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Info:
Windows 10
firmware 1.01a then 1.01c
12 v - 3:2 T1
Adjustable bench linear supply set at 12 volts,? 1.5 amps OCP setting, 3 A max from supply
Rev 1 board
built as designed (to the best of my knowledge)
My QDX was operating on all bands and then abruptly quit operating on 80 meters.
On RX switching from say 40 to 80 the watefall goes quiet and the signal strength drops to zero. Checking with another transceiver I see there is plenty of activity on 80 also, but nothing is getting through. Switching back to any other band the signals reappear.
On Tx the light blinks 3 times indicating the QDX thinks it's transmitting and the current draw increases slightly from .11 A to .26 A, but there is no measurable power output. Previously I saw 4.9 watts out. I'm seeing 4.4 - 5.4 watts out on the other bands.
Again on the other three bands it transmits and receives normally.
Note - this happened while I was running with firmware 1.01a. Loading 1.01c didn't help.
--
? 73
??? Bob? KD8CGH
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On Fri, Nov 12, 2021 at 04:45 PM, Bob Benedict, KD8CGH wrote:
On Tx the light blinks 3 times indicating the QDX thinks it's transmitting and the current draw increases slightly from .11 A to .26 A, but there is no measurable power output.
Bob,? Is the QDX LED blinking with the newer firmware version 1_01c?? that makes a big difference. 73 Evan AC9TU
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Hi Bob, you? might try a dummy load and see if it clears up.? Steve KY4GX.
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. Luke 2:14
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Bob,
The one possibility might be the switching diodes are not on.? Can you verify that D1 and D4 are on and the other 4 off?? The way that I do it is to measure the voltage on the cathode (band side) of the diode.? The two close to zero are on, the other 4 should be above 3 volts.? If not then check the solder joints around the 80 meters low pass filter.
73
Evan
AC9TU
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Thanks for the responses
?? As stated in OP, I'm using firmware 1-01.c - the three blinks should indicate that the QDX thinks it's transmitting. Also the current draw increases so something changes when it goes into transmit.
?? I did try a dummy load - no joy
? Evan - I'll try checking the diodes in the LPF. The thing that really got me is that receive is also dead, as in 0 db shown in WSJT-X. There are entirely different circuits selecting the BPF and LPF and both stopped working.
--
? 73
??? KD8CGH
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Evan
?
?You were spot on. I checked voltages at the diodes and on 80 meters and D4 was about 16 v instead of zero. I then checked L6 and found that it was no longer connected. I resoldered the wires and the QDX now transmits and receives on all bands. I was surprised the L6 came loose sitting in it's case quietly on my desktop. I have not used the QDX as a hockey puck, although I'm tempted.
?
I enjoyed about 20 minutes of operation and then RF out dropped to zero on all bands. Hitting tune, the LED blinks twice / second indicating insufficient audio input. The WSJT-X power slider is up all the way. In windows sounds/playback? I can see the level on the QDX audio is at 100%, but somehow it's no longer getting to the QDX CPU.
?
I also now also have the intermittent receive audio at 100% noise problem. I followed the advice on powering up and then connecting but no joy. It seems that about every third try the receive is correct (still no transmit). I wonder what the connect/disconnect life of Anderson Powerpoles is?
?
I also loaded up WSLT-X on a Raspberry Pi 4 I have and unfortunately it's the same story there for both receive level and insufficient audio out to transmit.
?
But wait - there's more. After the last time I started my QDX? on Windows the volume became muted and the volume icon in the taskbar became unresponsive. After many attempts to fix it, restarting the Windows Explorer process fixed it as mentioned here:
Why is my volume button not working windows?
-- ? 73 ??? KD8CGH
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On Wed, Nov 17, 2021, at 03:23 PM, Bob Benedict, KD8CGH wrote:
You were spot on. I checked voltages at the diodes and on 80 meters and D4 was about 16 v instead of zero. I then checked L6 and found that it was no longer connected. I resoldered the wires and the QDX now transmits and receives on all bands. I was surprised the L6 came loose sitting in it's case quietly on my desktop. I have not used the QDX as a hockey puck, although I'm tempted.
Glad that you found the problem.
?
I enjoyed about 20 minutes of operation and then RF out dropped to zero on all bands. Hitting tune, the LED blinks twice / second indicating insufficient audio input. The WSJT-X power slider is up all the way. In windows sounds/playback? I can see the level on the QDX audio is at 100%, but somehow it's no longer getting to the QDX CPU.
?
