate and a mouse. I subsequently
removed first the PowerMate and then the mouse (!), while PowerSDR was
running, but to no avail, so I'm still open to ideas.

Thanks anyway,
Joe

 

Re: [Flexradio] SDR-1000 and 192 khz soundcard

[n4hy]

Kjell:

Yes.  We are about to release new DSP that will allow you to set buffer 
sizes,

sample rates, etc.

Bob



Kjell privat wrote:


Hi!
Are there any plane to support 192 khz soundcard and a faster 
sampling-rate than now. This could give the option to view more of the 
band. Today there was a posting for the "M-Audio Audiophile 192". Any 
plane to include this? Has somone tried other 192khz card?

73 Kjell  La6xj

___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz

Re: [Flexradio] Delta-44 microphone connection

[n4hy]

And there are fewer SP's in the left half plane.  i.e., Butterworth's 
are inherently easier to stabilize.

I am not sure we need 8 poles.  We can experiment with that.

Bob



Frank Brickle wrote:

The new compander shows up in the RX audio chain too, just before the 
squelch. It really improves the squelch performance on CW RX, although 
it does point up the need to lengthen the squelch slew rates. There 
are some occasional clicks on the releases of high-amplitude CW 
elements when the compression or expansion are high with a low squelch 
threshold.


I'm also about to include the (optional) high-pass TX filter, meant to 
deal with DC bias coming from the auxiliary cheap soundcards. Unless 
somebody can argue convincingly and quickly for something else, it 
will be an order-8 Butterworth IIR with the corner at 100 Hz. The 
thinking behind this is that the rolloff doesn't need to be 
particularly steep as long as it goes to 0 at DC, and the Butterworth 
is maximally flat and linear in the passband compared with the 
elliptic or Chebyshev designs.


73
Frank
AB2KT

[Flexradio] New DSP runs

[n4hy]

The new DSP runs.  I finally figured out the last problem.  It is an IDE 
problem that needs
to be resolved before we distribute.  The difficulty is that changes get 
made to header files
that are including in many files.  To date, the IDE has been remaking 
them if they included
a changed header file.  There was ONE source file that was never getting 
remade even
though it included the changed header file and it was simply hosing 
everything else.


The new remoteable transfer of data mechanism is now transferring meter 
data and a
bug fix will enable the power spectrum next.  A surprising thing has 
happened.  I do not
fully understand it yet.  Even though a named pipe is being used to move 
around a large
block of data for (say) the power spectrum, rather than just doing a 
straight function
call and memcpy of the data to the console provided buffer,  the CODE IS 
FASTER
on my machine.  It remains to be seen if this will be true on resource 
impoverished

processors.

Bob

Re: [Flexradio] Delta-44 microphone connection

[n4hy]

While this is potentially correct,  it is pretty amazing how poor your 
transmit noise floor can be with these
sound cards and still be orders of magnitude less power than in a 
"normal transceiver".  I agree with you
that this will be the ultimate limiting factor and we can only know by 
testing.  If it gives us a noise floor
that is -40 dB, through a kilowatt output amplifier,  that will be a 
tenth watt getting to the antenna.
The realization of how poor the transmit sound card can actually be is 
what led us to to the second sound

card tricks to begin with.

Bob


Dale Boresz wrote:



What I wonder about with this approach, is what the final S/N ratio 
will be like. Since the input to the Delta 44 is not really designed 
for the very low signal levels of a microphone, I would expect the S/N 
ratio to be fairly poor with such a low-level input. If that is so, 
then you'll be increasing overall gain, but the S/N ratio will remain 
poor.  Also, consider that since the Delta 44 input jacks are 1/4" 
phone jacks, an adapter will need to be made for just about any 
microphone. If care is not taken in the implementation of the adapter, 
additional noise pickup in the form of magnetic and capacitive 
coupling of a.c. mains as well as rf could cause problems.


I vote for use of an external microphone preamp, which is designed 
specifically for the job at hand, and allows for better overall gain 
distribution.


73, Dale WA8SRA



___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz

Re: [Flexradio] Delta-44 microphone connection

[n4hy]

I would do it if it eliminates all need for an external mike amp and/or 
2nd sound card hookup.  The
care is that we drop that gain out when we go back to receive.  I am 
sure we do, but I have not looked
at your side in a few days and my memory is not that long! 

