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  1. ATU100
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Serial control/monitoring of meters?

 

Would it be possible to monitor the SWR and/or power metering via a serial port , or to control the tuner by a serial port ?? I run my radios all remotely, and with serial control, I could do that on a PC or Pi using Node Red.

Thanks,

Charlie KB8CR
 

Hi, Charlie.
No, no those futures you need. But you can add them in firmware pretty easy.
 

Florian Thienel has a way to do that.? See .? He has code for an Arduino Nano that pretends to be the display and sends the info over a serial line.? He then uses an ESP8266 device to send the info using the Internet of Things protocols.

I'm planning to set up a nano with his code, and feed the serial output to my control computer.? I'm also planning to add the ability to send a serial command to the Nano that will press the Tune button, and maybe other ones as well.

Steve KD2USS
 

Thanks, that's pretty much what I want to achieve. Wish it was being done on a Pi.....know nothing about Arduinos.

Charlie
 

I'll have to look at that.? I was thinking of doing the exact thing.? I want to have the ATU-100 send its current info (forward, reverse, power, etc.) out over a serial line to a raspberry Pi.? With that, then you could also control the atu-100 using a serial line.? ?
My goal is to use this info to adjust the antenna itself, before starting to try to tune it.
If/when I get this to work, I will add it to my fork of the code (the WA1RCT fork) so others can compile it using the free MPE toolset.
Dave
WA1RCT
 

Sounds great!? There is a gotcha, tho.? If I read the PIC data sheet correctly, the serial i/o goes through two pins that, on the ATU-100, are dedicated to two of the relay drivers.? If that's correct, we'd need to modify the hardware to use the built-in serial port.?

Steve
 

Steve you can use 2 ports for display data transfer and using soft UART library.
 

On Sun, Jan 16, 2022 at 03:46 PM, The Hempsteads wrote:
I want to have the ATU-100 send its current info (forward, reverse, power, etc.) out over a serial line to a raspberry Pi.? With that, then you could also control the atu-100 using a serial line.?
Dave, you seam to be ahead of me... I planned to do something similar now when I have a code base compile-able using free tools.
I got the idea to use this piece of software to snoop the display information using an MKR1000 Arduino and send it to a twin android over WiFi to the shack where the display is connected instead.
I can then power the ATU over the Coax and send data over WiFi to avoid more cables up and down to the attic and out through the walls.
Not exactly your planned setup but serial communication out from the ATU sent via cable, or in my case, by using an Arduino with WiFi is also a good idea.
If it would be possible to send slow RS232 over the coax it would be great but I guess it would be difficult to power the unit and send data over the same coax without also affecting receiver sensitivity and/or receiver noise level.
Just adding an arduino at the ATU might actually increase the noise level as it will be situated just next to the antenna...
 

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Hi

Although cable is involved you might want to consider RS485 which will work over greater distances than RS232

It expects to see twisted pair which I think is 200 ohms ish.

I've not tried sending it over coax. Might be possible with adaptors.

Jim?? G4EQX

On 17/01/2022 13:26, Bj?rn (SM0SBL) wrote:

On Sun, Jan 16, 2022 at 03:46 PM, The Hempsteads wrote:
I want to have the ATU-100 send its current info (forward, reverse, power, etc.) out over a serial line to a raspberry Pi.? With that, then you could also control the atu-100 using a serial line.?
Dave, you seam to be ahead of me... I planned to do something similar now when I have a code base compile-able using free tools.
I got the idea to use this piece of software to snoop the display information using an MKR1000 Arduino and send it to a twin android over WiFi to the shack where the display is connected instead.
I can then power the ATU over the Coax and send data over WiFi to avoid more cables up and down to the attic and out through the walls.
Not exactly your planned setup but serial communication out from the ATU sent via cable, or in my case, by using an Arduino with WiFi is also a good idea.
If it would be possible to send slow RS232 over the coax it would be great but I guess it would be difficult to power the unit and send data over the same coax without also affecting receiver sensitivity and/or receiver noise level.
Just adding an arduino at the ATU might actually increase the noise level as it will be situated just next to the antenna...