I also had the volume level seem to drop for some reason.? I had to go into the Windows 10 sound mixer, select the QDX device, and make sure the volume slider was set to 100%.? Then it worked.? To do that I right-click on the speaker symbol in the taskbar, select Open Volume Mixer, and then in the Device section change it to the Digital Audio Interface (QDX Transceiver).? This was after a couple of days and a number of contacts before I had to change it.? I do not know what changed.
?
I also now also have the intermittent receive audio at 100% noise problem. I followed the advice on powering up and then connecting but no joy. It seems that about every third try the receive is correct (still no transmit). I wonder what the connect/disconnect life of Anderson Powerpoles is?
After a significant number of times being successful in following my original procedure of connecting everything up after starting windows and then powering up the QDX, I found that yesterday I had issues starting again.? The one thing that was different was the noise level on 40 meters was really high.? I disconnected the antenna and restarted the QDX after a wait time and it connected.? Then today I again had startup issues.? This time I did all of the other steps, including disconnecting the antenna and using a battery.? That seems to work most times.? I have since added a drone LC noise filter to the power line from my station switching power supply.? That also seems to work. So not the process is as follows: 1 - Startup Windows PC 2 - Connect USB cable 3 - Power the QDX 4 - Start PuTTY and verify that the Audio Sweep shows good sideband suppression 5 - If the Audio Sweep comes back with both the Upper and Lower sideband at the same level, then power down the QDX.? Go back and restart from 3 after a 1 minute wait. 6 - Control Q out of the sweep and exit Terminal mode 7 - Close the PuTTY window 8 - Start WSJT-X or JTDX or whichever program I will be using with the QDX I think I will add a switch to the QDX so that I do not wear out the barrel connector. The QDX works GREAT once I get it going.? It is just not reliable in starting up nor in the response to the sound level on transmit.? I have left it decoding overnight and it was still decoding when I checked it the next morning. I am still of the opinion that it is an issue with the QDX, and not a Windows USB driver issue.? It could be that as part of the Windows startup of the interface that it is causing the same type of issue that noise on the power line or the antenna connect does.? The sum of all the noise reaches a threshold that causes the QDX to go into a state that the ADC and USB connections get hosed. I do not know how to verify any of the above.? I just make sure I have the sideband separation and that the QDX LED blinks 3 times on transmit. Still a lot of fun. 73 Evan AC9TU
?
?
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Hi all,
I'm really having fun with the QDX but was still have some start up issues with Windows 10 (even after I thought I had it all fixed!). Basically, the QDX would seem to be robustly configured, but when I would start WSJT-X or other program I would see no decodes and very high audio levels that shouldn't be that way. Since then, I figured out that I can tell as soon as I power on the QDX whether it booted correctly with Windows 10 or not. My power on sequence now is:
1 - Startup Windows PC
2 - USB to QDX cable already?connected (I always just leave it connected)
3 - Power the QDX
4 - Check the Recording Level on the Sound Control Panel. If it looks like this, it will NOT function correctly (remember, no software is running at this point and there should be no green bars on the recording level at all!). My antenna is even grounded so no signal should be present:
5. If it looks like the above, I simply power off the QDX for approximately 1 second and power it back on. This seems to fix the above issue every time so far... fingers crossed!
6. If you want, check the Recording level on the Sound Control panel again. If no bars are visible on the input, it's going to work!
7 - Start WSJT-X or whatever digital software program you like. Then have some fun with your QDX.
So far, this is working ok for me with Windows 10.
By the way, I also downloaded USBTreeView (mentioned by Andy) to see what was going on with the port (a great program, by the way, download it anyway to have some very detailed port information!). However, I could see no significant difference between a bad startup and a good one, so at least in my case this doesn't appear to be a port issue (at least from my uneducated observations). Attached is USBTreeView working and not working in case someone else really knows this stuff.
Cheers, Gregg
On Wed, Nov 17, 2021 at 3:47 PM Evan Hand < elhandjr@...> wrote: On Wed, Nov 17, 2021, at 03:23 PM, Bob Benedict, KD8CGH wrote:
You were spot on. I checked voltages at the diodes and on 80 meters and D4 was about 16 v instead of zero. I then checked L6 and found that it was no longer connected. I resoldered the wires and the QDX now transmits and receives on all bands. I was surprised the L6 came loose sitting in it's case quietly on my desktop. I have not used the QDX as a hockey puck, although I'm tempted.
Glad that you found the problem.
?
I enjoyed about 20 minutes of operation and then RF out dropped to zero on all bands. Hitting tune, the LED blinks twice / second indicating insufficient audio input. The WSJT-X power slider is up all the way. In windows sounds/playback? I can see the level on the QDX audio is at 100%, but somehow it's no longer getting to the QDX CPU.
