Topic: Double-checking before ordering - my BO RED build (now with E-field!)

[W3DRM]

Here is where I purchased my 5V power supply:

• http://www.adafruit.com/product/501

The 5v sampling display is shown below.

[DaleReid]

92 Merc:

My eField runs off power sent to it through the shielded CAT5 cable and that board sends power over the coax to the preamp.

So far I've not seen any need or way to hook up power directly to the eField amp board.  There is a usb mini connector on it, though.  Maybe I should be powering it through that?  Seems just fine otherwise.

[Silversword]

Hi,

I have a question as to where do I find out the 5v sampling coming from my power source?

I have looked around and have not been able to locate that graph.

Thanks for any suggestions.

--Stan Y.
   Maui, Hawaii

[W3DRM]

Hi,

I have a question as to where do I find out the 5v sampling coming from my power source?

I have looked around and have not been able to locate that graph.

Thanks for any suggestions.

--Stan Y.
   Maui, Hawaii

Using your browser, log-in to your router (mine is at 192.168.1.127) and select the "Signals" tab. Then scroll down below the graph where you'll find the Signal Tools section. Just click on the Enable button next to the 5v Sampling line. If you don't know what your router URL is, you can find it on the RED Controller LCD board display.

[corwyyn]

Using your browser, log-in to your router (mine is at 192.168.1.127) and select the "Signals" tab. Then scroll down below the graph where you'll find the Signal Tools section. Just click on the Enable button next to the 5v Sampling line. If you don't know what your router URL is, you can find it on the RED Controller LCD board display.

Don, do you mean log into your controller? 

[W3DRM]

Using your browser, log-in to your router (mine is at 192.168.1.127) and select the "Signals" tab. Then scroll down below the graph where you'll find the Signal Tools section. Just click on the Enable button next to the 5v Sampling line. If you don't know what your router URL is, you can find it on the RED Controller LCD board display.

Don, do you mean log into your controller?

Sorry, bad use of terminology. Yes this will get you into your controller.

[Silversword]

Got it.

Thanks Don.

Looks mine is a little noisy.  It is from a Motorola cell phone charger.  Need to find another one to compare with.

--Stan Y.
   Maui, Hawaii

[Cutty Sark Sailor]

Got it.

Thanks Don.

Looks mine is a little noisy.  It is from a Motorola cell phone charger.  Need to find another one to compare with.

--Stan Y.
   Maui, Hawaii

Stan, the line will be a bit 'noisy'... see Don's image above... anywhere from about 0.02 - 0.05 'grass' perhaps, riding about 4.65 or so volts... in my case.
 The way your system cops those long range signals, I don't think you've got an issue! The noise will vary depending on load. Let's not all go hyper over this... If you've no other issues, I wouldn't worry about it a lot

[corwyyn]

Sorry, bad use of terminology. Yes this will get you into your controller.

No worries Don, I figured it was probably the late hour of the post that was to blame.  Good to know how to access this info, I'm sure it will come in handy when I get things set up. 

Speaking of, I spent some time with the soldering iron in hand tonite working on the Amp board:

Soldering the first two pins of the first IC (the first transport is away *cheers*)


All eight ICs in place


All capacitors, LEDs and diodes mounted plus a few other parts


Now I've got four 12hr shifts to work so it will probably be Sunday before I can get to the resistors and finish off the amp board, then I'll tackle the controller.  With luck I'll have the rest assembled and ready for initial testing by the first day of summer

[DaleReid]

Kevin:
You take good pictures of something that is hard to photography well or easily.

Nice work.  I worry about solder bridges and screw ups on those tiny pieces, but moreso in getting the wrong component in the holes and the difficulty it would take to find it once soldered in place. Yet just going ahead and doing it under as controlled conditions (good light, me not tired nor distracted) gets the job done.  After doing my initial board set and the Efield kit, I have had zero problems with construction and they all fired up the first time. 

Keep at it, get that station on the air.  One of my experiences earlier on in my life that I'll remember under similar conditions happened many years ago when I was assisting one of our general surgeons.  The Sister at the Catholic Hospital in charge of the operating rooms came in during our case and said, "Dr. Walter.  We're behind.  DON'T hurry."

I initially thought she was being a bit sarcastic in the Germanic way that my grandmother could use, but after she left he explained that in years past when she urged people hurry, they made mistakes that took longer to undo and then do the right way. To not hurry was the best way to save time.

Made sense.  The board isn't a gall bladder, but take your time to do it right the first time.

[92merc]

92 Merc:

My eField runs off power sent to it through the shielded CAT5 cable and that board sends power over the coax to the preamp.

So far I've not seen any need or way to hook up power directly to the eField amp board.  There is a usb mini connector on it, though.  Maybe I should be powering it through that?  Seems just fine otherwise.

I've noticed that too.  When I've been swapping out my antenna's, I power off the amp.  I've noticed my shielded keeps the amp running.  Since I already have the USB cord and the brick, I just use the USB power anyway.

[corwyyn]

IT LIVES!!!!  OK, the amp anyway  Got the rest of the components mounted this evening and double checked everything then plugged in the 5v supply - red power LED on, four yellow LEDs blinking then going to a steady state (one lit, the other three off). Used a small screwdriver to vary the manual gain and watched the LEDs change with the adjustments so that appears to be working as it should.  Going to take a break and then I'll start in on the controller board later tonite.  Pics to follow...