 

You do not need to send serial data to the ATU-100.
And there is a simpler way to read the status of the AT-100 than decoding the OLED display data
You can fully control the ATU-100 auto tune function with one discrete output pin from the ESP32 to pull the _START pin low.
You can read the status of the ATU-100 with three discrete inputs connected through the RA6, DAT and CLK pins?
Connect through 560 Ohm resistors, so the protection diodes on the ESP32 can handle the 5V-3.3V logic mismatch,?
or have the ESP I2C control a PCF8574 buffer.??
ATU-100:? PROG:? ? ? ?LDG/Icom AH-4? ? ?ESP32? ?
? 1? ? ? ? ? ?1 MCLR? ? ? ? nc? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?nc
20 Vdd? ? 2 +5? ? ? ? ? ? ? nc? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?nc
19 Vss? ? 3 GND? ? ? ? ? ?GND? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?GND?
28 RB7? ? 4 DAT (red)? nc? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?input
27 RB6? ? 5 CLK (grn)? nc? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?input
21 RB0? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? _START (button)? output
10 RA6? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? _KEY? ? ?(Tx-req)? input? ?
Refer to the ATU-`100 schematic:
?
and the Indication section of the ATU-100 User manual:?
??
and especially the Radio interface Operation section of the Icom AH-4 operation description:?


?
 

Yes, the ATU-100 has 2 output pins, RA6 and RA7, to talk to a transmitter.
I would like to get more info from the ATU-100.? I think SENDING data out either RA7 or RA6 as a uart signal will be most helpful for me, and should not be hard to implement.? I'll just bit-bang a soft uart, and to get started, I'm planning on sending the same info out the uart as that is presented on the display.? That should not be too hard, and gives me a connection to any other device (arduino, raspberry pi, etc) to send the info via wifi.??
RECEIVING data is a bit harder, because the PIC is busy doing other things.? We could consider using interrupts, or just make the data rate coming into the PIC be much slower.? There are not many commands to send TO the PIC, but I have to think more about this part.


Dave
WA1RCT
 

Or you can use the esp io lines to simulate pressing the tune, auto and bypass buttons.
 

ok, I've successfully proven this PIC can output a bit-banged uart.? ?I took one of the I/O pins (in my case, one of the input switches, which I turned into an output), and whenever the PIC writes to the led, it sends the same characters out this output pin.? (note it ignores the row/column parameters used to display the text on the screen).? I run this at 9600 baud.? Looking at the signal on a scope, I could possibly run it up to 115k baud, but that would be probably the max.
I connected the output pin to a RS-232 to USB chip, and looked at the output on a terminal display on my laptop.??
Note this is ONLY transmitting, not receiving any data.
I added this capability (just a prototype), starting with my WA1RCT fork of the code, using the MPE compiler.
Now I have to decide what characters I want to send.
slow and steady progress.
Dave
WA1RCT
 

Hi Dave

This is just the feature I asked about some time ago, for remote operation

I will watch with interest, I have modified the original code to work with a larger 20x4 line display and make it use line 2 and 3 simple I thought, but it was pretty difficult job in the end, so I hope I can do that in your version
with more ease ?

Anyway I will look back now and see how to compile the forked version and see If i can change the display more easily

Good stuff

73,

Jon G4TSN

----- Original Message -----
From: "The Hempsteads" <dbhempstead@...>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 18, 2022 2:12 AM
Subject: Re: [ATU100] Serial control/monitoring of meters?


ok, I've successfully proven this PIC can output a bit-banged uart. I took one of the I/O pins (in my case, one of the input switches, which I turned into an output), and whenever the PIC writes to the led, it sends the same characters out this output pin. (note it ignores the row/column parameters used to display the text on the screen). I run this at 9600 baud. Looking at the signal on a scope, I could possibly run it up to 115k baud, but that would be probably the max.
I connected the output pin to a RS-232 to USB chip, and looked at the output on a terminal display on my laptop.
Note this is ONLY transmitting, not receiving any data.
I added this capability (just a prototype), starting with my WA1RCT fork of the code, using the MPE compiler.
Now I have to decide what characters I want to send.
slow and steady progress.
Dave
WA1RCT
 