?
I also had the volume level seem to drop for some reason.? I had to go into the Windows 10 sound mixer, select the QDX device, and make sure the volume slider was set to 100%.? Then it worked.? To do that I right-click on the speaker symbol in the taskbar, select Open Volume Mixer, and then in the Device section change it to the Digital Audio Interface (QDX Transceiver).? This was after a couple of days and a number of contacts before I had to change it.? I do not know what changed.
?
I also now also have the intermittent receive audio at 100% noise problem. I followed the advice on powering up and then connecting but no joy. It seems that about every third try the receive is correct (still no transmit). I wonder what the connect/disconnect life of Anderson Powerpoles is?
After a significant number of times being successful in following my original procedure of connecting everything up after starting windows and then powering up the QDX, I found that yesterday I had issues starting again.? The one thing that was different was the noise level on 40 meters was really high.? I disconnected the antenna and restarted the QDX after a wait time and it connected.? Then today I again had startup issues.? This time I did all of the other steps, including disconnecting the antenna and using a battery.? That seems to work most times.? I have since added a drone LC noise filter to the power line from my station switching power supply.? That also seems to work.
So not the process is as follows:
1 - Startup Windows PC
2 - Connect USB cable
3 - Power the QDX
4 - Start PuTTY and verify that the Audio Sweep shows good sideband suppression
5 - If the Audio Sweep comes back with both the Upper and Lower sideband at the same level, then power down the QDX.? Go back and restart from 3 after a 1 minute wait.
6 - Control Q out of the sweep and exit Terminal mode
7 - Close the PuTTY window
8 - Start WSJT-X or JTDX or whichever program I will be using with the QDX
I think I will add a switch to the QDX so that I do not wear out the barrel connector.
The QDX works GREAT once I get it going.? It is just not reliable in starting up nor in the response to the sound level on transmit.? I have left it decoding overnight and it was still decoding when I checked it the next morning.
I am still of the opinion that it is an issue with the QDX, and not a Windows USB driver issue.? It could be that as part of the Windows startup of the interface that it is causing the same type of issue that noise on the power line or the antenna connect does.? The sum of all the noise reaches a threshold that causes the QDX to go into a state that the ADC and USB connections get hosed.
I do not know how to verify any of the above.? I just make sure I have the sideband separation and that the QDX LED blinks 3 times on transmit.
Still a lot of fun.
73
Evan
AC9TU
?
?
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FWIW, I am getting the same start up/ audio problems, sometimes ok sometimes not, all bit flakey in my opinion. Phil?
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
On 17 Nov 2021, at 21:23, Bob Benedict, KD8CGH <rkayakr@...> wrote:
? Evan
?
?You were spot on. I checked voltages at the diodes and on 80 meters and D4 was about 16 v instead of zero. I then checked L6 and found that it was no longer connected. I resoldered the wires and the QDX now transmits and receives on all bands. I was surprised the L6 came loose sitting in it's case quietly on my desktop. I have not used the QDX as a hockey puck, although I'm tempted.
?
I enjoyed about 20 minutes of operation and then RF out dropped to zero on all bands. Hitting tune, the LED blinks twice / second indicating insufficient audio input. The WSJT-X power slider is up all the way. In windows sounds/playback? I can see the level on the QDX audio is at 100%, but somehow it's no longer getting to the QDX CPU.
?
I also now also have the intermittent receive audio at 100% noise problem. I followed the advice on powering up and then connecting but no joy. It seems that about every third try the receive is correct (still no transmit). I wonder what the connect/disconnect life of Anderson Powerpoles is?
?
I also loaded up WSLT-X on a Raspberry Pi 4 I have and unfortunately it's the same story there for both receive level and insufficient audio out to transmit.
?
But wait - there's more. After the last time I started my QDX? on Windows the volume became muted and the volume icon in the taskbar became unresponsive. After many attempts to fix it, restarting the Windows Explorer process fixed it as mentioned here:
Why is my volume button not working windows?
-- ? 73 ??? KD8CGH
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Hi Phil,
Does disconnecting the antenna before powering the QDX? seem to help?? What type of power supply are you using to power the QDX?
It seems that noise sources to the QDX aggravate the startup issue.? Most reliable is a startup with battery power and no antenna.? That is my fallback when the QDX will just not startup correctly.? After I get it calmed down, I can then go back and start with my filtered switching power supply.
73
Evan
AC9TU
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Hi Evan?
If this is true then it would be very easy for me to fix. I'd just need to arrange to mute any audio being sent to the PC for the first half second (say) by which time the PC and it's USB audio will have settled down.?