The issue is how will the microphone performance be impacted by hooking 
to this impedance and with
boat loads of digital gain.  In the lab,  I suggest you make the maximum 
whatever it takes to get the
microphone to operate properly on the meter and then let's do some 
testing to see what unintended

consequences there are.  If this works out, it simplifies the hookup.

Many will still want to use the suggestions of John, Alan, etc. on the 
external gizmo's that give fantastic
sounding audio but others just care about seeing the meter read right 
without distortion.


Frank implemented the new compressor ideas we talked about in Dayton.  
That will be included in
the new code where I am still struggling to find what has to be a single 
initialization bug that is just

driving me up a wall.

Bob





FlexRadio - Eric wrote:

I have tried this in the lab and at 40dB (the current maximum for the 
control), there just is not enough gain.  Perhaps we should consider 
raising the maximum.


Eric


n4hy wrote:

With the huge dynamic range available in the D44, I can't see why we 
can't just run the
preprocessing multiplier up very high(the gain on the transmit tab in 
setup).
Has anyone tried this and has it failed? What in your best 
guesstimate is the failure mode?


Bob

Re: [Flexradio] Delta-44 microphone connection

[n4hy]

With the huge dynamic range available in the D44, I can't see why we 
can't just run the
preprocessing multiplier up very high(the gain on the transmit tab in 
setup).
Has anyone tried this and has it failed? What in your best guesstimate 
is the failure mode?


Bob



Richard Stasiak wrote:


Hi Joe
A preamp is definitely needed, either a separate unit or the one built 
in to a second sound card. The Delta 44 has only line level inputs and 
your microphone is not producing line level audio, unless it has a 
built in preamp.
The microphone connector on the front of the SDR provides a convenient 
place to connect a microphone with a ptt switch in order to key the 
SDR into transmit. The audio from this connection is routed to a sound 
card microphone input or to a preamp.

73
Rick ve3mm
I received my SDR-1000 last week (right before the Dayton rush), which 
I ordered with the Delta-44. I have it set up and working on receive 
according to the diagram on Ken N9VV’s great website, together with 
1.3.4. I also understand that I will need to use a microphone preamp. 
However, regarding the actual wiring/connection of the microphone is 
it possible to connect the microphone to the front connector on the 
SDR1K enclosure and then connect the “To Mic In” connector on the back 
via the preamp to the Delta-44, or does the microphone need to be 
directly connected to the preamp (as shown in the diagram)?




___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
 

Re: [Flexradio] Friends ftp

[n4hy]

Thanks for the replies!  I got it.

Bob

[Flexradio] Friends ftp

[n4hy]

Would someone please email me (directly) with the friends ftp user and 
password?


Bob

Re: [Flexradio] Dayton, Friends, and Fun

[n4hy]

And a room with a bit less "ambience".  I enjoyed the lounge lizards so 
much, I found it hard

to concentrate.

Bob


FlexRadio - Eric wrote:


Phil,

Sorry to hear about the late breaking work.  Was looking forward to 
meeting in person, but I suppose there is always next year.  You are 
right about the "cool" factor of being able to remotely log in and 
participate in the usergroup activities.  That was right on the 
cutting edge.  Now if we could have only found some better lighting.  
We'll have to work on that for next year.  ;)


Eric Wachsmann KE5DTO



Philip Covington wrote:


Hi Eric,

It sounds like the show was a great success.  Unfortunately I had a
work related problem that I had to no choice but to attend to so I
wasn't able to make it to the show. (I should have turned off my
beeper on Saturday morning...).  I did watch some of the video feed on
Saturday night.  It was pretty cool to be able to "tune" in that way. 
I ended up giving my tickets to a friend who attended.  Hopefully I

will make the next Dayton show.

73 de Phil N8VB


.

 



___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz

Re: [Flexradio] Here's a question

[n4hy]

Gary:

Please describe your hardware (soundcards).

Bob


[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

When in SSB transmit and no audio is applied, the panadapter shows a 
display in the passband well above noise.  But, in addition, it isn't 
flat across the top.  It peaks at the low end and falls off 
approximately 25 dB as you move across to the high end of the 
passband.  Why is this?  Does it mean that the low end of the 
audio gets a big boost?  (The transmit equalizer is not enabled.)
 
