[Flexradio] Flexwire (I2C) question
Hi Alan, You are not mentioning the UCB form where you tell the application what bits you want activated. The first two entries are dedicated to the V/U module, Be sure to press the FlexWire button on that form. And you must select each bit that you want activated for each band. You can get to the form by pressing Ctrl + Alt + U Phil K3TUF ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz To opt out of the Reflector: http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire (I2C) question
Thanks to the input from various people, I now have a very nice 8-port UCB working perfectly. Another example of the hobby at its best. 73s, Alan WA4SCA -Original Message- From: Phil Theis [mailto:p...@k3tuf.com] Sent: Monday, December 29, 2014 1:04 PM To: wa4...@gmail.com; flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Flexwire (I2C) question Hi Alan, You are not mentioning the UCB form where you tell the application what bits you want activated. The first two entries are dedicated to the V/U module, Be sure to press the FlexWire button on that form. And you must select each bit that you want activated for each band. You can get to the form by pressing Ctrl + Alt + U Phil K3TUF ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz To opt out of the Reflector: http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
[Flexradio] FlexWire (I2C) question
I have a VU-5K and a K3TUF FlexWire adapter to use with a UCB. In testing the adapter, I wasn't able to see any change in the open collector outputs using either the recommended meter diode test, or an LED and 1K resistor from +5. Both the FlexWire Clock and Data lines show +3V DC on a 40 MHz scope. Before I open a ticket, what should I be seeing, and is there anything else besides enabling the button in the XVRT form? It is permanently enabled for the VHF and UHF modules. 73s, Alan WA4SCA ___ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz To opt out of the Reflector: http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
[Flexradio] FlexWire peripherals
Don, I use it for switching transverters and through DDUTIL you can switch HF antennas as well. It simply needs a PCA9555A chip on the I2C port. I put together a little peripheral for this purpose. I documented it at k3tuf.com/FW.html 73, Phil K3TUF ___ 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] FlexWire Peripheral Interface Bus
What ever happened to the peripherals for this port or the software support for antenna tuners, rotor controllers and band switches etc... ? Don, kd6hq ___ 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] FlexWire Peripheral Interface Bus
DDUtil pretty much eliminated the need for FlexWire widgets. Tim Ellison On 12/16/2012 5:35 PM, Don wrote: What ever happened to the peripherals for this port or the software support for antenna tuners, rotor controllers and band switches etc... ? Don, kd6hq ___ 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/
[Flexradio] Flexwire
Has anyone done any work with the Flexwire which allows it to trip a relay to access external Transverters by using the UCB Address in the XVTR Menu? Or is there a way to piggyback Transverters on the XVTR ports. Thanks Craig, W1MSG ___ 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] Flexwire
Oh yes. Go visit http://k3tuf.com/ and when you're through drooling at Phil's fabulous antenna setup, click on the Flexwire tab. Phil sells a very slick little board with 16 open collector outputs that can switch up to 16 external transverters. The really beautiful part of all this is the ability in PSDR to define each of those transverters so you can select them with just a click on the appropriate band button, and the frequency will read out the actual transverter frequency. You can also enter an LO error for each transverter to compensate as needed. It truly is the slickest thing since sliced bread ;o)) I use a similar setup here in a rover to switch 10 bands using a 1500 as the IF. Cannot be beat. Many thanks to Phil for making the hardware available. 73, Army - AE5P -Original Message- From: flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz [mailto:flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz] On Behalf Of Craig Gagner Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2012 11:30 AM To: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] Flexwire Has anyone done any work with the Flexwire which allows it to trip a relay to access external Transverters by using the UCB Address in the XVTR Menu? Or is there a way to piggyback Transverters on the XVTR ports. Thanks Craig, W1MSG ___ 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/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
Drooling is an understatement. I'm going to get mine on order ASAP.. 73, Tim - WJ0G On 9/27/12 10:52 AM, Army Curtis wrote: Oh yes. Go visit http://k3tuf.com/ and when you're through drooling at Phil's fabulous antenna setup, click on the Flexwire tab. Phil sells a very slick little board with 16 open collector outputs that can switch up to 16 external transverters. The really beautiful part of all this is the ability in PSDR to define each of those transverters so you can select them with just a click on the appropriate band button, and the frequency will read out the actual transverter frequency. You can also enter an LO error for each transverter to compensate as needed. It truly is the slickest thing since sliced bread ;o)) I use a similar setup here in a rover to switch 10 bands using a 1500 as the IF. Cannot be beat. Many thanks to Phil for making the hardware available. 73, Army - AE5P -Original Message- From: flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz [mailto:flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz] On Behalf Of Craig Gagner Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2012 11:30 AM To: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] Flexwire Has anyone done any work with the Flexwire which allows it to trip a relay to access external Transverters by using the UCB Address in the XVTR Menu? Or is there a way to piggyback Transverters on the XVTR ports. Thanks Craig, W1MSG ___ 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/ . ___ 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] Flexwire
K3TUF's website says the UCB is longer available. Bob, NZ5A Sent from my iPhone On Sep 27, 2012, at 11:52 AM, Army Curtis a...@suddenlink.net wrote: Oh yes. Go visit http://k3tuf.com/ and when you're through drooling at Phil's fabulous antenna setup, click on the Flexwire tab. Phil sells a very slick little board with 16 open collector outputs that can switch up to 16 external transverters. The really beautiful part of all this is the ability in PSDR to define each of those transverters so you can select them with just a click on the appropriate band button, and the frequency will read out the actual transverter frequency. You can also enter an LO error for each transverter to compensate as needed. It truly is the slickest thing since sliced bread ;o)) I use a similar setup here in a rover to switch 10 bands using a 1500 as the IF. Cannot be beat. Many thanks to Phil for making the hardware available. 73, Army - AE5P -Original Message- From: flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz [mailto:flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz] On Behalf Of Craig Gagner Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2012 11:30 AM To: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] Flexwire Has anyone done any work with the Flexwire which allows it to trip a relay to access external Transverters by using the UCB Address in the XVTR Menu? Or is there a way to piggyback Transverters on the XVTR ports. Thanks Craig, W1MSG ___ 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/ ___ 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] Flexwire
Yes, it does. Luckily I was not speaking of the UCB, but of his current stand-alone board that plugs into the Flex-wire port and provides 16 open collector outputs. It is available, and at a considerably lower price than the original UCB. Usual disclaimers apply. 73, Army - AE5P -Original Message- From: Robert Logan [mailto:bob.loga...@yahoo.com] Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2012 4:07 PM To: Army Curtis Cc: Craig Gagner; flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire K3TUF's website says the UCB is longer available. Bob, NZ5A Sent from my iPhone On Sep 27, 2012, at 11:52 AM, Army Curtis a...@suddenlink.net wrote: Oh yes. Go visit http://k3tuf.com/ and when you're through drooling at Phil's fabulous antenna setup, click on the Flexwire tab. Phil sells a very slick little board with 16 open collector outputs that can switch up to 16 external transverters. The really beautiful part of all this is the ability in PSDR to define each of those transverters so you can select them with just a click on the appropriate band button, and the frequency will read out the actual transverter frequency. You can also enter an LO error for each transverter to compensate as needed. It truly is the slickest thing since sliced bread ;o)) I use a similar setup here in a rover to switch 10 bands using a 1500 as the IF. Cannot be beat. Many thanks to Phil for making the hardware available. 73, Army - AE5P -Original Message- From: flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz [mailto:flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz] On Behalf Of Craig Gagner Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2012 11:30 AM To: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] Flexwire Has anyone done any work with the Flexwire which allows it to trip a relay to access external Transverters by using the UCB Address in the XVTR Menu? Or is there a way to piggyback Transverters on the XVTR ports. Thanks Craig, W1MSG ___ 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/ ___ 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] Flexwire accessories in the future?
Does Flex have any plans to release any accessories that use the Flexwire port in the near future? If so can you give a hint as to what they would do? Are there any other companies that make make anything to use with that port? Zack N8FNR ___ 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] FlexWire accessories
I have begun to update the website with information on VHF transverter interfaces for the FlexWire port. See k3tuf.com and choose FlexWire Information Thanks, Phil K3TUF ___ 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] FlexWire interface for VHF UCB
I have several beta test positive results so I am now ready to take orders for the daughter board for the UCB. This will take FlexWire instructions from the 5000, 3000 or 1500, although I have not had it tested on a 3000. Currently PowerSDR only sends instructions out the FlexWire port for bands that are identified in the XVTRs form. Data values are identified in the UCB form where the FlexWire output is selected. This interface board is a fully constructed and tested surface mount board consisting of a DB9 FlexWire connector and short cable to the small board which plugs into the UCB. The board uses the same I2C chip, the PCA9555, that is used internally in the Flex products. The output of the chip then is routed through a header set of pins to the existing UCB. The user needs to install a supplied header on the UCB. I have been using this interface along with the PowerSDR code for over a year now (along with a handful of others) and it has been working without a hitch. My station has automatic switching all the way from 160 meters through 24GHz. VHF and above selects the appropriate transverter via the interface and UCB. The low bands are switched using band data from N1MM using DDUTIL to share logging and DXLAB. Some day we hope to get HF data from PowerSDR so no additional logging software will be needed to switch antennas. Completed FlexWire interface boards will sell for 25 dollars shipped in the lower 48, elsewhere plus additional shipping. I will accept Paypal at this email. For those who have emailed me waiting, I will now go back and respond to your request, in case I miss someone, please feel free to send another request. I do plan on bringing several to Dayton. Thanks for all those who have been waiting. Phil K3TUF ___ 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] Flexwire Pin 3 Question
I know this is in the manual but……. Does this pin put out a DC voltage to switch a relay? If so how much? If not what is its intended use? Thanks KS4JU ___ 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] FlexWire
Hello, As I just purchased a 5000a, I am still in my learning curve. I searched the flex knowledge base before submitting this question. 1) What is the function of Flexwire port ? Is it supported in software? I tried to google it and found nothing. Thank you and 73 Robert ___ 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] FlexWire
The FlexWire port exposes several different types of I/O and they differ based on radio model, as the FLEX-1500 has version 2 of the FlexWire port whereas the F5K and F3K have version 1. FlexWire v1 has facility for audio input, audio output, 13.8 VDC voltage output and the necessary connections to interface with the radio's I2C bus. Here is an explanation of I2C, which is a bus that utilizes a messaging protocol so that the radio can talk to external hardware devices. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%C2%B2C In regards to FLEX SDRs, it can be used for a multitude of things by interfacing the radio to external device that utilize I2C interfaces. To date, there are only a few I2C devices that have been developed by third-party experimenters; a prototype I2C UCB (universal controller board) by Phil K3TUF (http://k3tuf.com/UCB.html ) and a Widget by K5FR for use with his DDUtil software that provide band switching and ALC for certain amps (http://flexwire-adapter.blogspot.com/) The FlexWire v2 interface on the FLEX-1500 has facilities for keying up external devices, like transverters since it does not have a dedicated keying output like the F5K and F3K. http://kc.flexradio.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50449.aspx -Tim -Original Message- From: flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz [mailto:flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz] On Behalf Of Robert Costa Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2011 3:44 PM To: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] FlexWire Hello, As I just purchased a 5000a, I am still in my learning curve. I searched the flex knowledge base before submitting this question. 1) What is the function of Flexwire port ? Is it supported in software? I tried to google it and found nothing. Thank you and 73 Robert ___ 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/
[Flexradio] Flexwire I2C communication
Is the I2C protocol described anywhere at all? I had a quick search of the Knowledge base, but couldn't find anything. Mike VA3MW ___ 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] flexwire audio in
Hi Guys, Im having troubles with the Flexwire port (FLEX3000) and getting line audio in from my rack. The active/hot is obviously pin 2 - however which ground should be used, pin 1 or pin 5 (or are they the same?) I wired it up via pin 1 as ground and 2 as hot/live/audio+ however cant get any signal into the flex. Ive gone into the audio settings and told it the audio comes in via Flexwire but still nothing.. Im also going via an I-Box.. Anyone have any ideas? (it used to work via the mic socket previously but I want to move it all away from front panel) Cheers Anthony ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: [Flexradio] flexwire audio in
Problem solved, Audio out problem from rack! (DUH) :) -- From: Anthony M anth...@consultexcel.com.au Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2009 8:10 PM To: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] flexwire audio in Hi Guys, Im having troubles with the Flexwire port (FLEX3000) and getting line audio in from my rack. The active/hot is obviously pin 2 - however which ground should be used, pin 1 or pin 5 (or are they the same?) I wired it up via pin 1 as ground and 2 as hot/live/audio+ however cant get any signal into the flex. Ive gone into the audio settings and told it the audio comes in via Flexwire but still nothing.. Im also going via an I-Box.. Anyone have any ideas? (it used to work via the mic socket previously but I want to move it all away from front panel) Cheers Anthony ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ Message delivered to anth...@consultexcel.com.au ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: [Flexradio] flexwire audio in
One question however, Has anyone else noticed much worse RF getting in via Flexwire vs Mic socket? Or is it just me... -- From: Anthony M anth...@consultexcel.com.au Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2009 9:04 PM To: Anthony M anth...@consultexcel.com.au; flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] flexwire audio in Problem solved, Audio out problem from rack! (DUH) :) -- From: Anthony M anth...@consultexcel.com.au Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2009 8:10 PM To: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] flexwire audio in Hi Guys, Im having troubles with the Flexwire port (FLEX3000) and getting line audio in from my rack. The active/hot is obviously pin 2 - however which ground should be used, pin 1 or pin 5 (or are they the same?) I wired it up via pin 1 as ground and 2 as hot/live/audio+ however cant get any signal into the flex. Ive gone into the audio settings and told it the audio comes in via Flexwire but still nothing.. Im also going via an I-Box.. Anyone have any ideas? (it used to work via the mic socket previously but I want to move it all away from front panel) Cheers Anthony ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ Message delivered to anth...@consultexcel.com.au ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ Message delivered to anth...@consultexcel.com.au ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: [Flexradio] flexwire audio in
