Re: New Cooling Solution for Pi and Quadra?

#150

sounds good!

You should be able to pop off the 4 rubber feet save them. Remove the bottom shell and … it won’t help the clean wire job. But you could flip/invert it so the “guts are showing”?

thus, making the unit stand out a little more.?

put the feet on the bottom (former top) and bam!?

pimp your Quadra!?

Re: New Cooling Solution for Pi and Quadra?

ve3ega

#149

Kelly,

Actually the pic doesn't quite do the color's justice - the illumination around the fan is really nice!
The Buck Converter Shelf has Green, Red Leds, The Quadra shelf COULD be lit up more - ummm :)
The QDX - just the boring Red - wait for next pic Yeah!

What shall we call this - "Pimp Your Quadra"?

73

Terry

Re: New Cooling Solution for Pi and Quadra?

#148

Looks nice! it could however use some rgb led has to be a spare gpio in that stack. You could code each level a different color or dance around or indicate mail waiting?!?

Mine all dangle by cat 5 … they don’t twinkle …?

kelly?

Re: New Cooling Solution for Pi and Quadra?

ve3ega

#147

Project Completed!

Re: Confused RE: How to re-image the Quadra

#146

开云体育

I’ve been using the Pi too long.? I was putting the card in a reader and into the USB drive, not using the card slot.? Thanks AE4DW for pointing that out!? In my defence, I’m monkeying with this while off sick to keep busy.? I’m not usually this dense!

?

Now that its working…? Cool little device, and it frees up a Pi for other uses.? Thanks for porting it, Dave.

?

Dave

?

Show quoted text

From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Dave Slotter, W3DJS
Sent: December 3, 2022 12:28 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Inovato-Quadra-4-HamRadio] Confused RE: How to re-image the Quadra

?

David,

?

How did you flash the card?

?

On Sat, Dec 3, 2022 at 10:57 AM David Empey, VE3KVR <david@...> wrote:

I'm obviously missing something.? I flashed the card, put it in the USB drive and booted the Quadra.? I don't see a pi user, or any way to login as anything other than the quadra user.?

--
-- Dave,?? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Technical Specialist,??--
--?? Lifetime Member:?////?--
--??--

Re: Quadra, DRA soundcard, and FLDIGI

#145

Well, on a hunch, shut down everything and restarted it all. PTT function is now active in FLDIGI. Now to try it on a live radio. Wheee!
--
VY 73.
Wes WB7BR

Re: Quadra, DRA soundcard, and FLDIGI

#144

Sorry Dave, did not make? myself clear. I was having trouble with the Configure>Soundcard>Devices PortAudio Capture and Playback selection. The DRA soundcard was not showing up in the dropdown list. I have restarted everything, and that is now resolved, the USB PnP Sound Device:Audio shows in both.
But, getting the PTT functional is a non-starter. I have even made the recommended additon of the cmedia.rules file to the /etc/udev/rules.d folder. And the config settings you showed previously. I click Select, then Test and....no PTT function. So, will see if the nbems folks have any answer.
--
VY 73.
Wes WB7BR

Re: Confused RE: How to re-image the Quadra

Don--AE4DW

#143

On Sat, Dec 3, 2022 at 10:57 AM, David Empey, VE3KVR wrote:

I'm obviously missing something.? I flashed the card, put it in the USB drive and booted the Quadra.? I don't see a pi user, or any way to login as anything other than the quadra user.?

USB drive? I'm assuming you mean you put it in the SD card slot...?

Re: Quadra, DRA soundcard, and FLDIGI

#142

Wes,

You're comparing apples and oranges here...? Linux <> Win7 and Fldigi <> Winlink

Have you tried checking this setting? The DRA requires a special setup in Fldigi:

Show quoted text

On Sat, Dec 3, 2022 at 3:36 PM Wes WB7BR <wesbflyer@...> wrote:

Might be Dave, but it works just fine when connected to a Win7 maching running Winlink?VaraHF. Will poll the other groups to see if anyone has ideas. As an idea, I will start FLDIGI on my Win7 machine and see if it connects there.
--
VY 73.
Wes WB7BR

--
-- Dave,?? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Technical Specialist,??--
--?? Lifetime Member:?////?--
--??--

Re: Quadra, DRA soundcard, and FLDIGI

#141

Might be Dave, but it works just fine when connected to a Win7 maching running Winlink?VaraHF. Will poll the other groups to see if anyone has ideas. As an idea, I will start FLDIGI on my Win7 machine and see if it connects there.
--
VY 73.
Wes WB7BR

Re: Quadra, DRA soundcard, and FLDIGI

#140

This sounds like it might be more of a DRA issue... Have you emailed?kuggie@... for support on the DRA?