Gary AI4IN




___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
 

Re: [Flexradio] Build 55 of vCOM Virtual Serial Port Driver

[n4hy]

Not to mention the fact that what Phil is producing will ultimately (if 
not already) be superior.
There will simply be no need for the MixW device driver since Phil is 
providing for timeouts,
etc.  Eventually, one would like to look into adding the ability to 
program it for 5 bits per
symbol so we can natively send asynchronous baudot data and then we 
would need two in
parallel: one pipe for control, one pipe for data unless we always want 
to stay AFSK.


MixW and these other programs do not care what driver provides the com 
port, just so they
have access to one.  What matters is the behavior of the com port and 
how close to specs

it can come so we can have HRD, etc. use it.

Bob
N4HY




Philip Covington wrote:


Dale,

It would be better to NOT have both the vCOM driver and the MixW
driver installed.  I am not completely sure on this, but I think that
both drivers (being Multiport Serial drivers) will have the same
system created bus enumerator and they may be layered into a device
stack arrangement.  So whatever IOCTLs that get sent will first go to
the driver higher on the stack and not be passed down to the next
lower driver if the upper driver completes the request.  This would be
the case with about all the device io controls and read/write
requests.  Which driver gets which place on the stack would depend on
its load order.  This is all speculation... but I would uninstall the
vCOM driver if you are using the MixW driver or vise verse...

73 de Phil N8VB

 

Re: [Flexradio] Convington com port code

[n4hy]

Consider us in on the beta test team.  This is great.

Bob


Philip Covington wrote:


I really like the list... much easier to follow the subjects and not miss stuff.

My motivation for writing a virtual com driver mainly is to provide
timeouts so the CAT stuff will work with HRD.  Also, in .NET 2.0 the
namespace System.IO.Ports has been added to support serial port
access.  The source code for the implementation of the serial control
is actually available on the GotDotNet website.  The MixW virtual com
port driver does not correctly report the com port capabilities.  It
reports a max baud rate of 0 to a IOCTL_SERIAL_GET_PROPERTIES
deviceiocontrol.  The .NET serial control doesn't like this and you
cannot open the com port.

I looked at the IRCOMM2K driver but it is not very easy to just add on
to it.  I started from scratch on a WDM driver.  It is about 80%
there.  I decided to change to the newer XP cancel-safe IRP queues
yesterday so I doing a small rewrite at the moment.  Even though they
were introduced in XP they will work on W2k and W98/Me also.

I hope to have something to release in a week or so.   It depends on
how the debugging goes.

Phil

 

Re: [Flexradio] Your input is needed - IQ passthrough mode

[n4hy]

You are absolutely right if Linrad would talk to jack which I hope it 
will do

in June.

So for the time being, the only scenario I see working in the short term is
the Wintel computer doing the dsp call to us and the "internal jack" do
the PASS out to an analog connection to the Linux computer running
jack.  Naturally, ideally this would all be digital and no analog components
would be required.  Frank is enabling all of the necessary pieces to
make this happen.

Bob


Frank Brickle wrote:


Robert McGwier wrote:
> I think you missed his point.  He wants both at the same time with 
the D44.

> DSP in process mode, and then the pipe would occur in the callback and
> pipe the IQ input to both the DSP and to the 3,4 outputs on the D44.

No. Start up two jsdrs. One is in PLAY, one is in PASS. 
alsa_pcm:capture_[12] are patched into both. The PLAY jsdr outputs :ol 
and :or to D44:1,2. The PASS jsdr :ol and :or are patched to D44:3,4.


What's wrong with that scenario? The additional overhead from the PASS 
jsdr is essentially nil.


73
Frank
AB2KT





___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz

Re: [Flexradio] Your input is needed

[n4hy]

Already being worked on and you will see that begin to roll out 
shortly.  The Linux

stuff is already remoteable.  commands, meter, power spectra, and even audio
are remoteable using the mechanisms we built and/or jack plugins.  The 
Wintel GUI
is being refactored into the proper layers so they can be run on top of 
a remote
DSP/hardware interface or a local copy.  This is a lot of work and it 
has to proceed
in a way that allows us to continue to put out working releases.  It 
will not be done

before Dayton.

Bob


Jim Lux wrote:


Something to think about in terms of client/server architectures.

What about having the "radio" on a Linux box, and the UI on a Wintel box?
Stream the audio (perhaps after some filtering, or maybe not, just raw I/Q)
from Linux to Windows via a simple UDP Socket interface?