73 Hans G0UPL http://qrp-labs.com
-------- Original message -------- From: Evan Hand <elhandjr@...> Date: Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 2:13 PM To: [email protected]Subject: Re: [QRPLabs] QDX - RX and TX stopped working on 80 meters only Hi Phil,
Does disconnecting the antenna before powering the QDX? seem to help?? What type of power supply are you using to power the QDX?
It seems that noise sources to the QDX aggravate the startup issue.? Most reliable is a startup with battery power and no antenna.? That is my fallback when the QDX will just not startup correctly.? After I get it calmed down, I can then go back and start with my filtered switching power supply.
73
Evan
AC9TU
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I use 9v battery supply for my QDX and I get the start up issues regularly, say 40/60, requiring reboots. Windows 11.
Robbie de M1ROK
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Hi Hans,
I had asked for corroborating tests to verify that what I observed could be duplicated.? So far I have only seen the problem reported by others, and that the rest between tries seems to work.?
I have just now run into the issue where the WSJT-X reports a CAT control issue and the QDX stops decoding.? I have tried to restart the QDX and am getting not getting the sideband discrimination in the Audio Sweep.? So now I do not know what the issue is.? This is trying with the battery power.? This kind of negates the prior observations, though the 6 cycle test seemed to be pretty conclusive.? There may be multiple issues:
1 is the "noise" problem and
2 is the dropped CAT problem.??
Today is the first time I observed the dropped CAT problem in the middle of a QSO.? Granted that I am only running FT8, so do not have long QSOs, and only respond to CQ as to sending a CQ.
The only other observation is that the QDX case was warm to the touch.? This was after 3 attempts to respond to a CQ and the first time today that I powered up the QDX.? Output power was 5.2 watts as measured by my Nissei SWR/Power meter.? Since this occurrence, I can no longer get the QDX to respond to any of my computers, Windows10 or Raspberry Pi.? I will now wait 30 minutes to see if that works.? I will respond back after 30 minutes.
Thank you for the response.
73
Evan
AC9TU
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On Wed, Nov 17, 2021 at 11:36 PM, Gregg Myers wrote:
4 - Check the Recording Level on the Sound Control Panel.?
?
6. If you want, check the Recording level on the Sound Control panel again. If no bars are visible on the input, it's going to work!
If you find the multiple clicks getting the audio Control Panel opened tedious, here's a way to create a desktop icon to open Sound Recording directly: 1. Right Click on desktop select New, then select Shortcut.? 2. Copy and paste this text into box for the "location of the item:" ? ? ? ? ?C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL mmsys.cpl,,1
3. Rename the shortcut to "Sound Recording"
4. If you want to change the shortcut's icon, right-click on the shortcut, select Properties, select Change Icon, copy/paste this text into the "Look for icons in this file:" box:
? ? ? ? ? ?%SystemRoot%\System32\mmsys.cpl
and select the speaker.
5. OK out of the Properties page.
More info on some other was to open sound settings at:
there are probably other sites with the same information.
Hope this makes life a little easier dealing with Windows!
--Al
WD4AH
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Hi Evan, I usually start up with no antenna connected, and my power source is a 12 volt LifePo battery, just an observation, but I seem to be getting more no starts now than when I first started using the QDX.? Regards
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
On 18 Nov 2021, at 10:42, Phil Hazelton via groups.io <philhazelton@...> wrote:
? FWIW, I am getting the same start up/ audio problems, sometimes ok sometimes not, all bit flakey in my opinion. Phil? G8PJH? On 17 Nov 2021, at 21:23, Bob Benedict, KD8CGH <rkayakr@...> wrote:
? Evan
?
?You were spot on. I checked voltages at the diodes and on 80 meters and D4 was about 16 v instead of zero. I then checked L6 and found that it was no longer connected. I resoldered the wires and the QDX now transmits and receives on all bands. I was surprised the L6 came loose sitting in it's case quietly on my desktop. I have not used the QDX as a hockey puck, although I'm tempted.
?
I enjoyed about 20 minutes of operation and then RF out dropped to zero on all bands. Hitting tune, the LED blinks twice / second indicating insufficient audio input. The WSJT-X power slider is up all the way. In windows sounds/playback? I can see the level on the QDX audio is at 100%, but somehow it's no longer getting to the QDX CPU.
?
I also now also have the intermittent receive audio at 100% noise problem. I followed the advice on powering up and then connecting but no joy. It seems that about every third try the receive is correct (still no transmit). I wonder what the connect/disconnect life of Anderson Powerpoles is?
?
