----- Original Message -----

From: Chris Waldrup

To: softrock40@...

Sent: Friday, October 07, 2005 10:52 PM

Subject: [softrock40] laptop SDR power up

One other thing.? I thought I?would test the kit with another computer just to rule out the computer's soundcard compatibility causing my problem.

My wife just bought a Sony Vaio laptop in August, and I installed Power SDR on it the same way I did on the Dell desktop.? When I open SDR all is fine, but as soon as I click the Standby button, the program powers up and then in about half a second goes back to standby.? I uninstalled and reinstalled with no luck.? Has anyone else seen this?

?

Chris

Hi Guys,

I performed some tests tonight- the radio still won't null but here's what I
have so far.

I'm not worried right now about the RX meter, but I shifted to a 500 khz
bandwidth and the display only changes about three tenths of a dBm. It is
still has a 26 dBm difference from the signal peak, but the panadapter is
right so I'll go with that.

Today at work during lunch, I inspected the board under the
stereomicroscope on my bench (I am a SMT soldering/rework technician). All
looks fine. I checked the components and made sure that all were in the
correct locations and that is ok too.

I tried reversing the tip and ring of the audio connector, and that only
made the minimum null be with both sliders to the extreme left (before, one
was far left and one was far right).


Voltage measurements

FST 3126 pin # (Inputs to chip)
1 4.2 V p-p square wave. Wide bottom part of trace with a thin upper
part (maybe 75 % is wide bottom and 25% is top of wave). 2 no measurable
reading on scope
4 4.2 V p-p. Also same characteristic as pin 1
5 no measurable reading on scope
10 4.2 V p-p . Same as pin 1
13 4.2 V p-p. Same as pin 1

FST 3126 pin # (chip outputs)
3,6,8,11 no measurable reading on scope

Out of curiosity I tried putting the scope probe on the output of the signal
generator and there was barely anything detectable at -30 dBm. When I
brought the signal up to around -20 dBm I began to see a signal. My
generator is an HP 8640B and scope is a Tek 465.

Pin 14 (Vcc) of the FST3126 read 4.38 V with my DMM and pin 8 (Vcc) of U8
also read 4.38V.

I can hear the generator when I connect it, and I can hear CW so I am
assuming that I can get RF into the FST3126. I measured the values of L1
and L2 before I installed them so they are correct. I also used red and
green wire when winding T1 so I would not get the colors confused.

What's the next step? Thanks in advance and sorry for the long email.

Chris



----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Tracey" <kd5tfd@...>
To: <softrock40@...>
Sent: Thursday, October 06, 2005 10:30 PM
Subject: Re: [softrock40] A few more things

Hello Chris,

My answers in line

At 08:10 PM 10/6/2005, you wrote:

Hi Guys,

I am working on getting this little receiver up and running but noticed a
few things I wanted to ask of those more experienced.

I connected my generator and set it to 7.040 Mhz at -60 dBm then went to

the

General tab and clicked on Calibration. I set the frequency in the field

to

the generator frequency and clicked on start and it gave me a Frequency
Calibration Complete message.

Hmm -- not sure the freq calibration will have any effect with the soft
rock as that is used to calibrate the DDS reference osc, and there ain't
one in a SoftRock setup. The way to get the freq calibrated for a

SoftRock

is to set the center frequency on the SoftRock page in setup.

I did the same thing for amplitude, so now
the peak on the spectrum display is at -60 dBm. However the displayed
reading for the RX meter at the top right says -83.2 dBm. As I tune

around

and the peak disappears the reading changes. What causes the discrepancy
between the signal meter reading and the spectrum peak's value- is the
reading an average between the signal and the noise floor?

It is not the diff between the sig and the noise floor, I think it's the
average power across the bandpass selected or something like that. Try
putting your known signal inside a 500 khz passband and see how the meter
correlates with the panadpater display.

<...deleted...>

I worked more with the Image Reject feature under DSP and I can only null

it

by about 10 dB. It is sitting at about -65 dBm right now. The best null
comes with the Phase all the way to 400 at far right and the Gain all the
way to -500 at far left. The controls are at the end of their setting so

I

need more range and I don't get the twitchy response that Bill mentioned.

I

went back to the General tab and clicked on calibrate Image Null (above
values) and got an message that says "Error calculating image null.

Please

try again."

I do not think the automatic calibrate on the image null will work with

the

Soft Rock, I've always done it by hand.

Does this mean that the receiver is bad or is there something in the
software I need to change?

This sounds like a hardware issue - one should not need to go to the
extremes to null the image. I don't think I've ever seen a properly
working SoftRock that needed to go the extremes to null the image signal.

First thing to check is that you're using a stereo input, some laptops

only

have a mic input and it is typically mono. Second thing to try is
reversing the left and right inputs to the sound card. Third thing to
look at is the hardware itself. If you have a scope try feeding a -30 dbm
or so 7.050 MHz signal to the Soft Rock antenna input and look at the I

and

Q outputs on the scope. They should be a 4-6 khz signal and about 0.8
Vp-p. They should also be of similar amplitude -- within about 20-30% of
each other. The phase relationship should be about 90 degrees between

them.

