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Bitx40 another Raduino(?) problem
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Hi to everyone here, my first post, unfortunately concerning RX problem. I'm quite new to electronics (ofc I know how to solder, so following assembly steps was quite easy to me), so maybe someone more experienced can help. One of the problems was easy to fix- the L2 coil was a bit loose and rotated 45deg. (compared to the other two coils) but was turned the right way and checked for continuity.? Second issue is more serious. According to a friend of mine who checked my bitx40 (he's way more into electronics)- the main board appears to work ok, the Raduino board seems to be the cause of the problems. The display works ok, shows 'some' frequency, backlight is also working fine. ?His test showed that the Raduino module provides very unstable 1MHz instead of 5MHz to the main board. SI5351A is not working, there is no stable 25MHz signal from Y1 oscillator. BTW. My unit has no C103 C107 caps. When powered on (antenna connected) there is only static noise (which changes with frequency), no stations received (even strong signals). On some frequencies the noise gets louder and distorted- doesn't matter if I connect dummy load or antenna. Here's a short video showing the problem? Like I said before- the unit was assembled according to the manual and worked like this from the start. I wrote an email two weeks ago to hfsignals@... unfortunately no answer so far. I'm very happy that this project appeared at an affordable price and I'd like to solve the problem with your (or project designer's) help- if not I hope HFSignals will handle this situation. |
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Jack Purdum
Is the LED on the Raduino board flashing wish a one second period?? Jck, W8TEE From: "majcool@..." <majcool@...> To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, March 13, 2017 1:43 PM Subject: [BITX20] Bitx40 another Raduino(?) problem Hi to everyone here, my first post, unfortunately concerning RX problem. I'm quite new to electronics (ofc I know how to solder, so following assembly steps was quite easy to me), so maybe someone more experienced can help. One of the problems was easy to fix- the L2 coil was a bit loose and rotated 45deg. (compared to the other two coils) but was turned the right way and checked for continuity.? Second issue is more serious. According to a friend of mine who checked my bitx40 (he's way more into electronics)- the main board appears to work ok, the Raduino board seems to be the cause of the problems. The display works ok, shows 'some' frequency, backlight is also working fine. ?His test showed that the Raduino module provides very unstable 1MHz instead of 5MHz to the main board. SI5351A is not working, there is no stable 25MHz signal from Y1 oscillator. BTW. My unit has no C103 C107 caps. When powered on (antenna connected) there is only static noise (which changes with frequency), no stations received (even strong signals). On some frequencies the noise gets louder and distorted- doesn't matter if I connect dummy load or antenna. Here's a short video showing the problem? Like I said before- the unit was assembled according to the manual and worked like this from the start. I wrote an email two weeks ago to hfsignals@... unfortunately no answer so far. I'm very happy that this project appeared at an affordable price and I'd like to solve the problem with your (or project designer's) help- if not I hope HFSignals will handle this situation.
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Jack Purdum
I can't be of more help as I just got back from vacation and my B40 is still in pieces on the bench. Also, I had 6" of water in my office because of a power failure/sump pump failure. I guess "Desktop PC" means you keep it on the desktop, not the floor! It seems odd to me that the LED, which is tied to I/O pin 13 would be on all the time, but can't check since mine is apart right now. Can someone verify that the onboard LED is always lit on a function Raduino? Jack, W8TEE From: majcool <majcool@...> To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, March 13, 2017 2:07 PM Subject: Re: [BITX20] Bitx40 another Raduino(?) problem I got solid light from the red LED on Raduino, no blinking?
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¿ªÔÆÌåÓýMy LED (D4) is on solid when working. ?LED (D3) Blinks when turning tuning dial. ? From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jack Purdum via Groups.Io
Sent: Monday, March 13, 2017 2:41 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [BITX20] Bitx40 another Raduino(?) problem ? I can't be of more help as I just got back from vacation and my B40 is still in pieces on the bench. Also, I had 6" of water in my office because of a power failure/sump pump failure. I guess "Desktop PC" means you keep it on the desktop, not the floor! ? It seems odd to me that the LED, which is tied to I/O pin 13 would be on all the time, but can't check since mine is apart right now. Can someone verify that the onboard LED is always lit on a function Raduino? ? Jack, W8TEE ? From: majcool
<majcool@...> ? I got solid light from the red LED on Raduino, no blinking? ?