Show quoted text

On Sat, Dec 3, 2022 at 1:55 PM Wes WB7BR <wesbflyer@...> wrote:

I have the HamIQ package operating from the uSD card, working fine. But, when I connected a DRA soundcard to the Quadra and started FLDIGI the DRA does not appear in the Soundcard list to choose the input and output. Curious thing, as soon as FLDIGI starts up, the DRA CM119a shows it is communicating with the Quadra, as the Heartbeat green LED starts flashing. I must be missing something here, but as I am not fluent in Linux, I am at a loss what it is. Any ideas?
--
VY 73.
Wes WB7BR

--
-- Dave,?? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Technical Specialist,??--
--?? Lifetime Member:?////?--
--??--

Quadra, DRA soundcard, and FLDIGI

#139

I have the HamIQ package operating from the uSD card, working fine. But, when I connected a DRA soundcard to the Quadra and started FLDIGI the DRA does not appear in the Soundcard list to choose the input and output. Curious thing, as soon as FLDIGI starts up, the DRA CM119a shows it is communicating with the Quadra, as the Heartbeat green LED starts flashing. I must be missing something here, but as I am not fluent in Linux, I am at a loss what it is. Any ideas?
--
VY 73.
Wes WB7BR

Re: Confused RE: How to re-image the Quadra

#138

David,

How did you flash the card?

Show quoted text

On Sat, Dec 3, 2022 at 10:57 AM David Empey, VE3KVR <david@...> wrote:

I'm obviously missing something.? I flashed the card, put it in the USB drive and booted the Quadra.? I don't see a pi user, or any way to login as anything other than the quadra user.?

--
-- Dave,?? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Technical Specialist,??--
--?? Lifetime Member:?////?--
--??--

Re: Confused RE: How to re-image the Quadra

#137

I'm obviously missing something.? I flashed the card, put it in the USB drive and booted the Quadra.? I don't see a pi user, or any way to login as anything other than the quadra user.?

Re: moving swap to sdcard

ve3ega

#136

Yes Dave, Thank You so much! Terry

Re: HamPi 3.1.1b2 for Inovato Quadra (November 2022) "Stone Mountain Edition" Released

#135

On Tue, Nov 8, 2022 at 01:40 PM, Dave Slotter, W3DJS wrote:

Inovato Quadra has been ordered and received. Not bad for $29 .....now to see what I've gotten myself into. Want to .........focus on various Digital Modes with uSDX, .?

73 Kees K5BCQ

New Cooling Solution for Pi and Quadra?

ve3ega

#134

I just ordered on of these:

I plan to tidy up my desktop at last, with it!

Terry

Re: moving swap to sdcard

#133

Terry,

Does this help answer your question about adjusting swappiness?

Show quoted text

On Sun, Nov 27, 2022 at 5:11 PM ve3ega <ve3ega@...> wrote:

I'm with you but 'm not sure that you would benefit from that?

My understanding of SD Cards as Swap files will be slower than any advantage expected or gained!

Thinking about speed increments, I looked at the Swap Partition allocated by Quadra and it is 992.2 Mb.
That seems an awful lot of wasted space for the OS to dump whatever, whenever it feels like it - when it could easily retain data in RAM (assuming light-use desk-top ham apps - not media)

The effect is highlighted when I try to open a couple of webpages, while keeping my main app operating in the background it definitely looks like the OS just dumps them into swap, while sharing available RAM and goes back and forth!

I then looked at the OS 'swappiness' (cat/proc/sys/vm/swappiness) expecting to see a default of around 60 (which is still considered high according to my research) but no its 100!

This means that with a higher value it takes LESS time for Quadra to start to use this swap space! - It therefore makes sense to LOWER this ('swappiness') value to say 25 so it will take 'Longer' for the OS to use Swap (less read/writes)!

Unfortunately my linux syntax knowledge now struggles as to the Command to change 'Swappiness' in Quadra's OS.

If you play with this, and have any success, let me know please!

73

Terry

--
-- Dave,?? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Technical Specialist,??--
--?? Lifetime Member:?////?--
--??--

Re: moving swap to sdcard

ve3ega

#132
Edited

I'm with you but 'm not sure that you would benefit from that?

My understanding of SD Cards as Swap files will be slower than any advantage expected or gained!

Thinking about speed increments, I looked at the Swap Partition allocated by Quadra and it is 992.2 Mb.
That seems an awful lot of wasted space for the OS to dump whatever, whenever it feels like it - when it could easily retain data in RAM (assuming light-use desk-top ham apps - not media)

I then looked at the OS 'swappiness' (cat/proc/sys/vm/swappiness) expecting to see a default of around 60 (which is still considered high according to my research) but no its 100!