Anthony, As a user of outboard audio equipment and a F5K I ran into a problem last week that may shed some light on what you are seeing. I was using a preamp and condenser studio mic; the preamp has a row of LEDs to show the audio level output. This was setup with about three of twelve LEDs lighting for normal audio. The F5K mic level was set at peaks just less than 0db. I changed to a dynamic studio mic and the fun began. I set it up the same way as the condenser mic. I got complaints about an echo or reverb in my audio. This problem really showed itself on 40M. I got no complaints on 20 or 17M. After all the usual playing around and disconnecting extraneous cables to the computer and checking connections there was no improvement. Finally, with some help and lots of suggestion I started backing down the gain on the preamp, note that the audio level was set to same level as the condenser mic according to the LED output lights. Once the mic level was backed down to about half of the previous setting the problem was gone. With this setting none of the LEDs light. I had to increase the MIC gain in the F5K to normal levels as indicated above but it worked great. It was suggested this problem might have been caused by the difference in mic impedance and the way the preamp was measuring the output. You might try experimenting with the output level of the preamp to see if this cures the problem. George W2GS -Original Message- From: flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz [mailto:flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz]on Behalf Of Anthony M Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2009 4:12 AM To: Anthony M; flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] flexwire audio in One question however, Has anyone else noticed much worse RF getting in via Flexwire vs Mic socket? Or is it just me... -- From: Anthony M anth...@consultexcel.com.au Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2009 9:04 PM To: Anthony M anth...@consultexcel.com.au; flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] flexwire audio in Problem solved, Audio out problem from rack! (DUH) :) -- From: Anthony M anth...@consultexcel.com.au Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2009 8:10 PM To: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] flexwire audio in Hi Guys, Im having troubles with the Flexwire port (FLEX3000) and getting line audio in from my rack. The active/hot is obviously pin 2 - however which ground should be used, pin 1 or pin 5 (or are they the same?) I wired it up via pin 1 as ground and 2 as hot/live/audio+ however cant get any signal into the flex. Ive gone into the audio settings and told it the audio comes in via Flexwire but still nothing.. Im also going via an I-Box.. Anyone have any ideas? (it used to work via the mic socket previously but I want to move it all away from front panel) Cheers Anthony ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ Message delivered to anth...@consultexcel.com.au ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ Message delivered to anth...@consultexcel.com.au ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ Message delivered to a...@bellsouth.net ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
[Flexradio] Flexwire audio in
Hello, Just curious about the Flexwire audio in specs, is it line leven instead of mic level? Does it bypass the mic preamp? Jesse 73 N4BFD http://www.qrz.com/db/N4BFD ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire audio in
Line level and it does not use the mic preamp. -Tim -Original Message- From: flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz [mailto:flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz] On Behalf Of Jesse N4BFD Sent: Saturday, September 19, 2009 4:46 PM Cc: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: [Flexradio] Flexwire audio in Hello, Just curious about the Flexwire audio in specs, is it line leven instead of mic level? Does it bypass the mic preamp? Jesse 73 N4BFD http://www.qrz.com/db/N4BFD ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ Message delivered to telli...@itsco.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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: [Flexradio] FlexWire Adapter Progress
Really pretty layout, board and enclosure. Excellent work my friend! 73 Neal k3nc On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 4:16 PM, Steve Nance sna...@charter.net wrote: The proto enclosure is done. See the blog for more info. http://flexwire-adapter.blogspot.com/ No additional reflector posts will be made on this project. If you're interested in this project you'll have to follow the blog or check back regularly. 73, Steve K5FR ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire adapter
Hello Fellow Flexers and especially to Steve K5FR. The Flexwire project will surely interest anyone who has an interest (as do I), in operating their Flex radio, remote. I know that we are largely spoilt by how easy it is to do so now, but it is not so easy to adjust output power, to control a linear amplifier and, most importantly, to be able to verify that the linear is following band changes that we make. Steve, I would be happy to pay in the order of $100 (which in Australian dollars is closer to $200 at present), so that I can regain this function from my old steam driven system that I used on my FT1000 MP. 73 Brian VK7RR ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire adapter
On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 1:39 AM, Brian Morgan brianmor...@netspace.net.au wrote: The Flexwire project will surely interest anyone who has an interest (as do I), in operating their Flex radio, remote. I know that we are largely spoilt by how easy it is to do so now, but it is not so easy to adjust output power, to control a linear amplifier and, most importantly, to be able to verify that the linear is following band changes that we make. Steve, I would be happy to pay in the order of $100 (which in Australian dollars is closer to $200 at present), so that I can regain this function from my old steam driven system that I used on my FT1000 MP. My only comment is that using FlexWire to interface to the stunt box means that the box may only be used with Flex radios. If one were to use some other interface, IP-over-Ethernet would be my first choice, then it could be used with any radio in any shack as the Rig Control Program could send it commands just as easily. PowerSDR can just as easily send CAT commands via a network socket as it can a dedicated Flexwire socket. Yes, it would require the stunt box to have an IP stack in it but more and more that is available with microcontrollers. For example, if you don't want to have to build the network stack you can start with something like the Maxim 'TINI'. http://www.maxim-ic.com/products/microcontrollers/tini/ I am sure there are others but that is one that is just off the top of my head. 73 de Brian, WB6RQN/J79BPL ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire adapter
My only comment is that using FlexWire to interface to the stunt box means that the box may only be used with Flex radios. If one were to use some other interface, IP-over-Ethernet would be my first choice, then it could be used with any radio in any shack as the Rig Control Program could send it commands just as easily. PowerSDR can just as easily send CAT commands via a network socket as it can a dedicated Flexwire socket. Yes, it would require the stunt box to have an IP stack in it but more and more that is available with microcontrollers. For example, if you don't want to have to build the network stack you can start with something like the Maxim 'TINI'. http://www.maxim-ic.com/products/microcontrollers/tini/ I am sure there are others but that is one that is just off the top of my head. Or the stuff from Rabbit Semiconductor in Davis http://www.rabbit.com/products/kits/ I think the MiniCore RCM5700 has Etherenet, and the dev kit is $49. Of course, that doesn't have a box or isolation interfaces. It might not even have the RJ45 connector, although I think the dev kit does have that added. ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire adapter
On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 10:15 AM, Lux, James P james.p@jpl.nasa.gov wrote: Or the stuff from Rabbit Semiconductor in Davis http://www.rabbit.com/products/kits/ I think the MiniCore RCM5700 has Etherenet, and the dev kit is $49. Of course, that doesn't have a box or isolation interfaces. It might not even have the RJ45 connector, although I think the dev kit does have that added. That does seem to be a nice platform. Lots more parallel I/O and it even has a quadrature encoder. Use that for a big tuning knob! Heck, it sure looks like the hardware analog to ddutil to me. 73 de Brian, WB6RQN/J79BPL ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire adapter
Brian/Jim, Thanks for the info, but I think I'm going to stay with the current plan for the time being. Especially until the new architecture is debuted. It may be a whole new ball game after that and the rules/goals/methods may change significantly. 73, Steve K5FR -Original Message- From: flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz [mailto:flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz] On Behalf Of Lux, James P Sent: Monday, March 23, 2009 12:15 PM To: Brian Lloyd; flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire adapter My only comment is that using FlexWire to interface to the stunt box means that the box may only be used with Flex radios. If one were to use some other interface, IP-over-Ethernet would be my first choice, then it could be used with any radio in any shack as the Rig Control Program could send it commands just as easily. PowerSDR can just as easily send CAT commands via a network socket as it can a dedicated Flexwire socket. Yes, it would require the stunt box to have an IP stack in it but more and more that is available with microcontrollers. For example, if you don't want to have to build the network stack you can start with something like the Maxim 'TINI'. http://www.maxim-ic.com/products/microcontrollers/tini/ I am sure there are others but that is one that is just off the top of my head. Or the stuff from Rabbit Semiconductor in Davis http://www.rabbit.com/products/kits/ I think the MiniCore RCM5700 has Etherenet, and the dev kit is $49. Of course, that doesn't have a box or isolation interfaces. It might not even have the RJ45 connector, although I think the dev kit does have that added. ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire adapter
I agree with you Steve.. Stick with what you're working on now. James Lux, P.E. Task Manager, SOMD Software Defined Radios Flight Communications Systems Section Jet Propulsion Laboratory 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Mail Stop 161-213 Pasadena, CA, 91109 +1(818)354-2075 phone +1(818)393-6875 fax -Original Message- From: Steve Nance [mailto:sna...@charter.net] Sent: Monday, March 23, 2009 11:12 AM To: Lux, James P; 'Brian Lloyd'; flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: RE: [Flexradio] Flexwire adapter Brian/Jim, Thanks for the info, but I think I'm going to stay with the current plan for the time being. Especially until the new architecture is debuted. It may be a whole new ball game after that and the rules/goals/methods may change significantly. 73, Steve K5FR -Original Message- From: flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz [mailto:flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz] On Behalf Of Lux, James P Sent: Monday, March 23, 2009 12:15 PM To: Brian Lloyd; flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire adapter My only comment is that using FlexWire to interface to the stunt box means that the box may only be used with Flex radios. If one were to use some other interface, IP-over-Ethernet would be my first choice, then it could be used with any radio in any shack as the Rig Control Program could send it commands just as easily. PowerSDR can just as easily send CAT commands via a network socket as it can a dedicated Flexwire socket. Yes, it would require the stunt box to have an IP stack in it but more and more that is available with microcontrollers. For example, if you don't want to have to build the network stack you can start with something like the Maxim 'TINI'. http://www.maxim-ic.com/products/microcontrollers/tini/ I am sure there are others but that is one that is just off the top of my head. Or the stuff from Rabbit Semiconductor in Davis http://www.rabbit.com/products/kits/ I think the MiniCore RCM5700 has Etherenet, and the dev kit is $49. Of course, that doesn't have a box or isolation interfaces. It might not even have the RJ45 connector, although I think the dev kit does have that added. ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
[Flexradio] FlexWire Adapter Report
Well, after many months of nose picking and butt scratching there is finally progress to report on the FlexWire Adapter. Since the development is still on-going and will be for a while I have decided to join the blog craze to report the progress of this project rather than using reflector posts. That way only the interested would be assaulted with my ramblings. The blog will be updated as news or progress happens. http://flexwire-adapter.blogspot.com/ For planning purposes I would be interested in how much interest there is for this device. So if you may be interested drop me a private email. I don't have a feeling for the cost yet but probably be in the ~$100 range for a completed unit with an enclosure and cable. Depends on the quantity of course. 73, Steve K5FR ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] FlexWire Adapter Report
Can you give us a summery of the high level capabilities of the FlexWire device? -Tim -Original Message- From: flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz [mailto:flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz] On Behalf Of Steve Nance Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2009 12:47 PM To: ddu...@yahoogroups.com Cc: 'FlexRadio List' Subject: [Flexradio] FlexWire Adapter Report Well, after many months of nose picking and butt scratching there is finally progress to report on the FlexWire Adapter. Since the development is still on-going and will be for a while I have decided to join the blog craze to report the progress of this project rather than using reflector posts. That way only the interested would be assaulted with my ramblings. The blog will be updated as news or progress happens. http://flexwire-adapter.blogspot.com/ For planning purposes I would be interested in how much interest there is for this device. So if you may be interested drop me a private email. I don't have a feeling for the cost yet but probably be in the ~$100 range for a completed unit with an enclosure and cable. Depends on the quantity of course. 73, Steve K5FR ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] FlexWire Adapter Report
Sure, here are the basic functions. See the blog for a more detailed description. Four (4) 8-bit TTL output only ports controlled by DDUtil: 2) ports tied to PowerSDR VHF+ buttons (XVTRs menu) Sends BCD signals based on which VHF+ button is pressed. Mostly for transverter control. 1) port tied to PowerSDR HF frequency/band Sends BCD signals based on PSDR frequency and band. Useful for amplifier band control or antenna switches 1) port tied to manual macro commands Send BCD commands to this port from DDUtil's macro function. Useful for controlling antenna stacks or steering arrays of antennas. ALC control for linear amplifiers. Will control amplifier output level by setting PSDR drive level. This is software control of PowerSDR drive level and not hardware ALC control. Hope that helps some. 73, Steve K5FR -Original Message- From: Tim Ellison [mailto:telli...@itsco.com] Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2009 12:48 PM To: Steve Nance; ddu...@yahoogroups.com Cc: 'FlexRadio List'; flexra...@yahoogroups.com Subject: RE: [Flexradio] FlexWire Adapter Report Can you give us a summery of the high level capabilities of the FlexWire device? -Tim -Original Message- From: flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz [mailto:flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz] On Behalf Of Steve Nance Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2009 12:47 PM To: ddu...@yahoogroups.com Cc: 'FlexRadio List' Subject: [Flexradio] FlexWire Adapter Report Well, after many months of nose picking and butt scratching there is finally progress to report on the FlexWire Adapter. Since the development is still on-going and will be for a while I have decided to join the blog craze to report the progress of this project rather than using reflector posts. That way only the interested would be assaulted with my ramblings. The blog will be updated as news or progress happens. http://flexwire-adapter.blogspot.com/ For planning purposes I would be interested in how much interest there is for this device. So if you may be interested drop me a private email. I don't have a feeling for the cost yet but probably be in the ~$100 range for a completed unit with an enclosure and cable. Depends on the quantity of course. 73, Steve K5FR ___ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
[Flexradio] FlexWire: F5k is I2C master ?