This would greatly facilitate the idea of multiple physical radios with one
controller, and seems a logical partitioning.  It also lends itself to
distributing the signal processing load among multiple processors.  For
instance, you might have the SDR1000 (or the SDR Mark II) connected to a
diskless Linux mobo, which would implement the radio control, and some of
the early stages of filtering (perhaps IF bandpass or gain control) in
response to simple command strings (as has already been described).  Then,
if you had fancy signal processing, you could have a another BIG,FAST
computer to do the DSP, which sends the processed audio stream to the Wintel
(or, maybe, my Treo 650).

Think of the concept of the radio being collocated with the antenna, and
instead of running coax hither and yon, you run Cat5 UTP, or, 802.11a/b/g
wireless links.

There's no reason why the operator of the radio should be physically close
to the radio, is there?


___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz

 

[Flexradio] Your input needed- Part II

[n4hy]

Let me focus this to help us where we are now:

We are enabling multiple receivers in the single radio 40 Khz bandwidth.
We have not thought through carefully how that should be done.
Phil has given us input that is doable: steer the audio from left ear to 
right

ear dependent solely on frequency offset from zero.  This can be done.
That requires controls (hooked to the mouse almost surely) and a fair
amount of work, primarily on Eric's part.  We are rushing like mad to
get our act together for Dayton and this will get "tossed in" with our
best quick effort, or with some useful commentary from this list, we
might get something a bit more usable on a single band, looking at 40
Khz of panadapter, multiple receiver tuner.

Bob

[Flexradio] Convington com port code

[n4hy]

Phil is doing com port code with timeouts.  That will be a great help.

Bob

Re: [Flexradio] Your input is needed

[n4hy]

Well you know where my sentiments are but for now, we are only talking 
about N virtual radios
listening to the same band and that band is restricted to the 40 Khz 
coming through the QSD.
It is my understanding from Gerald that he is likely to offer, AT A COST 
(and there are multiple),
a modification if you want wider bandwidth.  The costs are 1) He has to 
pay someone to manually
make this change and 2) your receiver performance will not improve as a 
result of a wider

"roofing" filter.

Since there is a single IF, and shared by TX and RX in the SDR-1000, you 
will not be able to
do multiple bands at once easily with this hardware and IF you could, 
you would probably not
like the penalty (adding the 144 Mhz IF's coming into the SDR-1000 in a 
hybrid combiner).


But we get the picture.  The SDR-2500 will likely be awesome!

Bob


Terry - W0VB wrote:


I'm with Dale on this one from the VHF/UHF and above
perspective.. if one could have multiple panadapter baselines on one SDR
console, to show each VHF/UHF/SHF band that is present in a particular user'
s station - it would be awesome!  Minimum hardware might be a transverter
for each band and one SDR unit... I'd even consider purchasing multiple
SDRs, if that's the only way to implement this.


It would be a tremendous enhancement to show on one screen, multiple bands,
each having it's own separate baseline on the console and being able to
selectively choose what's presented in the headphones (speakers), left and
right, or spatial. Perhaps a band, or frequency identifier, shown the side,
and below, each baseline



Many moons ago, Phil spoke of an activity he was working on, before SDR,
showing all bands, (whatever his definition was at the time - I believe
160-10 meters), on one display, with a panadapter line for each band, to
show MUF limits in that frequency spectrum.



As you know, some of the propagation on the bands above 50 Mhz start at the
bottom and work their way up in frequency. While other propagation modes
start in the SHF range and work their way down in frequency. Being able to
view multiple panadapter base lines, on one console, at the same point in
time, would be incredible!



I don't know what hardware, and software, limitations exist. but this
would be my view of the "requirements" direction for this discussion.



Terry, W0VB


___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz

 

Re: [Flexradio] DUMMY MICROSECOND

[n4hy]

Well, I have dummy microseconds every few of them.  But DUMEY 
microseconds are really

important concepts in projects.  Thanks Phil.

Bob



Philip M. Lanese wrote:


Bob
You are ABSOLUTELY correct on the "Dummy Microsecond".

In 40+ years of designing commercial control systems, on only three occasions
have I been able to run a top-down design (I owned the company) without having
to re-design major portions of the systems.  I coined the phrase "instant
experts" to describe people who come up with a "small change" that must be
incorporated.

I am coming out of retirement now (at an atrocious salary) because a company
decided they could "just move some stuff and lay out the patch antenna on the
PCB", forgetting (or not knowing) about 'fringe effects', etc.

Phil, K3IB



___
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz