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Re: boards and kits and stuff
This may be sacrilegious, but I've been using the UART ports for a long time as the comm interface between all the processors in my radio. You even could set it up as 485 multi-drop. I mainly use command/response type of protocol; the only information that is constantly sent is the S Meter value on a timer at about 10 times a sec. Unless tuning, then the frequency information is sent for each interrupt of the tuning knob. . I've used this concept for over 30 years in my professional career as UART has been around forever. It is inherently bi-directional with the current hardware implementation and processors have a very good interrupt system for this.? Of course, this idea won't pan out if you need to stream gobs of info. The newer implementation of the UART can go to over 1Mbaud.
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Russ |
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Re: boards and kits and stuff
¿ªÔÆÌåÓýI need to investigate how some of the commercial radios are doing this. ?They habe experts that have spent their entire careers on just display ops so ots good to learn from them. ?Dr.?William J. Schmidt - K9HZ J68HZ 8P6HK ZF2HZ PJ4/K9HZ VP5/K9HZ PJ2/K9HZ ? Owner - Operator Big Signal Ranch ¨C K9ZC Staunton, Illinois ? Owner ¨C Operator Villa Grand Piton - J68HZ Soufriere, St. Lucia W.I. Rent it: www.VillaGrandPiton.com email:??bill@... ? On Mar 23, 2025, at 5:25?PM, ken WA2MZE <wa2mze@...> wrote:
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Re: boards and kits and stuff
Of course there are lots of questions, and also misunderstanding of the limitations of SPI at the PJRC forums.
SPI never had a standard, but it is considered a "de facto" standard.? It was originally intended for short physical distance communication between ICs on a PCB.? That is probably 99% of what it is being used for today.? It can be expanded with more data lines to create a serial-parallel bus.? You can
see that being used to interface to the external memory chips.
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When you start pushing SPI off the board or increasing the clock frequency, that is where problems can begin.? For example, with the T41 pushing the SPI
through a ribbon cable and also running the clock at the maximum possible speed.? This is territory where the SPI bus shows weakness and it is up to
the designer to work around the limitations.? This is not because SPI is bad; it is because it was not designed to do this.? So if you want to make it work,
you need to be very careful with driving long cables (shunt capacitance), PCB routing, and all of the EMI implications.? This is why SPI driver chips
exist.? Same comments apply to I2C.? If you want to push the envelope with these inter-IC busses, you will need to do something extra.
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73 Greg KF5N |
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Re: SDTVer66.9 results
¿ªÔÆÌåÓýAny oscillations on 10M or 6M? ? ? Dr. William J. Schmidt - K9HZ J68HZ 8P6HK ZF2HZ PJ4/K9HZ VP5/K9HZ PJ2/K9HZ VP2EHZ ? Owner - Operator Big Signal Ranch ¨C K9ZC Staunton, Illinois ? Owner ¨C Operator Villa Grand Piton ¨C J68HZ Soufriere, St. Lucia W.I. Rent it: ? Moderator: North American QRO Group at Groups.IO. Moderator: Amateur Radio Builders Group at Groups.IO. ? email:? bill@... ? ? From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Robert Luken W3RDL via groups.io
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2025 10:51 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [SoftwareControlledHamRadio] SDTVer66.9 results ? After totally scrubbing and rebuilding the IDE and libraries, I can compile and run everything again. However Ver66.4 and 66.9 only run at 600MHz if TCXO is defined. They both freeze if compiled with 528MHz. The Receive I&Q Cal worked quite well, except the button assignments don't agree with the directions. Compiled with: Faster with LTO, 600 MHz, Dual Serial SDTVer66.4 -- 73 Bob W3RDL ?
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SDTVer66.9 results
¿ªÔÆÌåÓýAfter totally scrubbing and rebuilding the IDE and libraries, I can compile and run everything again. However Ver66.4 and 66.9 only run at 600MHz if TCXO is defined. They both freeze if compiled with 528MHz. The Receive I&Q Cal worked quite well, except the button
assignments don't agree with the directions. Compiled with: Faster with LTO, 600 MHz, Dual Serial SDTVer66.4
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Bob W3RDL |
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Re: boards and kits and stuff
¿ªÔÆÌåÓýGreat.? You should post this on the PJRC forums then¡ there are hundreds of comments about the pathetic SPI hardware support in the Teensy and you can tell them differently. ? ? Dr. William J. Schmidt - K9HZ J68HZ 8P6HK ZF2HZ PJ4/K9HZ VP5/K9HZ PJ2/K9HZ VP2EHZ ? Owner - Operator Big Signal Ranch ¨C K9ZC Staunton, Illinois ? Owner ¨C Operator Villa Grand Piton ¨C J68HZ Soufriere, St. Lucia W.I. Rent it: ? Moderator: North American QRO Group at Groups.IO. Moderator: Amateur Radio Builders Group at Groups.IO. ? email:? bill@... ? ? From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Greg KF5N via groups.io
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2025 8:20 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [SoftwareControlledHamRadio] boards and kits and stuff ? What I have seen from the Teensy SPI is reliable operation.? Very robust and predictable. ? -- 73 Greg KF5N |
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Re: boards and kits and stuff
The problem is the Teensy SPI interface which has some defects in it...
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Dr. William J. Schmidt - K9HZ J68HZ 8P6HK ZF2HZ PJ4/K9HZ VP5/K9HZ PJ2/K9HZ VP2EHZ Owner - Operator Big Signal Ranch ¨C K9ZC Staunton, Illinois Owner ¨C Operator Villa Grand Piton ¨C J68HZ Soufriere, St. Lucia W.I. Rent it: www.VillaGrandPiton.com Moderator: North American QRO Group at Groups.IO. Moderator: Amateur Radio Builders Group at Groups.IO. email: bill@... -----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of ken WA2MZE Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2025 5:25 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [SoftwareControlledHamRadio] boards and kits and stuff I guess one could use a pico (RP2040) to drive the display via the parallel interface, and talk to the Teensy via SPI. If much of the actual graphical processing is done on the pico, then the I2C interface might be fast enough. |
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Re: boards and kits and stuff
¿ªÔÆÌåÓýPlease send me your address for shipping the display driver board¡ ? ? Dr. William J. Schmidt - K9HZ J68HZ 8P6HK ZF2HZ PJ4/K9HZ VP5/K9HZ PJ2/K9HZ VP2EHZ ? Owner - Operator Big Signal Ranch ¨C K9ZC Staunton, Illinois ? Owner ¨C Operator Villa Grand Piton ¨C J68HZ Soufriere, St. Lucia W.I. Rent it: ? Moderator: North American QRO Group at Groups.IO. Moderator: Amateur Radio Builders Group at Groups.IO. ? email:? bill@... ? ? From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Terrance Robertson, KN6ZDE via groups.io
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2025 12:33 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [SoftwareControlledHamRadio] boards and kits and stuff ? I have a 5V display. |
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Re: Oscillations on high bands
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On Mar 23, 2025, at 7:36?AM, Oliver KI3P via groups.io <oliver@...> wrote:
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Re: Oscillations on high bands
I found that the 25 MHz and 30 MHz bands oscillate, but the lower bands don't, matching what others have found.?
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To figure out why I measured the insertion loss from the output of the PA to the input of the PA. i.e., I connect port 0 of my NanoVNA to J8, and port 1 to J7. What this measures is the magnitude of the feedback loop.
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What I found is that this is a lot higher than it should be, particularly at the higher bands.
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| 7 MHz | 14 MHz | 21 MHz | 24 MHz | 28 MHz |
|-------|--------|--------|--------|--------| |<-80dB | -63 dB | -53 dB | -48 dB | -47 dB | ?
I would expect roughly 40dB of insertion loss each through the T/R switch and the BPF selection switch U8. Clearly, I'm not getting that. It seems that the feedback amplitude is getting high enough at the higher bands to cause oscillations. What I would like to do next is:
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1) Repeat this measurement for a known-good version of the code as identified by Jerry. Is this feedback path amplitude different?
2) Find the reason for the change in the feedback amplitude path by examining the LPF control signals between known-good and known-bad code.
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Unfortunately, I am tied up for the week and won't be able to do this until next weekend.
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Re: Oscillations on high bands
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Good Morning Oliver,
Another issue that might be related is in the operation of the Audio Band Width Control.? When my radio is first turned on the bandwidth control works as it is supposed to.? Select any matrix button other than Menu and it continues to work correctly.? Select
the menu and exit the control now reverses direction and only moves the on-screen bandwidth bar a little when turning the control a lot.? Also, on the higher bands when trying to adjust PA out calibration with that control on one band it actually adjusts the
previous volume setting along with the output.? On the 10M band its effect is minimal and on the 6M band I cannot adjust the output at all as monitored on the scope on LPF output to the PA. Also, on the higher bands the scope does not show a clean sine wave
with PTT and is fuzzy. When the output is adjusted the sine wave gets fuzzy like it is being modulated by another signal unlike the lower bands which just increase and decrease in amplitude.? This started happening on the release of 063-1 Beta if I remember
correctly. I will check but believe it was ok on Ver 053.? It seemed the oscillation problem came up with the new calibration procedure and version the Al put out a few weeks ago.? All this is probably not related but will put it out there in case it turns
on a light bulb or two.