Hi all, as I am currently working on a I2C-enabled power supply for my homebrew rf amp I'd like to interconnect them. The amp and the power supply will have an AVR-based controller being capable of I2C... I am assuming the F5K is an I2C master and my devices will have to be I2C slaves to connect to the F5k. Am I right here? Also, at what speed is the I2C bus being run - 100 kHz or 400 kHz or ? Thanks a lot ! 73, Frank DG1SBG -- Frank Goenninger Cell: +49 175 4321058 E-Mail: f...@me.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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] FlexWire: F5k is I2C master ?
Frank, The F5K is the I2C master running at 100 kHz. Gerald Gerald Youngblood, K5SDR President FlexRadio Systems 13091 Pond Springs Rd. #250 Austin, TX 78729 Phone: 512-535-4713 Tune in excitement! (TM) -Original Message- From: flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz [mailto:flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz] On Behalf Of Frank Goenninger Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 3:09 PM To: Reflector Flex-Radio Subject: [Flexradio] FlexWire: F5k is I2C master ? Hi all, as I am currently working on a I2C-enabled power supply for my homebrew rf amp I'd like to interconnect them. The amp and the power supply will have an AVR-based controller being capable of I2C... I am assuming the F5K is an I2C master and my devices will have to be I2C slaves to connect to the F5k. Am I right here? Also, at what speed is the I2C bus being run - 100 kHz or 400 kHz or ? Thanks a lot ! 73, Frank DG1SBG -- Frank Goenninger Cell:+49 175 4321058 E-Mail: f...@me.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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
[Flexradio] flexwire-attached stunt box
There has been discussion here about some kind of external, intelligent stunt box attached to the flexwire port in order to provide interface to various things, e.g. ALC, antenna rotator control, etc. Something key to me would be some sort of scripting language that would become part of PowerSDR to allow people to easily tie events to actions. The scripting language can even allow things like ALC level conversion or even transfer function. Think 'CAT' without the rigidity. (FORTH? Embedded Java? elisp? OK, that's overkill) I liked Jim Lux's point about ALC not passing through the PC but instead should reduce drive in the F5K PA directly. That means that some of the intelligence would have to reside in the uP in the Flex box itself. Just a thought. Brian Lloyd Granite Bay Montessori School 9330 Sierra College Bl brian AT gbmontessori DOT com Roseville, CA 95661 +1.916.367.2131 (voice)+1.791.912.8170 (fax) PGP key ID: 12095C52A32A1B6C PGP key fingerprint: 3B1D BA11 4913 3254 B6E0 CC09 1209 5C52 A32A 1B6C ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
[Flexradio] flexwire-attached stunt box
In my opinion the protection hardware should reside in the amplifier not in the flex box and not in the computer. The amp is where the $700 tube resides. personally I don't see much need for ALC anyway. I have long called for a scripting language for PSDR as long ago as the SDR-1000. Its power is obvious. I would also like to see a flexible button array developed, where the function of the button would be defined by a script. The F5K can have power limits directly entered into the radio, and it could be associated with something as simple as a button representation of the check box in the antenna screen that turns on the TR relay function of a given antenna. You would simply enter a max power into a field and when you switched on the linear it would use that entered max power as the max power. You could have the barefoot power independent of the max power. each antenna could have its own max power field associated with it. One thing I have found is the F5K is very consistent in the power it generates, within tenths of a watt. I am amazed at how stable the power output is in this radio. This is much more consistent than the SDR-1000 was. Combining the script language and the button field you could for example choose a button labeled Acom 2000 and the power level would be set up to send the correct power level to the Acom. If you turned off the Acom button it would turn off the key line to the Acom and you could have whatever power you wanted going to the antenna through the Acom. you could do the same with transverters or you could use the button field to set up a switching matrix for example that would control the directionaliy of a receiving 4square you have connected to the RX1-in port. Push the NE button and the RX antenna in the flex switches to the RX port and a command through the flex wire switches the array to north east. Click a button labeled Ant-1 and you would be back on the Ant-1 port which may be connected for example to your transmitting vertical. This is real power and would be something NO other manufacturer provides, or has even conceived of. It would make setting up a contest station very easy for example and would make re-routing things easy in the middle of a contest as well. At my station I use a patch panel that brings out the I/O of every amp and the key line of every amp as well as the I/O of every line in the F5K and all the keying lines, so to change a failed amp in a contest would be a matter of unscrewing 2 coax connetors, rescrewing to the new amp and changing the key line plug, and changing the max drive level in the F5K, a 1 minute proposition. You could easily set up such a panel to allow for a SO2R set up of 2 F3K rigs to be changed to dual multi status, etc etc. When I had the SDR-1k as my primary rig I had it set up so if I clicked on a spot on spotcollector (in the DXlab suite) it would change band, choose the correct antenna, set me up on the correct freq. When I hit the first dit, the Acom would tune to 1500W on that band and I would make the contact. It was true point and shoot. I had a second SDR on another antenna so I could be in a rag chew with my buddies on 75 running 1500W and be working every DX spot that came through on CW from 160 to 20 with the other rig. This is the kind of flexibility Flex radio offeres us. 73 W9OY ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
I normally do not enter into religious discussions. However... I believe that this is precisely the situation... Flex hasn't said they'll publish the interface spec. Actually they have said they will do just that. Quoting from the Flex-5000 Owners Manual Version 1.10.3, caption under Table 4 on Page 9 Table 4 above shows the FlexWire connector pin-out. Complete specifications and the programming interface will be published to allow home brew and third party add-on products. This same comment is repeated under Table 5 on page 10 of Version 1.12.0 of the manual just published. I have been hoping the aforementioned specification would actually be published as I have a couple of homebrew ideas I would like to work on. I have been assuming based on the above quote, that was not going to require reverse engineering Flexwire related code (if any) in PowerSDR. I think the relevant question here is does FRS plan to follow through on the above comment and if so in what kind of time frame can we hope to see the specification? ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 9:34 AM, Bill Ockert [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Actually they have said they will do just that. Quoting from the Flex-5000 Owners Manual Version 1.10.3, caption under Table 4 on Page 9 Table 4 above shows the FlexWire connector pin-out. Complete specifications and the programming interface will be published to allow home brew and third party add-on products. What's referred to here is the API, the model of the device that is presented to external applications. That *will* be public. What won't be publicized are the details of the implementation, even though they are visible in the source code. It's not that the internal details are secret. It's that they are and will be mutable without notice, where the API is stable. It's the internals that Jim was referring to as not public, I believe. A lot of the point of the public API is to have a (public) structure that external applications can rely on, while keeping the low-level (private) implementation flexible. 73 Frank AB2KT -- Travelling by airplane in the US is nothing more than mass training of Americans to the requirements of the coming police state. The whole point is to make you learn to acquiesce without question, en masse, to completely absurd directives by dull functionaries wearing uniforms. -- Digby ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
At 09:34 AM 7/25/2008, Bill Ockert wrote: I normally do not enter into religious discussions. However... I believe that this is precisely the situation... Flex hasn't said they'll publish the interface spec. Actually they have said they will do just that. Quoting from the Flex-5000 Owners Manual Version 1.10.3, caption under Table 4 on Page 9 Table 4 above shows the FlexWire connector pin-out. Complete specifications and the programming interface will be published to allow home brew and third party add-on products. This same comment is repeated under Table 5 on page 10 of Version 1.12.0 of the manual just published. I have been hoping the aforementioned specification would actually be published as I have a couple of homebrew ideas I would like to work on. I have been assuming based on the above quote, that was not going to require reverse engineering Flexwire related code (if any) in PowerSDR. I think the relevant question here is does FRS plan to follow through on the above comment and if so in what kind of time frame can we hope to see the specification? Well... The pinout of the connector has been published. They've said it's I2C, protocol wise. And, the programming interface is published (after a fashion) in the source code. On the other hand, if by programming interface is meant something not requiring recompiling PowerSDR, I don't think it exists. and, one might wonder what the meaning of complete specifications is... (e.g., there's several flavors of I2C.. different address lengths and data rates) jim ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
I knew I should have stayed out of this. But what the heck. Yes, I saw the pinout, it is right there above the quote I had in my first post. If the pinout (and the relevant portions of the PowerSDR source code) were the complete story then there would be no need for the comment in the manual about a specification. It could just say something to the effect of refer to PowerSDR source code for details It doesn't, it says Complete Specifications and the programming interface will be published... That pretty much sums up that there is more to the story. Which I2C format, which of the 3 standard speeds, suggested / reserved addresses, what is the API inside PowerSDR (yes, that implies a recompile, that is part of the game on an SDR, I already have the compiler). That there be some direction on these details is fairly critical if there is to be compatibly between devices on FlexWire. To quote Monty Python Who is that guy over there? Oh, that's Judas' United Front. So religion aside and back to the original question in my post. Does FRS plan to follow through on the comment in the manual and if so in what kind of time frame can we hope to see the specification? 73 de Bill WB0VHW -Original Message- From: Jim Lux [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, July 25, 2008 11:56 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire At 09:34 AM 7/25/2008, Bill Ockert wrote: I normally do not enter into religious discussions. However... I believe that this is precisely the situation... Flex hasn't said they'll publish the interface spec. Actually they have said they will do just that. Quoting from the Flex-5000 Owners Manual Version 1.10.3, caption under Table 4 on Page 9 Table 4 above shows the FlexWire connector pin-out. Complete specifications and the programming interface will be published to allow home brew and third party add-on products. This same comment is repeated under Table 5 on page 10 of Version 1.12.0 of the manual just published. I have been hoping the aforementioned specification would actually be published as I have a couple of homebrew ideas I would like to work on. I have been assuming based on the above quote, that was not going to require reverse engineering Flexwire related code (if any) in PowerSDR. I think the relevant question here is does FRS plan to follow through on the above comment and if so in what kind of time frame can we hope to see the specification? Well... The pinout of the connector has been published. They've said it's I2C, protocol wise. And, the programming interface is published (after a fashion) in the source code. On the other hand, if by programming interface is meant something not requiring recompiling PowerSDR, I don't think it exists. and, one might wonder what the meaning of complete specifications is... (e.g., there's several flavors of I2C.. different address lengths and data rates) jim Yes, I saw the pinout, it is right above the quote I had in my first post. If the pinout (and the relevant portions of the PowerSDR source code) were the complete story then there would be no need for the comment in the manuaul. It could just say something to the effect of refer to PowerSDR source code for details It doesn't, it says Complete ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 9:34 AM, Bill Ockert [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Actually they have said they will do just that. Quoting from the Flex-5000 Owners Manual Version 1.10.3, caption under Table 4 on Page 9 Table 4 above shows the FlexWire connector pin-out. Complete specifications and the programming interface will be published to allow home brew and third party add-on products. What's referred to here is the API, the model of the device that is presented to external applications. That *will* be public. What won't be publicized are the details of the implementation, even though they are visible in the source code. It's not that the internal details are secret. It's that they are and will be mutable without notice, where the API is stable. It's the internals that Jim was referring to as not public, I believe. A lot of the point of the public API is to have a (public) structure that external applications can rely on, while keeping the low-level (private) implementation flexible. 73 Frank AB2KT Thank you Frank. A published API is precisely the point, it gives a fixed location for an add on into PowerSDR as opposed to a more arbitrary point that someone reverse engineering might pick. It is also only ½ of what is stated in the quote from the manual. Complete specifications appears from context to imply that in part some of the I2C interface issues that Jim raised in his post back to me, I2C format, address style, etc might be addressed? Back to my original question. When *will* the complete specification and programming interface (API) be published? Thanks!! 73 de Bill WB0VHW ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 10:55 AM, Bill Ockert [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It is also only ½ of what is stated in the quote from the manual. Complete specifications appears from context to imply that in part some of the I2C interface issues that Jim raised in his post back to me, I2C format, address style, etc might be addressed? Right. I was only talking about how apps would talk to the hardware, not what they'd say. Back to my original question. When *will* the complete specification and programming interface (API) be published? Sooner than you might think. We are moving very fast now towards an earlier exposure of alpha code for the new radio than we'd previously announced (Dayton next). The only uncertainty is how much developer time we can allocate to a block of firmware issues which, thanks to a lack of vendor support, we are going about solving ourselves, rather than depending on vendor assurances. 73 Frank AB2KT -- Travelling by airplane in the US is nothing more than mass training of Americans to the requirements of the coming police state. The whole point is to make you learn to acquiesce without question, en masse, to completely absurd directives by dull functionaries wearing uniforms. -- Digby ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 11:44 AM, Tom Clark, K3IO [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Correct me if I am wrong. Are not these innards tied up with the FCC's edicts that preclude the transmitter from transmitting on illegal frequencies? This wasn't a problem with the 1000 because it was a kit, but the 5K needs to be an FCC certified black box. I believe that's the case. There's no FCC edict against reading the code which implements the lockout, however. And since no documentation is exhaustive, there are often details that can only be gleaned from examining the source. It's an important goal to minimize how much of that is necessary, however. In short, to cut back the necessary code-reading to stepping on bugs or resolving ambiguities in the spec. There is no substitute for having the source when you need it. As a system develops, the hope is that you need it less and less. There seems to be a little residual confusion still, though. The idea is *never* to keep details secret. The idea is to set up the rules whereby an application developer can draw a circle around what he or she needs to be concerned with in developing the application. There is much necessary ugliness in any low-level implementation that developers have every right not to need to concern themselves with, once you promise them something better. 73 Frank AB2KT -- Travelling by airplane in the US is nothing more than mass training of Americans to the requirements of the coming police state. The whole point is to make you learn to acquiesce without question, en masse, to completely absurd directives by dull functionaries wearing uniforms. -- Digby ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
On Jul 25, 2008, at 12:08 PM, Frank Brickle wrote: On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 11:44 AM, Tom Clark, K3IO [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Correct me if I am wrong. Are not these innards tied up with the FCC's edicts that preclude the transmitter from transmitting on illegal frequencies? This wasn't a problem with the 1000 because it was a kit, but the 5K needs to be an FCC certified black box. I believe that's the case. There's no FCC edict against reading the code which implements the lockout, however. And since no documentation is exhaustive, there are often details that can only be gleaned from examining the source. It's an important goal to minimize how much of that is necessary, however. In short, to cut back the necessary code-reading to stepping on bugs or resolving ambiguities in the spec. There is no substitute for having the source when you need it. As a system develops, the hope is that you need it less and less. But isn't there a target spec. Something that gets you into the ballpark? Yes, reading the code is the only way to know for sure what is going on but usually there is at least a functional specification that says, this what we are going to do and how we plan to do it. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN Brian Lloyd - brian HYPHEN wb6rqn AT lloyd DOT 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
At 03:36 PM 7/23/2008, Brian Lloyd wrote: On Jul 23, 2008, at 12:33 PM, Frank Brickle wrote: On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 5:22 PM, Jim Lux [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The question is really do you want to play at the Firewire/Midi message level, or at the PowerSDR API level. The midi message level seems fraught with peril, since it has to play nice with the midi messages between PowerSDR and F5K. Let's go through this again, slowly. Regardless of the fact that -- at present -- the F5K MIDI ports are visible from Windows, in principle and in the future the *only* exposure of the F5K internals is through a set of virtual resources that are not yet available to the public, as of July 2008. I guess I misunderstand. Seems to me that I can hack code that will talk to the 5K via the firewire interface. I guess I don't understand how anyone could stop me as I am in control of the physical hardware, both 5K and host system. What I guess you are telling me is that you don't plan to provide me with a description of the messages that run over the FireWire or that you do plan to provide some kind of API that will abstract the access to the hardware. I believe that this is precisely the situation... Flex hasn't said they'll publish the interface spec. Granted, since Flex has committed to making source code available, one can (partially) reverse engineer the spec from the source code, but, on the other hand, Flex has also not committed to holding the spec constant. (Nor for that matter, have they committed to holding the API or external interface constant) Someone has to know what it looks like. I am not comfortable with the don't bother your pretty little head about that approach. Yes, it makes sense to abstract differences between types of hardware at some point but you have to get from here to hardware at some point. OTOH, I agree that we want to say, set LO frequency, without having to worry about what the LO is or how it is controlled at the hardware level. But I want to see all the layers. That's a want, not a need... From a developer's standpoint, there's some advantage in not showing everyone what's inside (or, more particularly, what's *planned to be* inside), because you don't have to respond to comments (good bad or indifferent) about your architecture. It has been made abundantly clear by the developers that they are not particularly interested in holding public design reviews, and while this doesn't do much for satisfying my curiosity, I have to support them in their desire. (since I'm going to be presenting at a design review for a SDR software infrastructure within the hour, I greatly sympathise..) The F/OSS community, in general, doesn't do *before the fact* design reviews or requirement reviews, etc. Rather, they rely on after the implementation review and comment. (There may well be design reviews for F/OSS internal to a larger organization that sponsors such development) Reading over a few months worth of the Linux Kernel Mailing List is an interesting exercise. Jim ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 7:59 AM, Jim Lux [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ...(Nor for that matter, have they committed to holding the API or external interface constant) That's correct. However, one of the big reasons Erlang was a top choice is its support for running simultaneous multiple versions of modules. That way, backward compatibility can be maintained while obsolete clients are updated or aged out gracefully. BTW protocol versioning has been in the firmware MIDI implementation since the beginning. Reading over a few months worth of the Linux Kernel Mailing List is an interesting exercise. Amen. 73 Frank AB2KT -- Travelling by airplane in the US is nothing more than mass training of Americans to the requirements of the coming police state. The whole point is to make you learn to acquiesce without question, en masse, to completely absurd directives by dull functionaries wearing uniforms. -- Digby ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
I guess I misunderstand. Seems to me that I can hack code that will talk to the 5K via the firewire interface. I guess I don't understand how anyone could stop me as I am in control of the physical hardware, both 5K and host system. What I guess you are telling me is that you don't plan to provide me with a description of the messages that run over the FireWire or that you do plan to provide some kind of API that will abstract the access to the hardware. I believe that this is precisely the situation... Flex hasn't said they'll publish the interface spec. Granted, since Flex has committed to making source code available, one can (partially) reverse engineer the spec from the source code, but, on the other hand, Flex has also not committed to holding the spec constant. (Nor for that matter, have they committed to holding the API or external interface constant) Understood. I am coming late to the game. In my usual style I have tried to jump into the game without knowing the rules and then assumed that the rules are the ones I would make. Strange as it may seem, sometimes that approach actually works. OTOH, you would expect that, if I am as smart as I think I am, I would exhibit learning behavior. :-) OTOH, I agree that we want to say, set LO frequency, without having to worry about what the LO is or how it is controlled at the hardware level. But I want to see all the layers. That's a want, not a need... Correct. In a layered environment everything should work just fine if you treat the lower layer as a black box. OTOH, knowing what it is doing might make implementation of an upper layer more effective. Violating layering can be a useful exercise. From a developer's standpoint, there's some advantage in not showing everyone what's inside (or, more particularly, what's *planned to be* inside), because you don't have to respond to comments (good bad or indifferent) about your architecture. Yes, that works just fine. Of course you are very likely to find yourself in a vacuum -- which may be the intent and may, in fact, be the most efficient way of proceeding. It has been made abundantly clear by the developers that they are not particularly interested in holding public design reviews, and while this doesn't do much for satisfying my curiosity, I have to support them in their desire. I guess my background has me thinking of things a different way. I am used to getting into a room with a bunch of people and talking about the problem we are trying to solve. It quickly becomes apparent to everyone there which people have a useful clue. Everyone bats it around for a couple of hours and then writes down something that represents the rough consensus. At that point someone goes off and tries a bit of code to see how it works. Broken-ness quickly becomes apparent and the starting point is adjusted and we all try again. Surprisingly this approach has been demonstrated to work amazingly well on a fairly large scale. (since I'm going to be presenting at a design review for a SDR software infrastructure within the hour, I greatly sympathise..) I can certainly sympathize as well. The F/OSS community, in general, doesn't do *before the fact* design reviews or requirement reviews, etc. Rather, they rely on after the implementation review and comment. (There may well be design reviews for F/OSS internal to a larger organization that sponsors such development) It is amazing how effective random-walk packet routing works in relatively small networks. But it sure doesn't scale. Reading over a few months worth of the Linux Kernel Mailing List is an interesting exercise. I bet. Perhaps I should ask this very basic question: is anyone interested in my opinions and ideas? If not, I will only end up annoying people to no purpose. In that case we can talk about operational issues, propagation, our kids, and still be friends. (First round's on me.) There is certainly more than enough work to get PowerSDR to be useful. In fact, it reminds me a lot of the old Adventure game. Yes I can catch the bird but only if I drop the rod first. Yes, you can get WSJT to work but only if you have this other package. And then there is the VAC of twisty little passages, all alike. :-) OTOH you have to be really, really good to not want to see the outside ideas. Granted 90% of everything you get will be of little or no use (including what you get from me) but that last 10% (1%? 0.1%?) might prove surprisingly insightful and valuable. You have to dig through a lot of rock to find the occasional jewel. You find more jewels if more people are digging. Brian Lloyd Granite Bay Montessori School 9330 Sierra College Bl brian AT gbmontessori DOT com Roseville, CA 95661 +1.916.367.2131 (voice)+1.791.912.8170 (fax) PGP key ID: 12095C52A32A1B6C PGP key
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 10:01 AM, Brian Lloyd [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yes, that works just fine. Of course you are very likely to find yourself in a vacuum -- which may be the intent and may, in fact, be the most efficient way of proceeding. Actually writing and debugging code is a fairly hermetic activity. However... OTOH you have to be really, really good to not want to see the outside ideas. Granted 90% of everything you get will be of little or no use (including what you get from me) but that last 10% (1%? 0.1%?) might prove surprisingly insightful and valuable. You have to dig through a lot of rock to find the occasional jewel. You find more jewels if more people are digging... I think the issue here is *not* a resistance to outside ideas. The problem is that so much of the design and implementation that's happening behind the scenes is essentially a refinement and a critique of a large body of closely-related work that's already very mature and very refined. Astonishingly little of the new architecture is in fact new at all. A lot of the design job has amounted to reviewing and culling the best available common, Open technology for our general family of applications. For example, much of the VR is different in no important details from a modern high-performance, mission-critical musical sound engineering application. The art and science of such applications is *very* ripe, and the documentary trail is decades long. Similarly, Erlang is the culmination of both a couple generations' worth of system development combined with shrewd predictions concerning the coming round of application-level networking innovations. It strikes me as the height of profligacy to think we can do better, given the resources available to us, at least as a practical matter. Designing this particular VR, for the application arena we're concerned with, requires above all a lot of woodshedding and absorption of all the pertinent preceding work. We've tried pretty hard to publicize what the necessary background is and how it can be acquired. Many of the issues that keep coming up for discussion are old, old discussions that have already seen their outcomes decided by the real world. One of the most conspicuous lessons is where the boundaries need to be drawn to keep a system coherent and maintainable. If I in particular am resistant to public discussion of many design concepts, it's because in any practical sense there *aren't* any issues to discuss. At least -- and I stress this, again and again -- at least, *not without a tangible prototype to criticize.* We're standing on the shoulders of many, many, very smart and productive developers and users *already*. Where we're at now is in exploiting what's already there. Once there's something to criticize, then it's time to bring out the knives and axes and see what we need to learn to do it better. Until then, the discussion amounts to little more than psychotherapy sessions devoted to how our (technical) ancestors decided to bring us up as children. They don't help getting the house built. 73 Frank AB2KT -- Travelling by airplane in the US is nothing more than mass training of Americans to the requirements of the coming police state. The whole point is to make you learn to acquiesce without question, en masse, to completely absurd directives by dull functionaries wearing uniforms. -- Digby ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
If I in particular am resistant to public discussion of many design concepts, it's because in any practical sense there *aren't* any issues to discuss. At least -- and I stress this, again and again -- at least, *not without a tangible prototype to criticize.* We're standing on the shoulders of many, many, very smart and productive developers and users *already*. Where we're at now is in exploiting what's already there. Once there's something to criticize, then it's time to bring out the knives and axes and see what we need to learn to do it better. Until then, the discussion amounts to little more than psychotherapy sessions devoted to how our (technical) ancestors decided to bring us up as children. They don't help getting the house built. Question answered. I'll shut up now until I see if I can jump on the moving bus. I could use a hand up tho'. Brian Lloyd Granite Bay Montessori School 9330 Sierra College Bl brian AT gbmontessori DOT com Roseville, CA 95661 +1.916.367.2131 (voice)+1.791.912.8170 (fax) PGP key ID: 12095C52A32A1B6C PGP key fingerprint: 3B1D BA11 4913 3254 B6E0 CC09 1209 5C52 A32A 1B6C ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
I hope the interface implementation to this bus is a lot more creative than outputting to a few relays. 73 W9OY ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 5:22 PM, Jim Lux [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The question is really do you want to play at the Firewire/Midi message level, or at the PowerSDR API level. The midi message level seems fraught with peril, since it has to play nice with the midi messages between PowerSDR and F5K. Let's go through this again, slowly. Regardless of the fact that -- at present -- the F5K MIDI ports are visible from Windows, in principle and in the future the *only* exposure of the F5K internals is through a set of virtual resources that are not yet available to the public, as of July 2008. There will be MIDI ports available for using MIDI as a control channel for the virtual devices, but those talk to a proxy that implements a model of the device. In some small number of cases that proxy consists basically of a tunnel to some F5K firmware. In the overwhelming majority of cases, however, all that any application will know about is one or more virtual F5Ks. The real F5Ks are firewalled off from applications. There's no guarantee that MIDI control bears any consistent relationship to the MIDI messaging protocol between the VR and the firmware. The essential concept to get down is that, from the standpoint of any application, the entire system is distributed, and the actual locations of individual system components are unknown to clients. Regarding the host OS, that's an issue for a client. The VR doesn't *have* an OS, properly speaking, anymore than a webserver has an OS as far as its clients are concerned. 73 Frank AB2KT -- Travelling by airplane in the US is nothing more than mass training of Americans to the requirements of the coming police state. The whole point is to make you learn to acquiesce without question, en masse, to completely absurd directives by dull functionaries wearing uniforms. -- Digby ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
At 12:33 PM 7/23/2008, Frank Brickle wrote: On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 5:22 PM, Jim Lux mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The question is really do you want to play at the Firewire/Midi message level, or at the PowerSDR API level. The midi message level seems fraught with peril, since it has to play nice with the midi messages between PowerSDR and F5K. Let's go through this again, slowly. Regardless of the fact that -- at present -- the F5K MIDI ports are visible from Windows, in principle and in the future the *only* exposure of the F5K internals is through a set of virtual resources that are not yet available to the public, as of July 2008. I don't think there's any disagreement here... I was referring to today's F5K with today's Windows drivers. Obviously a future version of PowerSDR (or whatever) might do things differently (including not using MIDI over firewire.. it could use some other messaging protocol over firewire, for instance), and might decide to provide a virtual MIDI (or other) interface to other programs (just as PowerSDR provides a serial port interface for CAT). So, regardless of what the PC side does now or in the future, for now, barring a firmware revision, if you have an F5K, you could write your own controller that works with the MIDI messages, as now defined in the source code. I don't make any claims that this is a sufficient body of knowledge. There could easily be operating details in the interaction between host and F5K that aren't obvious from the source code nor documented anywhere. Maybe there's some critical timing interaction, for instance. A possible implication of your statement above is that a future revision of the F5K firmware will hide or remove the MIDI control functionality, and the equivalent function (performed however it's done in the rev) will be exposed as virtual resources (which will be published). This would have the effect of killing off the work of anyone who was ambitious enough to write their own MIDI control app (which I suspect will be nobody). It would also mean that a change in the existing PowerSDR that, say, exposed I2C control functionality with CAT commands that use the existing API calls in console/FWC, would also stop working (as would old versions of PowerSDR in general). Or, the MIDI style interface might still exist, but the opcodes for I2C_WRITE and I2C_READ would go away. This isn't particularly surprising.. often firmware and software upgrades have to go hand in hand for compatibility, and maintaining total cross version compatibility is often more trouble than it's worth. After all, there's no guarantee from Flex that the F5K control interface definition (which isn't published in any case.. only inferred from the source code) is going to be constant. This is unlike the SDR1K, where the interface is literally fixed in hardware. Flex's only obligation is to make the source code available, not to keep the interfaces constant, nor even understandable or open. If they wanted to implement a encrypted handshake, they're free to do so. (I just got out of meeting where we talked about two factor authentication, X.509, Kerberos, etc.. so it's on my mind) Jim ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
On Jul 23, 2008, at 12:33 PM, Frank Brickle wrote: On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 5:22 PM, Jim Lux [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The question is really do you want to play at the Firewire/Midi message level, or at the PowerSDR API level. The midi message level seems fraught with peril, since it has to play nice with the midi messages between PowerSDR and F5K. Let's go through this again, slowly. Regardless of the fact that -- at present -- the F5K MIDI ports are visible from Windows, in principle and in the future the *only* exposure of the F5K internals is through a set of virtual resources that are not yet available to the public, as of July 2008. I guess I misunderstand. Seems to me that I can hack code that will talk to the 5K via the firewire interface. I guess I don't understand how anyone could stop me as I am in control of the physical hardware, both 5K and host system. What I guess you are telling me is that you don't plan to provide me with a description of the messages that run over the FireWire or that you do plan to provide some kind of API that will abstract the access to the hardware. The only problem with that is if I want to run in an environment that is different from the one for which you plan to provide the API. This gets back to the standardized message approach I was talking about. That is independent from the development environment. There will be MIDI ports available for using MIDI as a control channel for the virtual devices, but those talk to a proxy that implements a model of the device. In some small number of cases that proxy consists basically of a tunnel to some F5K firmware. In the overwhelming majority of cases, however, all that any application will know about is one or more virtual F5Ks. The real F5Ks are firewalled off from applications. There's no guarantee that MIDI control bears any consistent relationship to the MIDI messaging protocol between the VR and the firmware. The essential concept to get down is that, from the standpoint of any application, the entire system is distributed, and the actual locations of individual system components are unknown to clients. Someone has to know what it looks like. I am not comfortable with the don't bother your pretty little head about that approach. Yes, it makes sense to abstract differences between types of hardware at some point but you have to get from here to hardware at some point. OTOH, I agree that we want to say, set LO frequency, without having to worry about what the LO is or how it is controlled at the hardware level. But I want to see all the layers. Regarding the host OS, that's an issue for a client. The VR doesn't *have* an OS, properly speaking, anymore than a webserver has an OS as far as its clients are concerned. Right. That is an implementation issue and gets back to the whole, what is on the wire, approach instead of, what is in the box. Heck, we may use different platforms for different components. 73 Frank AB2KT -- Travelling by airplane in the US is nothing more than mass training of Americans to the requirements of the coming police state. The whole point is to make you learn to acquiesce without question, en masse, to completely absurd directives by dull functionaries wearing uniforms. -- Digby Brian Lloyd Granite Bay Montessori School 9330 Sierra College Bl brian AT gbmontessori DOT com Roseville, CA 95661 +1.916.367.2131 (voice)+1.791.912.8170 (fax) PGP key ID: 12095C52A32A1B6C PGP key fingerprint: 3B1D BA11 4913 3254 B6E0 CC09 1209 5C52 A32A 1B6C ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
Quoting Maarten [EMAIL PROTECTED], on Mon 21 Jul 2008 08:57:34 PM PDT: Oh. That really stinks. I can pretty much forget to homebrew something. This will make it tough to transfer my transverter hardware to a SDR5000. Programming a PIC or Rabbit sounds far more difficult than wiring a couple of relais and is most likely beyond my expertise. I kind of missed the whole digital electronic development. Hi. What was the reason not to include the X2 connector? I can understand to go to a better communication interface but why ditch the legacy port. So far I have not found any interfaces in the knowledge base. On google I found a few ham applications using the I2C protocol. How long did it take to finally get the UCB board developed. 73 Maarten N1DZ Not necessarily as hopeless as you might think.. http://www.remotemonitoringsystems.ca/i2crdb/ is a I2C relay board.. I don't know if it's FlexLink compatible... It uses the PCA9534 chip, which I've seen other references to. http://www.knjn.com/ShopI2C_accessories.html has a raft of I2C controlled stuff. The real question is what sort of PowerSDR support is there for random I2C peripherals. Jim, W6RMK ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
At 09:31 PM 7/21/2008, Neal Campbell wrote: You only need to worry about homebrewing an I2C interface until Flex comes out with some Flexwire products or defines a protocol so some of us can (like happened with the UCB). I am not sure but do not believe there is anything in Psdr currently that sends data over that port so you would have to homebrew that also. Bear in mind that the radio's really only been in most people's hands for about 6 months (first shipping was around September last year), and options tend to lag... Last April, Flex made the following statement: FlexWire Universal Peripheral Controller: The UPC will provide for control of amplifiers, rotators, antenna tuners, etc. FlexRadio's FlexWire UPC (not to be confused with the Universal Controller Board, soon to be available as a third party item) is in engineering and design. We expect a FlexWire UPC release in Q3 2008. (from the support page at Flex) That would be any day now, if they hold to their expectation (since we're 1/4 way through Q3, and all) (it's a revision from the announcement in September 2007: FlexWire accessories will be available second quarter of 2008. Back last October, Bob N4HY asked for suggestions about ALC interfaces to be sent to John B at Flex. Don't know if anything materialized from that. He also reported to ARRL at the beginning of the year that Flex was about to release.. several Flexwire peripheral devices..., but that might have been optimistic. Mid July, last year, (before the radio was shipping) there was discussion about blocking a pin in the connector to prevent folks from inadvertently cooking something. Those of you contemplating homebrew... Flex has the usual warning about non-approved devices might void the warranty (but, hey, that's the same as any other radio.. Don't go using that tesla coil as a driver) The thinking behind the flexwire port is that it could be smarter than just relays turned on and off (so, for instance, a flexwire device could send BCD data to antenna switches or sense ALC data and clamp down power output for amps, etc.). So you do run protocols to use a word over it to smart devices that could do more that just sink or get high signals. Until Flex comes out with something to use the port, the second best option is to tell us (on the list) what you really need to do and who knows, maybe someone will code up something for you! I don't think somethink has sophisticated was even envisioned like DDUtil a year ago and it does everything but turn on the coffee pot (Steve, are you working on this?) Neal Depending on how a PC application talks to the FlexWire (is it through midi messages?) one might be able to make an add-on utility that looks at CAT and spits out/receives the appropriate stuff (assuming that the Windows MIDI driver can tolerate multiple talkers).. A bit of greping through the PowerSDR code base might be called for... (I'd have grep'd by now, but I have a new computer, and I didn't copy the source code over yet. The current software is 1.12.0, but the most recent source that the support page has (without SVNing) is apparently 1.8.0.. and 1.8.0 is from 2006, so doesn't include the F5K.. If I can drag it up from a backup or get SVN up, I'll take a look..) Jim ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
There are tested functions defined to talk to the FlexWire interface. These functions do indeed talk through the firewire midi port (same as all other control messages). See ...Source\Console\FWC\fwc.cs for the details. Eric Wachsmann FlexRadio Systems -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jim Lux Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 11:19 AM To: Neal Campbell; Maarten Cc: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire At 09:31 PM 7/21/2008, Neal Campbell wrote: --snip-- I am not sure but do not believe there is anything in Psdr currently that sends data over that port so you would have to homebrew that also. --snip-- Depending on how a PC application talks to the FlexWire (is it through midi messages?) one might be able to make an add-on utility that looks at CAT and spits out/receives the appropriate stuff (assuming that the Windows MIDI driver can tolerate multiple talkers).. A bit of greping through the PowerSDR code base might be called for... ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