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The reference oscillator inside the Si5351 runs at 25mhz. ?There's a 25mhz crystal in the Raduino schematic. ?Not yet clear if you can actually see 25mhz there with a 10x scope probe, that may upset the oscillator to where it no longer functions. On Mon, Mar 13, 2017 at 01:55 pm, ron van doremalen wrote:
unclear why you expect 25Mhz to be generated. ? |
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Hi Jerry, I just tried that on Adafruit's 5351 module, and yes, you can see the 25 MHz. I was looking at the output of 5351 with one channel set to 10 MHz an triggering there. Output was 3.something Vpp. While doing that, probed both side of xtal with second channel, x10 probe, seeing 25 MHz of almost-sine wave, ~1 Vpp on one side of the xtal, ~700 mVpp on the other side. Output signal wasn't disturbed at all while doing this. Tried loading with x1, 25 MHz dropped to <300 mVpp, but output was still going on. Cheers, Goran VE6GPO |
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Very good to know! ?This is a strong indication that everyone with a Raduino emitting 1mhz has a broken 25mhz crystal. ?Goran had earlier reported 1mhz coming out of his Raduino Si5351 instead of 4.8mhz, and that he could not see 25mhz at the Si5351's crystal. ?I have found crystals in general to be relatively sensitive to high G shocks, such as when dropping a board one meter to a concrete floor. When I get back to my bench in a few days, I'll try powering up the Raduino with that crystal disabled, see if the output of the Raduino goes to around 1mhz. ? Unless somebody else steals all the glory first. ?(Please do!) ? Probably ok to just short one side of that crystal to ground. ?The data sheet does not indicate which pin drives the crystal and which receives (both pins XA and XB are called out as "input"). ?So I'll short the pin that has the smaller 25mhz signal, that's almost certainly an Si5331 pin that is input only. Jerry, KE7ER On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 05:46 pm, Goran VE6GPO wrote:
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do you have display on the LCD?? Clk2 is the output to the main board.? I think if ?signal generator set to MHz 3 v PP. It should at least allow antenna noise to be heard in the audio output to hear the filters. ?i have had a new BITX40v3 for a week now and it hasn't not worked.? The rArduino appears not to have been factory downloaded.? Ergo the si5351 library is a problem.? I've given up on trying to down load the program.? I can't down load ?the Blink example Sketch. Maybe the rAdriuno needs to be downloaded off the board.? rArduino on inline sockets would be a plus for experiments/maintenance. Maybe someone has a free Nano on its own and try a down load. My LCD display is 16 blocks of nothing. re no program control.si5351. ? Only audio noise from the speaker. 5 volt regulator gets finger burn hot.? Maybe the back light is drawing excessive current. ? Maybe the regulator getting so hot it's near thermal avalanche and generating noise.? At minimum heat sink is needed for sure. ? The LCD can be easily separated from the rArduino PCB.? This would allow the rArduino board to mount flat on stand-offs and allow the heat sink applied to the chassis box or a decent heat sink. ? Character contrast trimmer would be easy to adjust. Power input should be fused.? A separate power supply to be separate from being inside with the main board. That's my input for what it's worth.? Good Luck. and standing by. 73 Larry On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 7:46 PM, Goran VE6GPO <goran.poprzen@...> wrote:
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Sounds like serious trouble on the Raduino. ?My regulator runs on 12.0 volts, is getting warm but no so hot it would come anywhere near burning a finger. ?Those regulators are generally designed to shut down when they get too hot, then come back on once they cool down. ?I doubt you have an appropriate VFO signal from Raduino into the Bitx40. ?You might try the analog vfo instead (install L4 and the 10k tuning pot), see if the Bitx40 works ok without the Raduino. On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 06:34 pm, Larry Smith wrote:
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I agree. ? ? Problem my kit did not come with the coil.? I would have deduced that trouble shooting idea good..if only I had that coil like shown in most videos. i even pulled P14 connector cause there's dremel ?tool grove that migrates under the P14 connector.? Grove isolates the pin 2 ?Clk 2 from the 5351 from the ground plane Artwork problem. ?i pulled it because it was dirty with copper dust. If I get this to work I'll remove the extra wires that carry the unused Clks 1 and 0.? Might install a length of RG174 to carry CLk 2. Maybe a shield wall to separate/isolate the rArduino form the main PCB. 73 standing by and tuning Hi On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 8:48 PM, Jerry Gaffke via Groups.Io <jgaffke@...> wrote:
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Hi Jerry, didn't mean to steal the glory, just had a little bit of time on my hands. Took the xtal off of the board and still have 2.105 MHz where it should be 10.000 (or 1.055 instead of 5.000), with no xtal at the raduino pcb. I don't have any 25 or 27 MHz to replace and make sure that it will solve it. I'll check tomorrow at work if we have any spare 25 MHz, if not - digikey.ca might help ;) 73, VE6GPO On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 06:33 pm, Jerry Gaffke wrote:
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Jack Purdum
Are the RX/TX LED's flashing when you try to upload a sketch to the Nano? If not, try installing the device drivers that are distributed with the Arduino IDE. The files are in the drivers directory off the root IDE directory. Also, make sure you select the Nano from the IDE's boards list (i.e., Tools --> Boards) and that you have the correct port selected (Tools --> Port). You can also use the control panel to see that the correct COM port is active. Jack, W8TEE From: Larry Smith <815cpu@...> To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2017 9:34 PM Subject: Re: [BITX20] Bitx40 another Raduino(?) problem do you have display on the LCD?? Clk2 is the output to the main board.? I think if ?signal generator set to MHz 3 v PP. It should at least allow antenna noise to be heard in the audio output to hear the filters. ?i have had a new BITX40v3 for a week now and it hasn't not worked.? The rArduino appears not to have been factory downloaded.? Ergo the si5351 library is a problem.? I've given up on trying to down load the program.? I can't down load ?the Blink example Sketch. Maybe the rAdriuno needs to be downloaded off the board.? rArduino on inline sockets would be a plus for experiments/maintenance. Maybe someone has a free Nano on its own and try a down load. My LCD display is 16 blocks of nothing. re no program control.si5351. ? Only audio noise from the speaker. 5 volt regulator gets finger burn hot.? Maybe the back light is drawing excessive current. ? Maybe the regulator getting so hot it's near thermal avalanche and generating noise.? At minimum heat sink is needed for sure. ? The LCD can be easily separated from the rArduino PCB.? This would allow the rArduino board to mount flat on stand-offs and allow the heat sink applied to the chassis box or a decent heat sink. ? Character contrast trimmer would be easy to adjust. Power input should be fused.? A separate power supply to be separate from being inside with the main board. That's my input for what it's worth.? Good Luck. and standing by. 73 Larry On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 7:46 PM, Goran VE6GPO <goran.poprzen@...> wrote:
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A factory-fresh ATMega328p does not have a program; nor is it programmed for
an external oscillator. A "new" Arduino Nano does not have a program installed. It has a bootloader and may or may not have a blink program installed (as Jack suggests). More to the point, it may not be running on the external oscillator -- it depends on the fuse settings. There are variations on the bootloader; some may include a blink program to let the user know it is there. But that tells us little about which oscillator is running. The default oscillator is an internal 125 KHz, not the external 16 MHz oscillator. If you upload a program to that without changing the fuses to reflect the external oscillator, all your timings will be off, including those related to communication with other chips, etc. If one uses the Arduino IDE to compile and upload, the fuse settings are automatically included in the hex file. However, note that the Arduino IDE expects a bootloader to be already installed. Presumably, Some programmers and IDE's may not do this. So the mcu may be left in a default state with a 125 KHz oscillator. This may or may not be the case with the 1 MHz output, but it is worth investigating. Use something like AVRdudess to read the fuse settings (You can do this without programming the chip), and compare the settings with those from the fuse calculator available online. If necessary, the fuses can be programmed to use the external oscillator of the Nano. It is also possible that the 16 MHz oscillator of the Nano is bad. Then the device will not work or it will revert to internal oscillator. Both these conditions are not good, of course. In other words, the Nano itself may be the source of the problem. It would seem to be at least likely, since the 25 MHz oscillator for the Si5351 chip is working. If so, then the chip itself is not getting properly initialized or is not being programmed correctly. This seems to me to be much more likely than having a bad Si5351. What to do? First, try a load or reload of the Raduino program. That will probably fix things, unless the Nano oscillator is bad. Merely detach the Raduino and power it from USB to do the loading. If that doesn't work, get another Nano and load it on a breadboard; attach a lcd and tuning pot, and see if the display changes. If it does, it is probably ok and points to the real problem. Do not exceed 5v on the breadboard, no matter what the source of power. Another problem might be a short. Or low voltage supply to the Nano. The LM7805 regulator should run a little warm, but not hot. If it does, it is drawing something approaching 1 amp, and that is double or more for a normal Nano. I would suspect first the backlight of the lcd. These are notorious current hogs. The solution if the draw is too much is to install a 39 to100 ohm 1 or 2W resistor inline at pin 15 of the lcd. That is the backlight input line (pin 16 is the ground). Pushing the 5v regulator almost to the point of thermal shutdown would probably result in a voltage starvation problem for the Nano, or too little current if the backlight is drawing enough; either will disrupt the proper operation of the mcu. Another problem might be that the 3.3v regulator which supplies the Si5351 is not performing right. Especially if there is poor or inadequate 5v/3v interface. A little smaller 3v level would put it very near to the 0/1 level of the 5v. This is not too good for determining IO through the pins. It is supplied by the LM7805 and so may be suspect as well. Either way it points to the Nano itself. john AD5YE |
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hello,
I have a problem how to connect the 10k pot. on arduino board. In this scheme it is not clear. 73 Matjaz S56ZVD -----Izvorno sporo?ilo----- From: John Backo via Groups.Io Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2017 9:11 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [BITX20] Bitx40 another Raduino(?) problem A factory-fresh ATMega328p does not have a program; nor is it programmed for an external oscillator. A "new" Arduino Nano does not have a program installed. It has a bootloader and may or may not have a blink program installed (as Jack suggests). More to the point, it may not be running on the external oscillator -- it depends on the fuse settings. There are variations on the bootloader; some may include a blink program to let the user know it is there. But that tells us little about which oscillator is running. The default oscillator is an internal 125 KHz, not the external 16 MHz oscillator. If you upload a program to that without changing the fuses to reflect the external oscillator, all your timings will be off, including those related to communication with other chips, etc. If one uses the Arduino IDE to compile and upload, the fuse settings are automatically included in the hex file. However, note that the Arduino IDE expects a bootloader to be already installed. Presumably, Some programmers and IDE's may not do this. So the mcu may be left in a default state with a 125 KHz oscillator. This may or may not be the case with the 1 MHz output, but it is worth investigating. Use something like AVRdudess to read the fuse settings (You can do this without programming the chip), and compare the settings with those from the fuse calculator available online. If necessary, the fuses can be programmed to use the external oscillator of the Nano. It is also possible that the 16 MHz oscillator of the Nano is bad. Then the device will not work or it will revert to internal oscillator. Both these conditions are not good, of course. In other words, the Nano itself may be the source of the problem. It would seem to be at least likely, since the 25 MHz oscillator for the Si5351 chip is working. If so, then the chip itself is not getting properly initialized or is not being programmed correctly. This seems to me to be much more likely than having a bad Si5351. What to do? First, try a load or reload of the Raduino program. That will probably fix things, unless the Nano oscillator is bad. Merely detach the Raduino and power it from USB to do the loading. If that doesn't work, get another Nano and load it on a breadboard; attach a lcd and tuning pot, and see if the display changes. If it does, it is probably ok and points to the real problem. Do not exceed 5v on the breadboard, no matter what the source of power. Another problem might be a short. Or low voltage supply to the Nano. The LM7805 regulator should run a little warm, but not hot. If it does, it is drawing something approaching 1 amp, and that is double or more for a normal Nano. I would suspect first the backlight of the lcd. These are notorious current hogs. The solution if the draw is too much is to install a 39 to100 ohm 1 or 2W resistor inline at pin 15 of the lcd. That is the backlight input line (pin 16 is the ground). Pushing the 5v regulator almost to the point of thermal shutdown would probably result in a voltage starvation problem for the Nano, or too little current if the backlight is drawing enough; either will disrupt the proper operation of the mcu. Another problem might be that the 3.3v regulator which supplies the Si5351 is not performing right. Especially if there is poor or inadequate 5v/3v interface. A little smaller 3v level would put it very near to the 0/1 level of the 5v. This is not too good for determining IO through the pins. It is supplied by the LM7805 and so may be suspect as well. Either way it points to the Nano itself. john AD5YE |
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No. ?The 1mhz problem is not due to bad Nano firmware. ?Not a bad 5v or 3.3v rail. ?There's no way for a reference clock to go from Nano to Si5351, so it's nothing to do with the 125khz startup clock in the Nano. ?But there is evidence that the 25mhz crystal is not working. In post /g/BITX20/message/23393?I gave three threads, the first of which included post ?/g/BITX20/message/23306?which points to these two older threads: ?/g/BITX20/message/21886?and /g/BITX20/message/22008?regarding Goran's issue. ?Goran was the first to see the 1mhz problem, and he thoroughly checked his board with a scope, reflashed the Nano, checked his 3.3v, and probed the 25mhz crystal. ?No source for the problem found, except that there was no signal at the 25mhz crystal pins, but it was felt that perhaps the scope probe was disturbing some sensitive nodes there. ?However, now in post?/g/BITX20/message/23400?Goran reports that he can see a 25mhz sine wave at both pins of the 25mhz crystal of his Adafruit Si5331 board. ?My conclusion is that Goran's problem with his Raduino board is most likely a broken 25mhz crystal, and that may be the issue with all Raduino's giving a 1mhz vfo at power up. On Wed, Mar 15, 2017 at 01:11 am, John Backo wrote: In other words, the Nano itself may be the source of the problem. It would seem to be at least likely, since the ? |
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Allard PE1NWL
Goran VE6GPO
J¨²nior PY2ADA