I also loaded up WSLT-X on a Raspberry Pi 4 I have and unfortunately it's the same story there for both receive level and insufficient audio out to transmit.
?
But wait - there's more. After the last time I started my QDX? on Windows the volume became muted and the volume icon in the taskbar became unresponsive. After many attempts to fix it, restarting the Windows Explorer process fixed it as mentioned here:
Why is my volume button not working windows?
-- ? 73 ??? KD8CGH
|
On Thu, Nov 18, 2021, at 06:14 AM, Evan Hand wrote:
The only other observation is that the QDX case was warm to the touch.? This was after 3 attempts to respond to a CQ and the first time today that I powered up the QDX.? Output power was 5.2 watts as measured by my Nissei SWR/Power meter.? Since this occurrence, I can no longer get the QDX to respond to any of my computers, Windows10 or Raspberry Pi.? I will now wait 30 minutes to see if that works.? I will respond back after 30 minutes.
Hans, I tried again and still could not decode correctly.? I found that IC5 had a small bubble on it.? Measured the voltage of IC2 and found it to be low at 4.15 volts.? Clipped out IC5 and tested receive and it worked the first time. So my original finding of how to start still seems correct as long as there is not another failure.? I have another issue that I am killing the BS170s that then take out IC5.? This failure occurred when transmitting, so not related to the receiver issue.? Guess from now on I will run with the battery after I fix the finals for the third time. 73 Evan AC9TU
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On Wed, Nov 17, 2021 at 11:36 PM, Gregg Myers wrote:
5. If it looks like the above, I simply power off the QDX for approximately 1 second and power it back on. This seems to fix the above issue every time so far... fingers crossed!
Unfortunately, I am not a proud owner of a QDX - holding out for different bands (say 40 - 10). I am somewhat familiar with the Windows sound systems. As was stated earlier (on this thread or another), Windows likes to 'select' the most recent attached device, and many times changes the settings of the device to the last sound application used. Has anyone looked at the more advanced settings when the audio levels are high and compared them to when they are low? Some key? settings I have had get messed up: ? ?Microphone Boost - not available on all devices (common on devices labeled as Digital Jack)? ? ?Enable audio enhancements - not available on all devices? ? ?AGC - not available on all devices? I find it especially odd when I change between a device with one of these features to one that does not have it.? If the device has one of these feature, and I use one that doesn't, the state when I return to the one that does seems rather random. -- Rob KB8RCO
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Rob,
My answer to your question is no, I have not looked at anything more advanced than turning off the suspend capability in Windows 10.
I can state that I have found that the QDX is not discriminating between the sidebands per the Audio Sweep terminal application that the QDX provides when the audio input is the issue.? Since this is only using the Terminal program I am assuming that the audio USB connection is not required.? I have not tried to disable the audio device in Windows to verify this, so that might be another verification for me to help validate that it is on the QDX side and not the connection.
To further support the idea that the discrimination issue is in the QDX when I had a failure of IC5 that took resulted in a power drawdown of the 5volt regulator the same symptoms prevailed.? The 5volt regulator is not used by the MPU nor the USB link, so the terminal program continued to work.? ?The Audio Sweep produced the same symptoms as when the noise caused the audio signal in WSJT-X to be at max value and not decoding.? this again points to an internal QDX issue.
All of my tests have linked the lack of good decoding of the audio signal from the QDX to be linked to when the QDX Audio Sweep shows no separation between the sidebands.
The above are my observations and possibly erroneous assumptions and conclusions.? I believe them to be a little more than just speculations, as I am trying to provide supporting facts.? I am also stating that they are my thoughts, and could be in error.? Corrective feedback is always welcomed.? That is how I learn, which for me is the real fun in this hobby.
73
Evan
AC9TU
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On 18/11/2021 14:36, Rob Giuliano via groups.io wrote: Has anyone looked at the more advanced settings when the audio levels are high and compared them to when they are low? Rob Always:-) As you say the unwary may get caught out. But the fault symptom as Evan describes is a high level indicated on the QDX section of the Windows record sound panel. Not really any way of mistaking it. The record input comes solely from the QDX. 73 Alan G4ZFQ
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What I'm seeing with WSJT-X in tune: QDX audio selected, level shows high in sounds/playback, QDX blinks twice a second (PTT but no audio). No amount of unplug/plug QDX, close/restart WSJT-X, rebooting laptop makes any difference. Recall that after building my QDX initially worked flawlessly, this started later. It looks like there is 100% signal on the QDX digital interface but the QDX doesn't see it. Since the USB runs straight into the micro I don't see anything on the QDX side to debug.
--
? 73
??? KD8CGH
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Bob Benedict, KD8CGH