Sorry to have mis-represented this. I guess we just need to write routines that can use these functions to talk to our products! Neal On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 12:26 PM, Eric Wachsmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There are tested functions defined to talk to the FlexWire interface. These functions do indeed talk through the firewire midi port (same as all other control messages). See ...Source\Console\FWC\fwc.cs for the details. Eric Wachsmann FlexRadio Systems -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jim Lux Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 11:19 AM To: Neal Campbell; Maarten Cc: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire At 09:31 PM 7/21/2008, Neal Campbell wrote: --snip-- I am not sure but do not believe there is anything in Psdr currently that sends data over that port so you would have to homebrew that also. --snip-- Depending on how a PC application talks to the FlexWire (is it through midi messages?) one might be able to make an add-on utility that looks at CAT and spits out/receives the appropriate stuff (assuming that the Windows MIDI driver can tolerate multiple talkers).. A bit of greping through the PowerSDR code base might be called for... -- Neal Campbell Abroham Neal Software Programming Services for Windows, OS X and Linux (540) 242 0911 - Try Spot for OS X, the intelligent DXCluster Client at www.abrohamnealsoftware.com - introduction priced at $10.99 - For a great dog book, visit www.abrohamneal.com - See the FlexRadio Systems Flex-5000a in action at www.flex-videos.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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
At 09:26 AM 7/22/2008, Eric Wachsmann wrote: There are tested functions defined to talk to the FlexWire interface. These functions do indeed talk through the firewire midi port (same as all other control messages). See ...Source\Console\FWC\fwc.cs for the details. Eric Wachsmann FlexRadio Systems If someone were to figure out the format of the MIDI messages needed, could a separate program feed them in, without needing to change PowerSDR? (i.e. does the Windows MIDI driver do mixing?) ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
At 09:28 AM 7/22/2008, Neal Campbell wrote: Sorry to have mis-represented this. I guess we just need to write routines that can use these functions to talk to our products! Neal On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 12:26 PM, Eric Wachsmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There are tested functions defined to talk to the FlexWire interface. These functions do indeed talk through the firewire midi port (same as all other control messages). See ...Source\Console\FWC\fwc.cs for the details. Well... adding functionality to PowerSDR is non-trivial. The process is straightforward, but decidedly non-trivial: One has to scrounge up Visual Studio 2003, then figure out how and where to add the functions you'd want (User interface wise). After that, it's pretty easy to figure out how to call Eric's control functions. (this is assuming you have a piece of gear that is I2C controlled, and you know how to command it already. here's the functions: I2C_WriteValue(ushort addr, byte val) I2C_Write2Value(ushort addr, byte v1, byte v2) I2C_ReadValue(ushort addr, out uint val) If you want to do it with MIDI messages, it's a bit more complex.. (because they're sent back and forth as SysEx messages).. Something along the lines of F0, 00, 00, 41, 2byte msg id, 2 byte protocol id (unused), 4byte opcode, 4 byte data, 4 byte data, F7 I think you need to turn the short ints into hex (I can't remember if MIDI allows high bit set in the middle of a SysEx.. probably not) opcode is found in a big ENUM, and might be 1019, 1020, 1021, for the three functions above. Jim ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
Could you? Yes. Would you want to? That's questionable. The midi messages are basically like a stream of bytes going to/from a serial port. The messages themselves are 10 bytes each. To allow another writer to the port would mean that you would have to synchronize who was sending when. Having said all of that, there is nothing that would technically keep this from working as long as you avoid the collisions. In RX mode, unless you are changing frequency or setting some function, I don't believe there is anything active going on. So in RX, this should be pretty easy. Eric Wachsmann FlexRadio Systems -Original Message- From: Jim Lux [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 11:35 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; 'Neal Campbell'; 'Maarten' Cc: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: RE: [Flexradio] Flexwire At 09:26 AM 7/22/2008, Eric Wachsmann wrote: There are tested functions defined to talk to the FlexWire interface. These functions do indeed talk through the firewire midi port (same as all other control messages). See ...Source\Console\FWC\fwc.cs for the details. Eric Wachsmann FlexRadio Systems If someone were to figure out the format of the MIDI messages needed, could a separate program feed them in, without needing to change PowerSDR? (i.e. does the Windows MIDI driver do mixing?) ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
At 09:53 AM 7/22/2008, Eric Wachsmann wrote: Could you? Yes. Would you want to? That's questionable. The midi messages are basically like a stream of bytes going to/from a serial port. The messages themselves are 10 bytes each. To allow another writer to the port would mean that you would have to synchronize who was sending when. Having said all of that, there is nothing that would technically keep this from working as long as you avoid the collisions. In RX mode, unless you are changing frequency or setting some function, I don't believe there is anything active going on. So in RX, this should be pretty easy. I was wondering if the Windows MM driver would essentially queue the outbound messages. (probably not, see below) So PowerSDR is sending messages. Simultaneously, say you have something like a rotator control that is sending messages, destined for the I2C output. Presumably, the state machine in the F5K receives the entire midi sysex, parses it, then fires it off to do whatever, then goes back to fetch the next MIDI message.. So the messages are interleaved according to time of arrival at the Windows Midi outbound queue. Indeed, if one did the query messages, I could see things getting confused. The F5K would send the SysEx back, and it's not clear who the recipient task would be. But, if the Windows MM driver can only talk to one task at a time, (i.e. it's like opening a serial port), then this is moot. That is, if when you call Midi.MidiOutOpen, it only allows one user. (without delving too deeply into the arcana of the Windows MultiMedia API... http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms789663.aspx Fascinating that they handle MIDI as an audio device... More at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms712058%28VS.85%29.aspx It shows that MidiOutOpen can return a status of MMSYSERR_ALLOCATED so it appears that only one process can talk to a given MIDI device at a time... } So you're stuck with feeding the stuff through PowerSDR (or implementing some changes in the CAT style interface in PowerSDR to accept commands for passthrough) Jim ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
Jim ... I am confused a bit. Steve k5fr's DDUtil seemingly has all of this functionality. Steve has a different approach, in that he uses the software CAT interface of PSDR and the driving of the computers serial and parallel ports, but the end results are the same. It effectively controls the SteppIR and the various amps like the Quadra and the PW1 and the LP-100 power meter and rotor direction control and autotune tuners. It can even lock other radios together for synchronizing the tuning. The only thing I see that is lacking is an ALC input for the 5K. Am I missing something or will the Flexwire box expand on these functions? -- Larry W8ER Jim Lux wrote: At 09:53 AM 7/22/2008, Eric Wachsmann wrote: Could you? Yes. Would you want to? That's questionable. The midi messages are basically like a stream of bytes going to/from a serial port. The messages themselves are 10 bytes each. To allow another writer to the port would mean that you would have to synchronize who was sending when. Having said all of that, there is nothing that would technically keep this from working as long as you avoid the collisions. In RX mode, unless you are changing frequency or setting some function, I don't believe there is anything active going on. So in RX, this should be pretty easy. I was wondering if the Windows MM driver would essentially queue the outbound messages. (probably not, see below) So PowerSDR is sending messages. Simultaneously, say you have something like a rotator control that is sending messages, destined for the I2C output. Presumably, the state machine in the F5K receives the entire midi sysex, parses it, then fires it off to do whatever, then goes back to fetch the next MIDI message.. So the messages are interleaved according to time of arrival at the Windows Midi outbound queue. Indeed, if one did the query messages, I could see things getting confused. The F5K would send the SysEx back, and it's not clear who the recipient task would be. But, if the Windows MM driver can only talk to one task at a time, (i.e. it's like opening a serial port), then this is moot. That is, if when you call Midi.MidiOutOpen, it only allows one user. (without delving too deeply into the arcana of the Windows MultiMedia API... http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms789663.aspx Fascinating that they handle MIDI as an audio device... More at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms712058%28VS.85%29.aspx It shows that MidiOutOpen can return a status of MMSYSERR_ALLOCATED so it appears that only one process can talk to a given MIDI device at a time... } So you're stuck with feeding the stuff through PowerSDR (or implementing some changes in the CAT style interface in PowerSDR to accept commands for passthrough) Jim ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
The CAT system is intended precisely to handle legacy software, so it's the right thing to be using in these situations. That will continue to be the case. Regarding MIDI control, it's very unlikely that the F5K MIDI ports will *ever* be opened up directly to user apps -- MIDI access to the F5K is handled separately through the Virtual interface, so the issues raised here are moot. 73 Frank AB2KT On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 10:59 AM, Larry W8ER [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jim ... I am confused a bit. Steve k5fr's DDUtil seemingly has all of this functionality. Steve has a different approach, in that he uses the software CAT interface of PSDR and the driving of the computers serial and parallel ports, but the end results are the same. It effectively controls the SteppIR and the various amps like the Quadra and the PW1 and the LP-100 power meter and rotor direction control and autotune tuners. It can even lock other radios together for synchronizing the tuning. The only thing I see that is lacking is an ALC input for the 5K. Am I missing something or will the Flexwire box expand on these functions? -- Larry W8ER Jim Lux wrote: At 09:53 AM 7/22/2008, Eric Wachsmann wrote: Could you? Yes. Would you want to? That's questionable. The midi messages are basically like a stream of bytes going to/from a serial port. The messages themselves are 10 bytes each. To allow another writer to the port would mean that you would have to synchronize who was sending when. Having said all of that, there is nothing that would technically keep this from working as long as you avoid the collisions. In RX mode, unless you are changing frequency or setting some function, I don't believe there is anything active going on. So in RX, this should be pretty easy. I was wondering if the Windows MM driver would essentially queue the outbound messages. (probably not, see below) So PowerSDR is sending messages. Simultaneously, say you have something like a rotator control that is sending messages, destined for the I2C output. Presumably, the state machine in the F5K receives the entire midi sysex, parses it, then fires it off to do whatever, then goes back to fetch the next MIDI message.. So the messages are interleaved according to time of arrival at the Windows Midi outbound queue. Indeed, if one did the query messages, I could see things getting confused. The F5K would send the SysEx back, and it's not clear who the recipient task would be. But, if the Windows MM driver can only talk to one task at a time, (i.e. it's like opening a serial port), then this is moot. That is, if when you call Midi.MidiOutOpen, it only allows one user. (without delving too deeply into the arcana of the Windows MultiMedia API... http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms789663.aspx Fascinating that they handle MIDI as an audio device... More at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms712058%28VS.85%29.aspx It shows that MidiOutOpen can return a status of MMSYSERR_ALLOCATED so it appears that only one process can talk to a given MIDI device at a time... } So you're stuck with feeding the stuff through PowerSDR (or implementing some changes in the CAT style interface in PowerSDR to accept commands for passthrough) Jim ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ -- Travelling by airplane in the US is nothing more than mass training of Americans to the requirements of the coming police state. The whole point is to make you learn to acquiesce without question, en masse, to completely absurd directives by dull functionaries wearing uniforms. -- Digby ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
At 10:59 AM 7/22/2008, Larry W8ER wrote: Jim ... I am confused a bit. Steve k5fr's DDUtil seemingly has all of this functionality. Steve has a different approach, in that he uses the software CAT interface of PSDR and the driving of the computers serial and parallel ports, but the end results are the same. It effectively controls the SteppIR and the various amps like the Quadra and the PW1 and the LP-100 power meter and rotor direction control and autotune tuners. It can even lock other radios together for synchronizing the tuning. The only thing I see that is lacking is an ALC input for the 5K. Am I missing something or will the Flexwire box expand on these functions? -- Larry W8ER I think you're right. DDUtil could conceivably issue an appropriate CAT command to PowerSDR which would send the appropriate I2C stuff out the FlexWire port. No difference logically.. I don't think there's any CAT commands currently defined to do this (but adding that might be a fairly easy thing to do... ZZFW or something..) Jim ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
At 11:40 AM 7/22/2008, Jim Lux wrote:
At 10:59 AM 7/22/2008, Larry W8ER wrote:
Jim ... I am confused a bit. Steve k5fr's DDUtil seemingly has all
of this functionality. Steve has a different approach, in that he
uses the software CAT interface of PSDR and the driving of the
computers serial and parallel ports, but the end results are the
same. It effectively controls the SteppIR and the various amps like
the Quadra and the PW1 and the LP-100 power meter and rotor
direction control and autotune tuners. It can even lock other radios
together for synchronizing the tuning. The only thing I see that is
lacking is an ALC input for the 5K. Am I missing something or will
the Flexwire box expand on these functions? -- Larry W8ER
I think you're right. DDUtil could conceivably issue an appropriate
CAT command to PowerSDR which would send the appropriate I2C stuff
out the FlexWire port. No difference logically..
I don't think there's any CAT commands currently defined to do this
(but adding that might be a fairly easy thing to do... ZZFW or something..)
