Can not find platform.local.txt referenced in Read_Me.ino file.
Ron
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Re: zBITx First Impressions from M7NDB
#zbitx
Shielding between the display and the RPi and shielding of the flexible connecting wire.
For sbitx I use copper foil and Kapton foil as electrical insulator because it can withstand temperatures better.
Another consideration is a single point ground, similar to the single point grounding of the station.
Ground loops should be avoided.
--
Gyula HA3HZ
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Re: zBitX offset waterfall passband
On Thu, May 22, 2025 at 08:35 PM, Vic WA4THR wrote:
More anomalies. I connected the zBitX to an HDMI monitor/keyboard/mouse and now when looking on that screen the LSB signal on 7250 is correctly shown in the passband, while the zBitX screen is still offset, but the frequencies at the top of the HDMI display show the signal as being 7275, not the 7250 shown in the frequency display. What am I doing wrong here?
On the zbitx, the RIT switch is in the ON position, is this intentional?
--
Gyula HA3HZ
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zBitX FT8 missing incoming decodes for QSO
Hi group,
Doing some FT8 with my zBitX using the built in FT8 software. Generally working fine, but I noticed an anomaly on the device display of decodes vs the RPi desktop display of decodes in the sBitx software.
Specifically, I responded to a CQ using the device display and knob and the contact completed as expected and was logged. During the process of the contact, the RPi desktop sBitx display showed both my outgoing messages and those from the other station in response, as I would expect.
On the device display however, ONLY my outgoing messages were shown.? The incoming messages to me from the other station were not, despite the fact that they are present in the desktop view.
Is this intentional for some reason?? A known issue?
Thanks!
Steve KF8KI
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Re: zBitX offset waterfall passband
There are a number of issues that need to be?resolved... Open a issue with anything you find at:?
More anomalies. I connected the zBitX to an HDMI monitor/keyboard/mouse and now when looking on that screen the LSB signal on 7250 is correctly shown in the passband, while the zBitX screen is still offset, but the frequencies at the top of the HDMI display show the signal as being 7275, not the 7250 shown in the frequency display. What am I doing wrong here?
?
=Vic=
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Re: Unreliable WIFI on zBitx?
Thanks for the insight.?? Mine is sitting on a desk about 6-7
feet from the WIFI AP, so I don't think it's a range thing.?? I've
had a solid SSH connection to it for several hours now and have
been doing some FT8 with the built in software, so it seems to be
just RealVNC related.
73, Steve KF8KI
On 5/22/2025 1:31 PM, Jody - K3JZD via
groups.io wrote:
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I have run SSH and RealVNC for hours at a time while trying
out things.? But I am either 5 feet away from my WiFi Router or
about 30 feet away.? ?I have not experienced any unexpected
disconnects with either connection.? But I have only been using
CW into a dummy load.? So, maybe my results are not typical.
?
72,
Jody - K3JZD.??
_._,_._,_
Groups.io Links:
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zBitx - incorrect FT8 message sent for CQ POTA
I tried to do my first POTA activation with zBitx.
In the FT8.mc macro I have defined:
F9 CQPO,CQ POTA * {GRIDSQUARE}
?
After pressing F9 in my external keyboard, zBitx displayed "CQ POTA SP5DAA KO02" but the psk monitor didn't reported my transmission.
Instead, it reported transmission from SP5DA. It looks like zBitx erreneously and silently drops the last character of my callsign.
?
How can I fix it? zBitx is a perfect device for SOTA & POTA activity unless I have to take a laptop to run WSJT-X on it...
?
73,
Wojtek SP5DAA
?
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Re: zBitX offset waterfall passband
More anomalies. I connected the zBitX to an HDMI monitor/keyboard/mouse and now when looking on that screen the LSB signal on 7250 is correctly shown in the passband, while the zBitX screen is still offset, but the frequencies at the top of the HDMI display show the signal as being 7275, not the 7250 shown in the frequency display. What am I doing wrong here?
?
=Vic=
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I have been using the batteries and a 9v Mean Well GST40A09-P1. ?