If the IQ sigs are not of similar amplitude, check the soldering on the
FST3125 bus switch, and check that you see clock inputs on all the control
lines. 99% or soft rock hardware problems seem to be the connection of
the signals on the FST chip.

If that does not get it going, come on back and we'll debug some more.

Cheers,

Bill (kd5tfd)






Yahoo! Groups Links

Yahoo! Groups Links

One other thing. I thought I would test the kit with another computer just to rule out the computer's soundcard compatibility causing my problem.
My wife just bought a Sony Vaio laptop in August, and I installed Power SDR on it the same way I did on the Dell desktop. When I open SDR all is fine, but as soon as I click the Standby button, the program powers up and then in about half a second goes back to standby. I uninstalled and reinstalled with no luck. Has anyone else seen this?

Chris

Chris -
A quick way to check to see if you are using a stereo input or not is to
change the display from panadapter to phase 2. If you don't get a display

any moving dots, its mono. Be sure to use line in instead of microphone in
too.
73/72 - Mike WA8BXN












Yahoo! Groups Links

That sounds like the problem I had when I didn't have the SR-40 connected

a stereo input on the sound card (seems all of my mic inputs are really
mono). The image should null easily about into the noise level not too far
from the center range. Go to your sound level window on the computer

this is not part of the sr-40 software) and see if you can adjust the
left-right balance on the input you are using. If you can't, its mono. Try
using a line in connection to the sound card.
73/72 - Mike WA8BXN


-------Original Message-------

From: Chris Waldrup


Does this mean that the receiver is bad or is there something in the
software I need to change?




Yahoo! Groups Links

Hello Chris,

My answers in line

At 08:10 PM 10/6/2005, you wrote:

Hi Guys,

I am working on getting this little receiver up and running but noticed a
few things I wanted to ask of those more experienced.

I connected my generator and set it to 7.040 Mhz at -60 dBm then went to

General tab and clicked on Calibration. I set the frequency in the field

the generator frequency and clicked on start and it gave me a Frequency
Calibration Complete message.

Hmm -- not sure the freq calibration will have any effect with the soft
rock as that is used to calibrate the DDS reference osc, and there ain't
one in a SoftRock setup. The way to get the freq calibrated for a

is to set the center frequency on the SoftRock page in setup.

I did the same thing for amplitude, so now
the peak on the spectrum display is at -60 dBm. However the displayed
reading for the RX meter at the top right says -83.2 dBm. As I tune

and the peak disappears the reading changes. What causes the discrepancy
between the signal meter reading and the spectrum peak's value- is the
reading an average between the signal and the noise floor?

It is not the diff between the sig and the noise floor, I think it's the
average power across the bandpass selected or something like that. Try
putting your known signal inside a 500 khz passband and see how the meter
correlates with the panadpater display.

<...deleted...>

I worked more with the Image Reject feature under DSP and I can only null

by about 10 dB. It is sitting at about -65 dBm right now. The best null
comes with the Phase all the way to 400 at far right and the Gain all the
way to -500 at far left. The controls are at the end of their setting so

need more range and I don't get the twitchy response that Bill mentioned.

went back to the General tab and clicked on calibrate Image Null (above
values) and got an message that says "Error calculating image null.

try again."

I do not think the automatic calibrate on the image null will work with

Soft Rock, I've always done it by hand.

Does this mean that the receiver is bad or is there something in the
software I need to change?

This sounds like a hardware issue - one should not need to go to the
extremes to null the image. I don't think I've ever seen a properly
working SoftRock that needed to go the extremes to null the image signal.

First thing to check is that you're using a stereo input, some laptops

have a mic input and it is typically mono. Second thing to try is
reversing the left and right inputs to the sound card. Third thing to
look at is the hardware itself. If you have a scope try feeding a -30 dbm
or so 7.050 MHz signal to the Soft Rock antenna input and look at the I

Q outputs on the scope. They should be a 4-6 khz signal and about 0.8
Vp-p. They should also be of similar amplitude -- within about 20-30% of
each other. The phase relationship should be about 90 degrees between

If the IQ sigs are not of similar amplitude, check the soldering on the
FST3125 bus switch, and check that you see clock inputs on all the control
lines. 99% or soft rock hardware problems seem to be the connection of
the signals on the FST chip.

If that does not get it going, come on back and we'll debug some more.

Cheers,

Bill (kd5tfd)






Yahoo! Groups Links

Hi Art,

I had that problem too and the nice people in the group helped me fix it.
On the Power SDR console, click on Setup at the top left corner. Click on
Audio, then change the Card 1 Driver from Direct Sound to MME. I hope this
works for you.