Rick, KN4AIE
From:[email protected] on behalf of Oliver KI3P via groups.io Sent:?Sunday, March 23, 2025 6:52 AM To:[email protected] Subject:?Re: [SoftwareControlledHamRadio] Oscillations on high bands Hold the press! I was not checking the high bands. I see the oscillation on the 10m band. Back to investigating...
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Re: Oscillations on high bands
Hmm. I have now restored my radio to the point where it's working (mostly; sometimes display freezes get me) and I don't see the oscillation when transmitting in SSB mode. I am running commit e72d0c9d262d75e7d9a001ef6ee03427c2a3ea75 of the code posted
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I attached a logic analyzer to J1 (LPF ACC Control) on the LPF board so I could examine the control signals being applied by the board while operating the radio. As shown in the screenshot below, they are working as expected.
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So if this is a software bug, it is a bug that only manifests on some hardware. Why might this be? I wonder if it might be down to timing: there is a 300 us gap between when the BPF is switched between the RX and TX paths () and the TX/RX line is changed (line 3446 of the ino).
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If, for some weird hardware reason, your RX_BPF_SEL switch takes more time to change state, then you might end up in a situation where the radio is transmitting and both the RX and TX paths are connected to the BPF, which would give you feedback. Even if the RX path is later switched away from the BPF path, the feedback signal might have already grown large enough to sustain itself despite the ~40dB attenuation increase it would take when the switch changed state.
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So, can you try this -- put a 10 ms delay after in the ino? i.e., we want that little section of code to look like this:
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??? setBPFPath(BPF_IN_TX_PATH);
? ? SetRF_OutAtten(powerOutSSB[currentBand]); ? ? MyDelay(10L);
? ? digitalWrite(RXTX, HIGH); ?//xmit on
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Sorry I can't be of more help trying to debug since my radio can't replicate the fault.
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Re: Oscillations on high bands
Compiling now. I did find the calls in setupSWR() that would have messed with the? BPF and comment them out. Just tried it. It oscillates :(. - Jerry On Saturday, March 22nd, 2025 at 7:30 PM, Oliver KI3P via groups.ioLinks: |
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Re: Oscillations on high bands
¿ªÔÆÌåÓý±õ²Ô³Ù±ð°ù±ð²õ³Ù¾±²Ô²µ¡Dr.?William J. Schmidt - K9HZ J68HZ 8P6HK ZF2HZ PJ4/K9HZ VP5/K9HZ PJ2/K9HZ ? Owner - Operator Big Signal Ranch ¨C K9ZC Staunton, Illinois ? Owner ¨C Operator Villa Grand Piton - J68HZ Soufriere, St. Lucia W.I. Rent it: www.VillaGrandPiton.com email:??bill@... ? On Mar 22, 2025, at 7:25?PM, Oliver KI3P via groups.io <oliver@...> wrote:
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Re: Oscillations on high bands
Jerry, please try the latest commit I just pushed to GitHub. I removed a call to setupSWR() that I am concerned might have messed with the registers:
On Saturday, March 22nd, 2025 at 7:30 PM, Oliver KI3P via groups.io <oliver@...> wrote:
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Re: Oscillations on high bands
I think this is the commit of a version that has no oscillation if you want to do some git diff'ing:
22385bc73b1046f1b095800e5b5009398fb4d57f
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My screen freezes seem to be happening less often for some reason, so I've been able to do some debugging. No smoking guns yet, though I did see a peculiar behavior where the control pins 4 and 6 on U8 were both LOW, which should not be possible. The problem then fixed it self, somehow, when I probed the inputs to U6. This seems like it might just be a dry solder joint on my board and is unlikely to affect anyone else. |
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Re: Oscillations on high bands
On 2025-03-22 15:47, K9HZ wrote:
Ni idea... I didn't write a line of that code...*** That's mostly a hardware thing. When you read the register, do you get what you wrote or the current non-driven state of the pins? - Jerry, KF6VB Dr. William J. Schmidt - K9HZ J68HZ 8P6HK ZF2HZ PJ4/K9HZ VP5/K9HZ |