?
?
?
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zBITx First Impressions from M7NDB
#zbitx
First things first. I love it even though it does have some issues I need to address. As others have said, it is a fantastic bit of feature-rich kit for the price.
?
Received it in the UK on the 4th of May, a little ahead of when I thought it might be shipped. No VAT or charges from the carrier have been requested.
?
The date of this post is 22 May 2022 and the software versions in the shipped version are: display: v1.06 and main board v3.052.
?
It is running nicely on two batteries. On RX: current drawn is 460 mA. On TX: at 100 drive into a dummy load it is 2.6 Amps.
?
Power out (20m 14.035 MHz) Vbat = 7.7 V
Drive = 100 Pwr = 7.00 Watts?
Drive = 80? Pwr = 5.00 Watts
Drive = 50 Pwr = 2.65 Watts
Drive = 30 Pwr = 1.00 Watts
Drive = 25 Pwr = 0.69 Watts
?
At Drive = 100 above, heating and power loss of the rx components is 3.85 watts; transmitted power is 7 Watts and the battery is supplying 20 watts.
The box is dissipating 13 watts when transmitting, so it is going to warm up. I'll try and get an estimate of the thermal impedance of the box to get an idea of how long it is wise to transmit, particularly with FT8. My morse is so slow and gappy it is not going to be a problem!!
?
The morse keyer issues are already noted, and I find both the straight key and iambic modes unusable, but there is likely RF in the box causing issues. The question I am asking is this RF leak a likely cause of some of the keying issues when using a straight key or paddle??
?
Using the automatic CQ (F1) facility as the benchmark for my investigation, it fails to complete a full 3x3 CQ call around 25% of the time. The code it produces is clean and easy to decode but it suddenly stops randomly without completing. Sometimes it is near the start, other times it is towards the end, and all points in between! I call this possible RF induce effect a truncated TX. The device continues to work normally after a truncated TX event.
?
Applying some ferrites to the power cable from the cells gave a small improvement. This also made the straight key and paddle operation less glitchy.
?
I also noticed the frequency of truncated TX incidents increased as the rear heatsink warmed up, hinting at some thermal component at work. Possibly, an inductor losing permeability as it warms??
?
Another hint pointing the finger at leaking RF is when I touch and hold the heatsink during a transmission the frequency of truncated TXs goes down. Again, it does not eliminate them.
?
I also tried short cables and ferrites for the morse keys, to no great effect.?
?
FT8 also looked like its transmissions were being cut short. PSKreporter saw them but I didn't manage to complete a QSO. I need to do a bit more investigation here.
?
The morse decoder works nicely. Its secret is twiddling with the IF setting and fine tuning into the blue bandwidth cursor. Once set it appears to work well in a range of conditions.
?
I activated VNC so have a number of ways to access the machine. Could this additional overhead for the processor be a factor in the truncated TX issue? I feel it is unlikely.
?
This is probably as far as I can go without taking the alan key to it and opening the case; which is the next step.
?
Does anyone have any advice or guidance about tracking down this alleged RF issue? eg Where to Start? Applying some shielding?
?
73 John
?
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Re: Unreliable WIFI on zBitx?
I have run SSH and RealVNC for hours at a time while trying out things.? But I am either 5 feet away from my WiFi Router or about 30 feet away.? ?I have not experienced any unexpected disconnects with either connection.? But I have only been using CW into a dummy load.? So, maybe my results are not typical.
?
72,
Jody - K3JZD.??
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On May 22, 2025, at 13:12, Jody - K3JZD via groups.io <k3jzd.jody@...> wrote:
? I will second the idea of using a Drok Power Supply.? I bought a 10 amp 12vdc adjustable Drok wire frame supply from Amazon.? ?I run it at 7.5v - about the same as the two batteries would provide,? ?It seems to be very clean ad holds the voltage very steady.
?
I had tried a 9vdc 5a brick power supply that was made for a computer. While it did not have any RFI that could detect, the zBITX ran pretty hot with a 9v supply, and the voltage dropped quite a bit whenever I transmitted.? It seemed like 5a wasn't quite? enough.
?
And, I also found out that the JESSPOW 18650 Flat Top 3300mAh Li-ion Batteries that Amazon sells are good quality.?
?
72,
Jody - K3JZD? ?
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I will second the idea of using a Drok Power Supply.? I bought a 10 amp 12vdc adjustable Drok wire frame supply from Amazon.? ?I run it at 7.5v - about the same as the two batteries would provide,? ?It seems to be very clean ad holds the voltage very steady.
?
I had tried a 9vdc 5a brick power supply that was made for a computer. While it did not have any RFI that could detect, the zBITX ran pretty hot with a 9v supply, and the voltage dropped quite a bit whenever I transmitted.? It seemed like 5a wasn't quite? enough.
?
And, I also found out that the JESSPOW 18650 Flat Top 3300mAh Li-ion Batteries that Amazon sells are good quality.?
?
72,
Jody - K3JZD? ?
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On Thu, May 22, 2025 at 08:57 AM, Jay Bremner wrote:
I ordered one because I can deal with these minor issues, it weighs under a pound, so perfect for POTA/SOTA and self-contained digital modes.?
?
Personally I think the issues with current draw and heat generation make it less than perfect for POTA/SOTA and self-contained digital modes. ?The review I linked has these two items as the first two negative points for the radio.?
?
Hopefully these things will be improved over time, but from what I read here it sounds like most people are operating them from home using wall current and have added cooling solutions that add weight, as opposed to attacking the root cause of excess current draw and heat generation.??
?
--
Regards,
Dave, N1AI
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zBitX offset waterfall passband
I picked up a zBitX at FDIM, but am just now getting it going as I had a backlog of storm-related stuff to deal with on the farm when I got home. So far it seems amazing. I have scanned the manual and have been reading postings, but this issue doesn't seem to be covered anywhere. In the photo below I am listening to 7.255 LSB and the signals are loud and strong and you can see the waterfall trace, but the red line for the carrier point is about 1500hz above the frequency, so the signal trace is offset in the indicated pass band. Is there a way to adjust the waterfall? Also, is there a way to increase the contrast for signals on the waterfall? Those there are nowhere near the intensity shown on other SDR devices, or maybe it is because the background shows a higher noise level?
?
=Vic=
\\ 
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Re: Any update on ft8 messenger you mentioned before?
I haven't done it myself, but I think you may be able to just:
1. Edit the update_zbitx script, line 11, which reads:
???? git checkout farhandev
to read:
???? git checkout messenger
Then update in the usual way by .
2. Use this ino file to update the frontpanel:
No warranty included, I haven't had time to dig into the software side of this properly yet. Someone else may have better instructions.
-Grant
On Thu, May 22, 2025 at 11:25?AM Vince d'Eon VE6LK/AI7LK via <vincedeon= [email protected]> wrote:
Can anyone please direct me on how I add Messenger to my zBitx? I don't speak github or linux very well ...
72,
.Vince
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Which power supply is recommended for this radio?
Thanks,
Bob
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Re: zBITX Crashes - Suspect Memory Leak
#zbitx
Hi Tom,
?
Glad you were able to take advantage of my changes.? ?While I have a number of nice paddles that I have bought over the years, I just can't get good at using them.? I have been pounding on straight keys for many years, and can be thinking about something else while I'm sending.? With electronic keyers, I have to work at it.? ?Did not mind making mistakes in sending whenever I started out - but feel embarrassed when making mistakes today :-)? ?Should have jumped into electronic keyers back when they first showed up and stumbled along with everyone else.
?
72,
Jody - K3JZD
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Re: Unreliable WIFI on zBitx?
Some additional data on this:
RealVNC test running with zBitX in receive only failed after about five minutes.?? In this case all that was running on the RPi desktop was start.sh and sBitx.?? No activity on RealVNC other than just display updates watching the waterfall.
wlan0 responded to wlan0 down, but did not respond to wlan0 up. Also attempted service networking restart with no effect.??? On sudo reboot, the RPi shutdown with a blank external monitor and did not restart.? A power cycle is required.? Whatever the failure mode is, something in the system is mad!