Hi Art,

I had that problem too and the nice people in the group helped me fix it.
On the Power SDR console, click on Setup at the top left corner. Click on
Audio, then change the Card 1 Driver from Direct Sound to MME. I hope this
works for you.

Chris
KD4PBJ

----- Original Message -----
From: "KY1K" <ky1k@...>
To: <softrock40@...>
Sent: Friday, October 07, 2005 2:23 PM
Subject: [softrock40] It LIVES!

After 3 long days of waiting for my softrock to arrive, it finally
did! Now I won't be waiting at the mailbox to meet the mailman!

Took me much longer than 3 hours to build, but I made some errors
that had to be corrected:>:

For anyone about to go through this, I suggest the following:

Don't do like I did....and put the tanatlum caps in backwards! Even
with a lighted magnifying lamp, I didn't see the little X on the
component indicating the polarity. Had to remove 3 of them and
reinstall them, fortunately I caught this before I applied power.

Software install went without a problem. I'm a little concerned that
I didn't get prompted to install some other utility programs like the
directions said I would....but it fired up without errors on the first

try.

The moment of truth came.......time to plug it in and look for smoke.

No smoke, but the LED is very dim....oooopppssss, must be a problem.
Turns out that's not a problem, they are all pretty dim,! The 2.2 K
series resistor limits the LED current to 1.3 ma. No doubt, this was
intentional due to the nature of the beast in that it draws power
from the USB port.

My Dell laptop has no stereo input on the sound card and my antenna
was a 6 foot clip lead laying on the bench. So, I haven't adjusted
the null for the opposite sideband yet.

Even with the bad antenna, I heard a few signals, enough to know it
works! Most of the signals I heard were noise coming from the
computer though, but I dido manage to hear some CW. My computer is
59, much louder than the few signals I was able to hear with the
limited antenna.

So, it looks real good so far.

At some point, my softrock will probably be installed in a box! So I
attached both cables to the same side of the PCB, leaving one
mounting hole available for the day when I want to install it in a
box (both cables anchored to the same mounting hole).

Took me awhile to figure out how to adjust the frequency on the
flexradio software.....but that was the hardest part of the software
aspect of the testing.

Fired it up with SDRadio, it works with SDRadio software too.

I have a problem with occasional (very brief) dropout of the audio
every 3 to 4 seconds for 100 msec's or so. It also pops when the
audio drops out. It does this whether the softrock is plugged in or
not though. Tried setting the soundcard to use mime instead of the
windoze driver, but had the same results.

I can make a recording of it (I think). Will probably have time to
work on it tonight after the house gets quiet.

So far so good.

Hope everyone's assembly goes as well as mine.

Regards,

Art







Yahoo! Groups Links

Yahoo! Groups Links

After 3 long days of waiting for my softrock to arrive, it finally
did! Now I won't be waiting at the mailbox to meet the mailman!

Took me much longer than 3 hours to build, but I made some errors
that had to be corrected:>:

For anyone about to go through this, I suggest the following:

Don't do like I did....and put the tanatlum caps in backwards! Even
with a lighted magnifying lamp, I didn't see the little X on the
component indicating the polarity. Had to remove 3 of them and
reinstall them, fortunately I caught this before I applied power.

Software install went without a problem. I'm a little concerned that
I didn't get prompted to install some other utility programs like the
directions said I would....but it fired up without errors on the first

The moment of truth came.......time to plug it in and look for smoke.

No smoke, but the LED is very dim....oooopppssss, must be a problem.
Turns out that's not a problem, they are all pretty dim,! The 2.2 K
series resistor limits the LED current to 1.3 ma. No doubt, this was
intentional due to the nature of the beast in that it draws power
from the USB port.

My Dell laptop has no stereo input on the sound card and my antenna
was a 6 foot clip lead laying on the bench. So, I haven't adjusted
the null for the opposite sideband yet.

Even with the bad antenna, I heard a few signals, enough to know it
works! Most of the signals I heard were noise coming from the
computer though, but I dido manage to hear some CW. My computer is
59, much louder than the few signals I was able to hear with the
limited antenna.

So, it looks real good so far.

At some point, my softrock will probably be installed in a box! So I
attached both cables to the same side of the PCB, leaving one
mounting hole available for the day when I want to install it in a
box (both cables anchored to the same mounting hole).

Took me awhile to figure out how to adjust the frequency on the
flexradio software.....but that was the hardest part of the software
aspect of the testing.

Fired it up with SDRadio, it works with SDRadio software too.

I have a problem with occasional (very brief) dropout of the audio
every 3 to 4 seconds for 100 msec's or so. It also pops when the
audio drops out. It does this whether the softrock is plugged in or
not though. Tried setting the soundcard to use mime instead of the
windoze driver, but had the same results.

I can make a recording of it (I think). Will probably have time to
work on it tonight after the house gets quiet.

So far so good.

Hope everyone's assembly goes as well as mine.

Regards,

Art







Yahoo! Groups Links