Jim
Something like
catstruct code=ZZFW
descFlexWire Control/desc
activetrue/active
nsetparms8/nsetparms
ngetparms4/ngetparms
nansparms8/nansparms
/catstruct
Get ZZFW P1 P1 P1 P1;
Set ZZFW P1 P1 P1 P1 P1 P2 P2 P2 P2;
Answer ZZFW P1 P1 P1 P1 P1 P2 P2 P2 P2;
P1 is I2C address in hex
P2 is data to send or readback in hex
I haven't delved into the CAT parser, etc., so there's probably some
handy utilities for format conversions, but I assume you'd need to
throw in a routine in CATCommands.cs along the lines of:
public string ZZFW(string s)
{
if (s.Length == parser.nSet)
{
addr = Convert...(0:3)
val1 = Convert...(4:5)
val2 = Convert...(6:7)
I2C_Write2Value(addr, val)
}
else if (s.Length == parser.nGet)
{
addr = Convert...(0:3)
I2C_ReadValue(addr,val)
return(convertformat(val))
}
else
{
return parser.Error1;
}
}
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Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
On Jul 22, 2008, at 9:35 AM, Jim Lux wrote: At 09:26 AM 7/22/2008, Eric Wachsmann wrote: There are tested functions defined to talk to the FlexWire interface. These functions do indeed talk through the firewire midi port (same as all other control messages). See ...Source\Console\FWC\fwc.cs for the details. Eric Wachsmann FlexRadio Systems If someone were to figure out the format of the MIDI messages needed, could a separate program feed them in, without needing to change PowerSDR? (i.e. does the Windows MIDI driver do mixing?) It seems to me that the messages are more important than the interface. I have a number of different ways to talk to various I2C busses (I use I2C for IPC in our various robots). So for me, I would just want to know what the message format is. Is there are standard form for messages on the flexwire I2C bus? I am late to the party and I am certain you have probably thought of it. That strikes me as the important thing as then anyone with any hardware that can speak to the I2C bus could code a control or data collection program. Brian Lloyd Granite Bay Montessori School 9330 Sierra College Bl brian AT gbmontessori DOT com Roseville, CA 95661 +1.916.367.2131 (voice)+1.791.912.8170 (fax) PGP key ID: 12095C52A32A1B6C PGP key fingerprint: 3B1D BA11 4913 3254 B6E0 CC09 1209 5C52 A32A 1B6C ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
At 02:13 PM 7/22/2008, Brian Lloyd wrote: On Jul 22, 2008, at 9:35 AM, Jim Lux wrote: At 09:26 AM 7/22/2008, Eric Wachsmann wrote: There are tested functions defined to talk to the FlexWire interface. These functions do indeed talk through the firewire midi port (same as all other control messages). See ...Source\Console\FWC\fwc.cs for the details. Eric Wachsmann FlexRadio Systems If someone were to figure out the format of the MIDI messages needed, could a separate program feed them in, without needing to change PowerSDR? (i.e. does the Windows MIDI driver do mixing?) It seems to me that the messages are more important than the interface. I have a number of different ways to talk to various I2C busses (I use I2C for IPC in our various robots). So for me, I would just want to know what the message format is. Is there are standard form for messages on the flexwire I2C bus? I am late to the party and I am certain you have probably thought of it. It would appear that although there are two API calls, one with 8 bits of data, one with 16, they both map to the same MIDI message. The address in the API call is a ushort, but I don't know if the F5K implementation uses 7 or 10 bit addresses, or what speed it runs at. From the comments in the PowerSDR code, it's not clear whether they use the SMBus semantics, and, of course, the details of the MIDI message to Flexwire I2C are buried in the (non-open) firmware inside the F5K. All we can see is the MIDI message format, and infer what the transformation is. That strikes me as the important thing as then anyone with any hardware that can speak to the I2C bus could code a control or data collection program. interesting idea you triggered... I2C is a multimaster bus.. once you have I2C peripherals, you could control them either by having the F5K send commands (as the result of appropriate API calls from within PowerSDR, or, by painfully shooting MIDI messages out) or from an external I2C master (for which there are zillions of PC implementations).. then, when PowerSDR is enhanced or a suitable New Architecture node is created, you could do away with your I2C controller. Actually, given that there isn't support for any FlexWire peripherals in the current software (at least, greping for the word wire doesn't find any), you might as well not bother connecting them to the F5K. Just build your system and hope that when PowerSDR does support FlexWire, it will have the necessary flexibility to be configured for your peripherals. ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
At 03:10 PM 7/22/2008, Brian Lloyd wrote: On Jul 22, 2008, at 10:23 AM, Jim Lux wrote: Wouldn't it have to? There is nothing in the MIDI message that indicates its destination. Therefore, there is nothing the receiver can do to route the message to its proper recipient. Whoever gets the message must be the recipient or you need some sort of manual configuration to route different messages based on command or content. The music guys manage this with physical patching but that seems a bit of a kludge for what we want to do here. There is a virtual equivalent of patching provided by the MM DLL.. Actually, MIDI note and controller messages do have an address (channel), although SysEx messages don't necessarily have this. There is a SubID described in the SysEx, but the F5K interface doesn't appear to use it. There IS an address for I2C, of course, and it's encapsulated in the MIDI message. Probably best to think of the MIDI link as just a transport between an API inside PowerSDR and the I2C interface on the back of the F5K, and ignore the fact that it happens to be MIDI. That is, work at the PowerSDR internal API level (or through an interface to that API exposed by CAT), and let everything below that be abstracted. Then it's just Send I2C word Receive I2C word ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
At 03:20 PM 7/22/2008, Brian Lloyd wrote: On Jul 22, 2008, at 11:18 AM, Frank Brickle wrote: The CAT system is intended precisely to handle legacy software, so it's the right thing to be using in these situations. That will continue to be the case. Regarding MIDI control, it's very unlikely that the F5K MIDI ports will *ever* be opened up directly to user apps -- MIDI access to the F5K is handled separately through the Virtual interface, so the issues raised here are moot. Are the MIDI ports only reachable through the firewire? I guess if you own that device you can enforce that. Essentially.. commands to F5K microcontroller are encapsulated in MIDI messages which are encapsulated in FireWire transport. It's exposed to the user application as a MIDI device with several possible names, enumerable by the Windows multimedia API call. FLEX 5000,FLEX-5000 Midi, FlexRadio Flex-5000, FlexRadio Flex-5000 MIDI PowerSDR just gets the list of devices using MidiInGetName, and uses the first one that matches one of the above names. There's a slightly different set of names for the output device: FLEX 5000, 2- FLEX-5000 Midi, FlexRadio Flex-5000, 2- FlexRadio Flex-5000 MIDI I would imagine that any Windows application could enumerate and open the relevant (virtual) MIDI device and send all manner of messages... Someone who has a F5K could probably go into Windows Device Manager and find out what it enumerates as. ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
It seems to me that the messages are more important than the interface. I have a number of different ways to talk to various I2C busses (I use I2C for IPC in our various robots). So for me, I would just want to know what the message format is. Is there are standard form for messages on the flexwire I2C bus? I am late to the party and I am certain you have probably thought of it. It would appear that although there are two API calls, one with 8 bits of data, one with 16, they both map to the same MIDI message. The address in the API call is a ushort, but I don't know if the F5K implementation uses 7 or 10 bit addresses, or what speed it runs at. From the comments in the PowerSDR code, it's not clear whether they use the SMBus semantics, and, of course, the details of the MIDI message to Flexwire I2C are buried in the (non-open) firmware inside the F5K. All we can see is the MIDI message format, and infer what the transformation is. Well, you are back to to talking about implementation rather than messages on the wire. Where do I have access to the wire? I have access at the Firewire and I have access at the I2C bus. Seems to me that what needs to be done is to ensure that everything that one might want to do is instantiated in messages over these two wires. That strikes me as the important thing as then anyone with any hardware that can speak to the I2C bus could code a control or data collection program. interesting idea you triggered... I2C is a multimaster bus.. once you have I2C peripherals, you could control them either by having the F5K send commands (as the result of appropriate API calls from within PowerSDR, or, by painfully shooting MIDI messages out) or from an external I2C master (for which there are zillions of PC implementations).. then, when PowerSDR is enhanced or a suitable New Architecture node is created, you could do away with your I2C controller. Most definitely. Again, think in terms of messages on the wire. Who interprets those messages can change. Right now it could be an external controller but if that function is then subsumed by code running in PowerSDR or ??? it gets done there. As for extending PowerSDR, maybe extensions should be implemented as little servers listening on the net and implementing pieces of the new architecture. Then as things migrate you don't need to upgrade everything at once. Actually, given that there isn't support for any FlexWire peripherals in the current software (at least, greping for the word wire doesn't find any), you might as well not bother connecting them to the F5K. Just build your system and hope that when PowerSDR does support FlexWire, it will have the necessary flexibility to be configured for your peripherals. Well, what are the devices you want to control? What can you do with them? How do we expect to control these devices remotely? This seems somewhat similar to some of the network management problems I was working on a number of years back. My approach at that time was to have the devices themselves serve up their own management semantics to the management system. Sort of a, hi, this is what I am and here is what you can do with me, architecture. That way the manufacturer of the device can extend its capabilities without requiring everybody to know ahead of time what it can do. (I always hated that we needed to write and compile a MIB and then add the code to do something with it. The coder had to know the semantics of the variable in the MIB which seemed to me to negate the value of the MIB in the first place -- well other than it defined what actually traveled over the wire and that was a plus. Still ...) Brian Lloyd Granite Bay Montessori School 9330 Sierra College Bl brian AT gbmontessori DOT com Roseville, CA 95661 +1.916.367.2131 (voice)+1.791.912.8170 (fax) PGP key ID: 12095C52A32A1B6C PGP key fingerprint: 3B1D BA11 4913 3254 B6E0 CC09 1209 5C52 A32A 1B6C ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
At 04:54 PM 7/22/2008, Brian Lloyd wrote: Well, you are back to to talking about implementation rather than messages on the wire. Where do I have access to the wire? I have access at the Firewire and I have access at the I2C bus. yes.. I assume that there's some standard way to do MIDI over Firewire, since I don't think PowerSDR installs any special drivers for this, and it's a common enough thing in the music business that there is some default way to do it. Clearly Windows supports it in some way (and probably so does MacOSX) Seems to me that what needs to be done is to ensure that everything that one might want to do is instantiated in messages over these two wires. The existing transformation appears to be pretty broad (albeit undocumented in the details).. There's just not a whole lot of scope in I2C messages, and the obvious cases are mapped into a pair of MIDI SysEx messages. Most definitely. Again, think in terms of messages on the wire. Who interprets those messages can change. Right now it could be an external controller but if that function is then subsumed by code running in PowerSDR or ??? it gets done there. The question is really do you want to play at the Firewire/Midi message level, or at the PowerSDR API level. The midi message level seems fraught with peril, since it has to play nice with the midi messages between PowerSDR and F5K. As for extending PowerSDR, maybe extensions should be implemented as little servers listening on the net and implementing pieces of the new architecture. Then as things migrate you don't need to upgrade everything at once. i.e. a cat interface that listens on an IP address, rather than a serial port. (I think that already exists.. doesn't it?) Jim ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
[Flexradio] Flexwire
I am using the SDR1000 with my transverters for VHF/UHF. I use the X2 port and the open collector switches to control my transverters via a simple homebrew interface. ( Not a UCB but just a couple of relais) With each band selection button I can switch the specific transverter and its associated PA's on. This is great for remote operation. I looked at the SDR5000 manual and noticed that the X2 port is not present anymore. Or am I wrong? I noticed a new port called Flexwire. What is the Flexwire port? What is I2C? The working of the X2 port I could understand without any real advanced knowledge. This Flexwire does not look that easy. Where can I find information on this host of peripheral devices? Does anyone use the flexwire and with what device? 73 Maarten N1DZ ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
Quoting Maarten [EMAIL PROTECTED], on Mon 21 Jul 2008 08:10:41 PM PDT: I am using the SDR1000 with my transverters for VHF/UHF. I use the X2 port and the open collector switches to control my transverters via a simple homebrew interface. ( Not a UCB but just a couple of relais) With each band selection button I can switch the specific transverter and its associated PA's on. This is great for remote operation. I looked at the SDR5000 manual and noticed that the X2 port is not present anymore. Or am I wrong? You're right I noticed a new port called Flexwire. What is the Flexwire port? What is I2C? The working of the X2 port I could understand without any real advanced knowledge. This Flexwire does not look that easy. I2C is a simple serial protocol invented by (I think) Philips for things like TV tuners and remotes. Lots of ICs are available that use I2C, and programming a PIC or Rabbit for it is pretty easy. Is there an off the shelf interface that speaks I2C and for which the hooks are in PowerSDR? I don't know... Where can I find information on this host of peripheral devices? Does anyone use the flexwire and with what device? Jim, W6RMK ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