I wonder if it might work better to stick with i2c for communication. ? It's already in the code, and can work bidirectionally, so that we could send commands that way.? I see the biggest negative is that it only works for very short distances, but there are fixes for that.? There's a chip, the PCA9615, that will send i2c over 100m of ethernet cable.
thanks,

Steve
 

On Tue, Jan 18, 2022 at 07:58 PM, Steve Gaarder KD2USS wrote:
I wonder if it might work better to stick with i2c for communication. ? It's already in the code, and can work bidirectionally, so that we could send commands that way.? I see the biggest negative is that it only works for very short distances, but there are fixes for that.? There's a chip, the PCA9615, that will send i2c over 100m of ethernet cable.
thanks,
Another solution would be to use I2C-to-UART converter chip such as ZDU0110RFX which is available at DigiKey as of today (269-5023-ND). There are several other possible candidates but most are not available today due to the component sourcing issues.
ZDU0110RFX is a 3.3 or 5V device, has built in clock, an I2C control interface and serial communication as well as some GPIO. It is preset to communicate serially at 57600 baud without any further programming.
It could easily be put on a small board and attached on the same pins as the display but used for RS232. A differential driver/receiver added should make communication possible over longer distances without to much problems. It will need changes in the code of course and perhaps an attached IRQ to an IO port.
 

Dave, that's great progress!? I'll be interested in trying your code.? I thinik 9600 baud is plenty - it's not that much information.

Steve
 

FYI, I pushed the bits up to github, the WA1RCT fork for the 9600 baud output.? Currently it outputs them on B2, the Bypass switch (I'll change that in the future).? I'm now putting together a small windows console app to pull these short strings together, and will try to mimic the ATU-100 display.? When I get that running I'll post a picture.??
Note that many of the messages are partial.? They just send the things that change, and use a row/column position to write them in the correct positions, so any software that listens to these messages needs to remember what has been put where previously.

I do agree that using I2C would be easier SW to write.? The I2C bit-banger is already there.? The issue is that you need to add more HW for that, and I'm not currently willing to do that.? ?So this would easily support sending data out this new i2C device, and then you would have to write software to poll the device for input data.??
Everyone is free to pull my WA1RCT fork and try different things.? It now compiles under the free compiler, so all you need is an inexpensive PicKit3 to program your board.? Please just don't push bits back up to the fork without talking to me.
Right now I'm not planning on merging this back to the original SW, as that would need N7DDC's approval, and would probably want/need extensive testing first.
Dave
WA1RCT
 

I don't see it on github. The newest commit I see in your repo is 22 days ago.

Vince - K8ZW.

On 01/19/2022 08:04 AM, The Hempsteads wrote:
FYI, I pushed the bits up to github, the WA1RCT fork for the 9600 baud
output. Currently it outputs them on B2, the Bypass switch (I'll change
that in the future). I'm now putting together a small windows console
app to pull these short strings together, and will try to mimic the
ATU-100 display. When I get that running I'll post a picture.
Note that many of the messages are partial. They just send the things
that change, and use a row/column position to write them in the correct
positions, so any software that listens to these messages needs to
remember what has been put where previously.

I do agree that using I2C would be easier SW to write. The I2C
bit-banger is already there. The issue is that you need to add more HW
for that, and I'm not currently willing to do that. So this would
easily support sending data out this new i2C device, and then you would
have to write software to poll the device for input data.
Everyone is free to pull my WA1RCT fork and try different things. It
now compiles under the free compiler, so all you need is an inexpensive
PicKit3 to program your board. Please just don't push bits back up to
the fork without talking to me.
Right now I'm not planning on merging this back to the original SW, as
that would need N7DDC's approval, and would probably want/need extensive
testing first.
Dave
WA1RCT
--
Michigan VHF Corporation -- nobucks dot net
K8ZW -

 

Dave, just like Vince, I also cannot see your latest push to GitHub. The last charges were 23 days ago. Did you commit the changes, but not push??That's what usually happens to me :)?

Thanks, Karl Heinz - K5KHK

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