Suggestions or ideas??? Happy to trying testing further if there are suggestions as to what the test looks like.
73, Steve KF8KI
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On 5/22/2025 12:30 PM, Steve Weigold via groups.io wrote: Hello all:
New zBitX owner here too, after picking one up at Hamvention. I've been putting it through it's paces and trying to figure out how it best fits in my toolbag.?? I'm hoping to use it for various *OTA activations, but I need to make sure that I have determined the appropriate setup and am making sure it's reliable here at home before I head out somewhere with less resources.
That said, I've been using FT8 and I find that the built in FT8 interface is a bit clunky and I much prefer WSJTX, which I have configured and working well.? (I may start another thread on the built in FT8)? WSJTx of course requires access to the RPi desktop and I really don't want to haul a keyboard, mouse and a monitor out to a park somewhere if it can be avoided, so I was hoping to use RealVNC with a tablet or other device so I can access the desktop.
I have RealVNC set up and working fine, but what I'm finding is that when trying to operate, I can't work very long before the WIFI interface fails.? Worse, when it does fail, trying to restart just the wlan0 interface (using sudo ifconfig wlan0 down/up) will not work either.? It requires a full reboot.? wlan0 down causes the interface to show disconnected.? wlan0 up seems to do nothing.? In cases where the interface hasn't gone into failure mode, those commands work fine.
I've run the zBitX on the bench in receive only with an SSH connection open for hours and WIFI has been fine, so I thought it might be RF related, but I tried a similar test to see how long I could keep a RealVNC session open just in receive and it failed even just on receive after about 5 minutes.?? Of note in that case, the SSH session was still open too.? Trying it again currently with just RealVNC to see if that makes a difference. I'll report back.
Now I'm wondering if it's a WIFI "load" issue, since RealVNC is going to put much more load on the unit than an SSH connection open and doing nothing.
Anyone else run into this or have recommendations?
If the setup matters, zBitX is running on a power supply at 8.5V.
Thanks for any wisdom!
Steve KF8KI
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Unreliable WIFI on zBitx?
Hello all:
New zBitX owner here too, after picking one up at Hamvention. I've been putting it through it's paces and trying to figure out how it best fits in my toolbag.?? I'm hoping to use it for various *OTA activations, but I need to make sure that I have determined the appropriate setup and am making sure it's reliable here at home before I head out somewhere with less resources.
That said, I've been using FT8 and I find that the built in FT8 interface is a bit clunky and I much prefer WSJTX, which I have configured and working well.? (I may start another thread on the built in FT8)? WSJTx of course requires access to the RPi desktop and I really don't want to haul a keyboard, mouse and a monitor out to a park somewhere if it can be avoided, so I was hoping to use RealVNC with a tablet or other device so I can access the desktop.
I have RealVNC set up and working fine, but what I'm finding is that when trying to operate, I can't work very long before the WIFI interface fails.? Worse, when it does fail, trying to restart just the wlan0 interface (using sudo ifconfig wlan0 down/up) will not work either.? It requires a full reboot.? wlan0 down causes the interface to show disconnected.? wlan0 up seems to do nothing.? In cases where the interface hasn't gone into failure mode, those commands work fine.
I've run the zBitX on the bench in receive only with an SSH connection open for hours and WIFI has been fine, so I thought it might be RF related, but I tried a similar test to see how long I could keep a RealVNC session open just in receive and it failed even just on receive after about 5 minutes.?? Of note in that case, the SSH session was still open too.? Trying it again currently with just RealVNC to see if that makes a difference. I'll report back.
Now I'm wondering if it's a WIFI "load" issue, since RealVNC is going to put much more load on the unit than an SSH connection open and doing nothing.
Anyone else run into this or have recommendations?
If the setup matters, zBitX is running on a power supply at 8.5V.
Thanks for any wisdom!
Steve KF8KI
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HA3HZ
Vic WA4THR
Robert Fairbairn
Dave, N1AI