Oh. That really stinks. I can pretty much forget to homebrew something. This will make it tough to transfer my transverter hardware to a SDR5000. Programming a PIC or Rabbit sounds far more difficult than wiring a couple of relais and is most likely beyond my expertise. I kind of missed the whole digital electronic development. Hi. What was the reason not to include the X2 connector? I can understand to go to a better communication interface but why ditch the legacy port. So far I have not found any interfaces in the knowledge base. On google I found a few ham applications using the I2C protocol. How long did it take to finally get the UCB board developed. 73 Maarten N1DZ -Original Message- From: Jim Lux [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 21, 2008 11:20 PM To: Maarten Cc: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire Quoting Maarten [EMAIL PROTECTED], on Mon 21 Jul 2008 08:10:41 PM PDT: I am using the SDR1000 with my transverters for VHF/UHF. I use the X2 port and the open collector switches to control my transverters via a simple homebrew interface. ( Not a UCB but just a couple of relais) With each band selection button I can switch the specific transverter and its associated PA's on. This is great for remote operation. I looked at the SDR5000 manual and noticed that the X2 port is not present anymore. Or am I wrong? You're right I noticed a new port called Flexwire. What is the Flexwire port? What is I2C? The working of the X2 port I could understand without any real advanced knowledge. This Flexwire does not look that easy. I2C is a simple serial protocol invented by (I think) Philips for things like TV tuners and remotes. Lots of ICs are available that use I2C, and programming a PIC or Rabbit for it is pretty easy. Is there an off the shelf interface that speaks I2C and for which the hooks are in PowerSDR? I don't know... Where can I find information on this host of peripheral devices? Does anyone use the flexwire and with what device? Jim, W6RMK ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire
You only need to worry about homebrewing an I2C interface until Flex comes out with some Flexwire products or defines a protocol so some of us can (like happened with the UCB). I am not sure but do not believe there is anything in Psdr currently that sends data over that port so you would have to homebrew that also. The thinking behind the flexwire port is that it could be smarter than just relays turned on and off (so, for instance, a flexwire device could send BCD data to antenna switches or sense ALC data and clamp down power output for amps, etc.). So you do run protocols to use a word over it to smart devices that could do more that just sink or get high signals. Until Flex comes out with something to use the port, the second best option is to tell us (on the list) what you really need to do and who knows, maybe someone will code up something for you! I don't think somethink has sophisticated was even envisioned like DDUtil a year ago and it does everything but turn on the coffee pot (Steve, are you working on this?) Neal On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 11:57 PM, Maarten [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Oh. That really stinks. I can pretty much forget to homebrew something. This will make it tough to transfer my transverter hardware to a SDR5000. Programming a PIC or Rabbit sounds far more difficult than wiring a couple of relais and is most likely beyond my expertise. I kind of missed the whole digital electronic development. Hi. What was the reason not to include the X2 connector? I can understand to go to a better communication interface but why ditch the legacy port. So far I have not found any interfaces in the knowledge base. On google I found a few ham applications using the I2C protocol. How long did it take to finally get the UCB board developed. 73 Maarten N1DZ -Original Message- From: Jim Lux [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 21, 2008 11:20 PM To: Maarten Cc: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire Quoting Maarten [EMAIL PROTECTED], on Mon 21 Jul 2008 08:10:41 PM PDT: I am using the SDR1000 with my transverters for VHF/UHF. I use the X2 port and the open collector switches to control my transverters via a simple homebrew interface. ( Not a UCB but just a couple of relais) With each band selection button I can switch the specific transverter and its associated PA's on. This is great for remote operation. I looked at the SDR5000 manual and noticed that the X2 port is not present anymore. Or am I wrong? You're right I noticed a new port called Flexwire. What is the Flexwire port? What is I2C? The working of the X2 port I could understand without any real advanced knowledge. This Flexwire does not look that easy. I2C is a simple serial protocol invented by (I think) Philips for things like TV tuners and remotes. Lots of ICs are available that use I2C, and programming a PIC or Rabbit for it is pretty easy. Is there an off the shelf interface that speaks I2C and for which the hooks are in PowerSDR? I don't know... Where can I find information on this host of peripheral devices? Does anyone use the flexwire and with what device? Jim, W6RMK ___ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ -- Neal Campbell Abroham Neal Software Programming Services for Windows, OS X and Linux (540) 242 0911 - Try Spot for OS X, the intelligent DXCluster Client at www.abrohamnealsoftware.com - introduction priced at $10.99 - For a great dog book, visit www.abrohamneal.com - See the FlexRadio Systems Flex-5000a in action at www.flex-videos.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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
[Flexradio] FlexWire
I have a Flex-5000A on order with expected delivery next month which I'm waiting for with great anticipation. I haven't heard of any effort to put together a peripheral interface to the FireWire port. Or even a design requirements document for the anticipated functions for this device to perform. Having a new Razzle-Dazzle radio is cool, but how do I connect it to my other equipment such as a band decoding amplifier (Quadra, THP, et al.), transverter stack, band decoding tuner, antenna switches, ad finem. Is Flex going to sponsor such a device or is it up to the user community to do their own thing. If it's community sponsored then we need to get on with it as these things take time to do. Comments! 73, Steve - K5FR ___ 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 Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] FlexWire
At 11:42 AM 9/23/2007, Steve Nance wrote: I have a Flex-5000A on order with expected delivery next month which I'm waiting for with great anticipation. I haven't heard of any effort to put together a peripheral interface to the FireWire port. Or even a design requirements document for the anticipated functions for this device to perform. Having a new Razzle-Dazzle radio is cool, but how do I connect it to my other equipment such as a band decoding amplifier (Quadra, THP, et al.), transverter stack, band decoding tuner, antenna switches, ad finem. Is Flex going to sponsor such a device or is it up to the user community to do their own thing. If it's community sponsored then we need to get on with it as these things take time to do. One might want to ponder whether you want such functions to be implemented as a a 1394 peripheral, a USB device, or a FlexLink device. The former are more generalized, the latter would be handy if the firmware in the F5K supported some useful functions (keying amplifiers?). There's nothing saying that PowerSDR, HRD, or any other program couldn't shoot band select data out to a peripheral independent of what it's telling the SDR1000 or F5K to do. Either way, there's a cable involved. I would think that FlexLink would be most useful if there's some sort of add-on device that needs very tight coupling to the F5K (maybe sequencing of external transverters/preamps or something) where you don't want to depend on the host PC to do the work. For something like an antenna rotator or tuner, I think one might want a non-tied-to-Flex implementation. Jim, W6RMK ___ 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 Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] FlexWire
You are philosophically right. My only problem with other programs doing this type of thing is not being able to run the radio by itself. On the other hand, with an ancillary program, more control can be had of the functions and the output devices are already in place and available or could be. Logging programs like DXlabs|Commander already have band decoding capability and it works very well. Thanks for the stimulation, Steve - K5FR -Original Message- At 11:42 AM 9/23/2007, Steve Nance wrote: I have a Flex-5000A on order with expected delivery next month which I'm waiting for with great anticipation. I haven't heard of any effort to put together a peripheral interface to the FireWire port. Or even a design requirements document for the anticipated functions for this device to perform. Having a new Razzle-Dazzle radio is cool, but how do I connect it to my other equipment such as a band decoding amplifier (Quadra, THP, et al.), transverter stack, band decoding tuner, antenna switches, ad finem. Is Flex going to sponsor such a device or is it up to the user community to do their own thing. If it's community sponsored then we need to get on with it as these things take time to do. One might want to ponder whether you want such functions to be implemented as a a 1394 peripheral, a USB device, or a FlexLink device. The former are more generalized, the latter would be handy if the firmware in the F5K supported some useful functions (keying amplifiers?). There's nothing saying that PowerSDR, HRD, or any other program couldn't shoot band select data out to a peripheral independent of what it's telling the SDR1000 or F5K to do. Either way, there's a cable involved. I would think that FlexLink would be most useful if there's some sort of add-on device that needs very tight coupling to the F5K (maybe sequencing of external transverters/preamps or something) where you don't want to depend on the host PC to do the work. For something like an antenna rotator or tuner, I think one might want a non-tied-to-Flex implementation. Jim, W6RMK ___ 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 Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] FlexWire
At 06:06 PM 9/23/2007, Steve Nance wrote: You are philosophically right. My only problem with other programs doing this type of thing is not being able to run the radio by itself. But what you're really talking about is running only PowerSDR (i.e. whether the peripheral is physically connected to the F5K or not is sort of immaterial). So what I suspect you really want is to have the peripherals controlled by PowerSDR. And, if the PowerSDR control UI is written in a sufficiently abstracted way, it shouldn't matter whether the commands go out via RS232, USB emulating RS232, 1394b, or FlexLink. HOWEVER.. I'm not sure that PowerSDR should start down the path of embedding this sort of functionality, because, historically, all in one sorts of programs inevitably start to violate their own internal partitioning rules (just this little fix to get feature X working). Having separate programs to do things tends to enforce a separation of function and improve modularity. ANd, as a really big benefit, it makes it easier for subsequent contributors to modify, since they don't have to figure out everything, just the piece they are fiddling with. Jim, W6RMK ___ 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 Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
[Flexradio] Flexwire carries audio?
At 09:50 AM 6/4/2007, Lee A Crocker wrote: The flex wire is a 2 wire plus ground bus that can control eproms rotors switches potentiometers and other devices in a 2 way fashion and it can also carry audio I/O on the same 2 wires plus ground. It is not the same as a separate line level audio I/O. If you had a flex wire going up your tower you could theoretically work DX while you were at the top. The audio I/O on the 5K is also present the flex-wire interface carries the audio, too? Seems incompatible with a I2C style implementation Jim ___ 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 Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire carries audio?
FlexWire does carry the audio, but it is on separate lines than the I2C. Eric Wachsmann FlexRadio Systems -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] radio.biz] On Behalf Of Jim Lux Sent: Monday, June 04, 2007 12:31 PM To: Lee A Crocker; Jerry Flanders; Flexradio Subject: [Flexradio] Flexwire carries audio? At 09:50 AM 6/4/2007, Lee A Crocker wrote: The flex wire is a 2 wire plus ground bus that can control eproms rotors switches potentiometers and other devices in a 2 way fashion and it can also carry audio I/O on the same 2 wires plus ground. It is not the same as a separate line level audio I/O. If you had a flex wire going up your tower you could theoretically work DX while you were at the top. The audio I/O on the 5K is also present the flex-wire interface carries the audio, too? Seems incompatible with a I2C style implementation Jim ___ 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 Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ 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://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ FlexRadio Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire carries audio?
-Original Message- From: Jim Lux [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 04, 2007 3:33 PM To: Eric Wachsmann; 'Lee A Crocker'; 'Jerry Flanders'; 'Flexradio' Subject: RE: [Flexradio] Flexwire carries audio? At 12:56 PM 6/4/2007, Eric Wachsmann wrote: FlexWire does carry the audio, but it is on separate lines than the I2C. digital format? [Eric] No. Analog. audio? [Eric] 1 input, 1 output. Connector pinout? [Eric] I don't have that in front of me, but we'll get it on the web soon. ___ 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 Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire carries audio?
At 12:56 PM 6/4/2007, Eric Wachsmann wrote: FlexWire does carry the audio, but it is on separate lines than the I2C. digital format? audio? Connector pinout? Jim, W6RMK ___ 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 Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
Re: [Flexradio] Flexwire carries audio?
Guess I got my wires crossed - Original Message From: Eric Wachsmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Jim Lux [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Lee A Crocker [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Jerry Flanders [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Flexradio FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz Sent: Monday, June 4, 2007 3:56:59 PM Subject: RE: [Flexradio] Flexwire carries audio? FlexWire does carry the audio, but it is on separate lines than the I2C. Eric Wachsmann FlexRadio Systems -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] radio.biz] On Behalf Of Jim Lux Sent: Monday, June 04, 2007 12:31 PM To: Lee A Crocker; Jerry Flanders; Flexradio Subject: [Flexradio] Flexwire carries audio? At 09:50 AM 6/4/2007, Lee A Crocker wrote: The flex wire is a 2 wire plus ground bus that can control eproms rotors switches potentiometers and other devices in a 2 way fashion and it can also carry audio I/O on the same 2 wires plus ground. It is not the same as a separate line level audio I/O. If you had a flex wire going up your tower you could theoretically work DX while you were at the top. The audio I/O on the 5K is also present the flex-wire interface carries the audio, too? Seems incompatible with a I2C style implementation Jim ___ 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 Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ ___ You snooze, you lose. Get messages ASAP with AutoCheck in the all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta. http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/newmail_html.html ___ FlexRadio mailing list FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archive Link: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ FlexRadio Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