This means that with a higher value it takes LESS time for Quadra to start to use this swap space! - It therefore makes sense to LOWER this ('swappiness') value to say 25 so it will take 'Longer' for the OS to use Swap (less read/writes)!

Unfortunately my linux syntax knowledge now struggles as to the Command to change 'Swappiness' in Quadra's OS.

If you play with this, and have any success, let me know please!

73

Terry

Re: Confused RE: How to re-image the Quadra

#131

Hi JIm,

Thanks for the information on the FTDI history.  

I got into Ham Radio around September of 2019 going the cheap Baofeng route. After a couple of months I upgraded to the Yaesu FT-60.  I run CHIRP on Windows 10 on a Mac Intel machine using VMware.  Been doing this for quite a few years without any issues.  Originally, I did have an issues with the cable which was ultimately resolved when I bought a better one that supposedly had the right chipset.  During the last couple of years, my interest in Ham Radio has been minor although I eventually got my Extra license.

Although I can run most of the PC programs on my Mac, Apple has switched to their silicon M series chips which make running Windows a much harder going forward.  CHIRP does not work well in Mac OS and my Intel based Mac computer is getting quite old and new ones are getting quite expensive let alone not fully compatible with Ham Radio related software. When the Inovato machine came out, I thought that this is a great inexpensive solution for my Ham Radio needs as now being retired my interest has perked up to do long distance low power communications (still sorting out the details).

So, are you suggesting that a Kenwood cable would work without any additional coding or drivers with the Inovato?  Trying to find an easy solution to at least be able to program the radios with a computer.

As I previously mentioned, my Baofeng UV-82HP brand cable works perfectly with Inovato.  The cable I have for the Yaesu FT-60 does not work even though it works perfectly using Windows.   (Don’t know the brand but the device manager in Windows defines it as a FT232R USB UART).  I removed Brltty as suggested by another member and that resulted in the cable appearing to work, but giving this error message: Failed to communicate with radio: can only concanate str (not "bytes") to str.

So that is where I stand for now.

Thanks,

Andrew

Show quoted text

On Nov 27, 2022, at 1:59 PM, Jim Strohm <jim.strohm@...> wrote:

The simplified and sanitized version is that some company in China
pirated the FTDI chipset in the cable, and flooded the market with
cheap counterfeit knock-offs, which were adopted by all the
beancounter-managed companies that used FTDI features.  Predictably,
FTDI took umbrage and "bricked" the counterfeits.  I'm not familiar
with the technical details of how this was done, but all the knockoff
cables suddenly became useful only as bungee cords, except that they
didn't stretch very well.

My personal stake in this -- I bought a cheap Chinese handi-talkie
intended as a new-ham freebie "welcome to our brotherhood" giveaway.
This was just after the bricking occurred but before it became common
knowledge.  The HT came with a counterfeit-chip programming cable,
branded with the HT company logo.  As it happens, this HT had a
"feature" that made programming it through the front panel nearly
impossible from a usability standpoint, but it didn't really matter
because it wouldn't save the programming when the HT was turned off.

The US vendor that supplied the HT was the sole authorized US
distributor for the brand, and I was in personal contact with the
owner, CEO, and chief bottle-washer about the fact that the original
cable wouldn't program my radio.   His "fix"?  He personally sent me a
new replacement cable with the company logo that was supposed to have
a genuine FTDI chip.  He knew about the counterfeit FTDI chip problem
almost from Day One.  The diabolic part for me was that the
counterfeit cables appeared to work perfectly until it was time to hit
"save".

His fix?  Well, not so much of a fix.   The new cable worked exactly
like the old fix.

Ultimately I bought a Kenwood cable, which worked perfectly and solved
the problem instantly.  It cost almost as much as the cheap Chinese
HT, NOT counting the months of my wasted time that I'll never get
back.

Now I'm left with an HT I've never used and never will use, because
the affair was too distasteful in too many respects.  I also have two
cables with counterfeit FTDI chips.  The sole bright side is that I
have a cable with a genuine FTDI chip -- that works with the old
drivers as well as with the new drivers, as do all the genuine FTDI
cables, as far as I've seen.

So as far as I can tell, this never was a driver issue, except that
perhaps the drivers were part of the highly successful "bricking"
exploit, or else now somebody has implemented an FTDI client that's
not fully compliant with all of FTDI's API.

If I've got any of this wrong, or if anybody can add information to
the party (especially how FTDI bricked the counterfeit chips), please
speak up promptly.

73
Jim N6OTQ


On Sun, Nov 27, 2022 at 11:54 AM Andrew <averacpa@...> wrote:

I am afraid I am not aware of that.

I do know that my cable works with Chirp on Windows 10, so the issue is with finding the right driver (and proper install) to work.