[dfroula]

Boards look good!

BTW, it is not a good idea to dual-power your amp with both the USB power supply and the controller connected. Better to let the power connection through the CAT5 line handle the job. There is no isolation on the amp board between the USB connector and the power line in the CAT5 connector. Your two supplies will end up fighting each other if there is the least bit of voltage difference between them.

Regards,

Don
WD9DMP

92 Merc:

My eField runs off power sent to it through the shielded CAT5 cable and that board sends power over the coax to the preamp.

So far I've not seen any need or way to hook up power directly to the eField amp board.  There is a usb mini connector on it, though.  Maybe I should be powering it through that?  Seems just fine otherwise.

I've noticed that too.  When I've been swapping out my antenna's, I power off the amp.  I've noticed my shielded keeps the amp running.  Since I already have the USB cord and the brick, I just use the USB power anyway.

[corwyyn]

Thanks Don. I had read thru the documentation and figured out that the best option was what you mentioned I was just powering the amp board long enough to do the initial test, now it's in an ESD safe bag waiting for the controller to be assembled. 

[dfroula]

No problem powering the amp board through the USB connector without the controller connected. I wasn't quite sure if you had them both connected at the same time, but figured I'd throw out the precaution. All sorts of bad things could happen with two supplies directly connected to the power bus.

I think the USB power port on the amp is there (along with the pot) for using the amp stand-alone for monitoring the signals with an alternative detector or software program. And testing, of course.

Best,

Don
WD9DMP

[Cutty Sark Sailor]

I have to admit, for several days, from comments here and some other boards, that I had wondered if some were attempting to dual power their amps. Especially the E fields... it can explain a lot of issues. 

BTW, it is not a good idea to dual-power your amp with both the USB power supply and the controller connected. Better to let the power connection through the CAT5 line handle the job. There is no isolation on the amp board between the USB connector and the power line in the CAT5 connector. Your two supplies will end up fighting each other if there is the least bit of voltage difference between them.

Regards,

Don
WD9DMP

92 Merc:

My eField runs off power sent to it through the shielded CAT5 cable and that board sends power over the coax to the preamp.

So far I've not seen any need or way to hook up power directly to the eField amp board.  There is a usb mini connector on it, though.  Maybe I should be powering it through that?  Seems just fine otherwise.

I've noticed that too.  When I've been swapping out my antenna's, I power off the amp.  I've noticed my shielded keeps the amp running.  Since I already have the USB cord and the brick, I just use the USB power anyway.

Beside the obvious 'fight between supplies' there's another thing that I suspect is worse...
The Coax to the Preamp is an import part of the filtering for E field signals, as well as being a conduit for signals and power.
Below is a rough diagram of the coax input to the amplifer... with a 'generic' Wall Wart attached in red.
Look what could happen when you add the 'red' components in parallel with Richo's carefully designed filters:

I should probably have made a comment earlier, and I apologize...
Perhaps I should add this to the 'operating' post???
Mike

[corwyyn]

So as promised here is a picture of the (almost) completed amp board, I realized I forgot to place the output connectors on either side of the RJ45 assembly so went back and added them in:


And some pictures of the controller board.  This is just after the GPS chip had been mounted with the power supply components in place and tested:


Close up of the GPS chip to show the solder joints.  After I took this image I noticed the three on the right side needed a bit of a touch-up, they probably would have been fine but it was all of fifteen seconds with the soldering iron to make them flow a bit better:


And finally a picture of the completed controller board with the Discovery board and LCD display mounted:


Now I need to download the software to update the firmware on the Discovery board, relocate the cable modem and router from the living room so I can begin testing, then add the outer layer of heat-shrink to the two antennas but it's closer than it was this time last week 

[dfroula]

Looks great!

You will want to load the operating firmware on the board before powering up the controller assembly for testing. The Discovery board comes pre-installed with some demo firmware that could potentially damage the controller board. The manual warns about this.

Best,

Don
WD9DMP

[DaleReid]

Kevin:
A work of art.  Fun, wasn't it?

The GPS is impressive.

Dale

[corwyyn]

Well station 1042 is officially up and running, I have it in monitor mode right now so you won't be seeing any data from it but hopefully this weekend I can get the amp and antennas sited better and see what happens; right now it looks like I've got a decent noise source on channel 2B and nothing much on 2A so I'll need to get that sorted.  Also I noticed I get nothing on the LCD display, not sure what's going on but as I can get all the info I need thru the web interface I'm not too concerned about it right now.  Had to take the GPS antenna outside as it wasn't seeing much of anything in my bedroom, right now it is attached to the wood pole I had my VP2 mounted on before I relocated it and as soon as I get time the GPS antenna will join the VP2 up on the mast that's mounted on the back patio. 

I'm sure I'll have plenty of questions this weekend as I work to get the station fully operational.

[DaleReid]

 Kevin,
Well, just looking at the output on the controller  based web page gives one of the few views into the noise environment, but when I watch mine, I'm very surprised that the servers actually can extract some usefull signals out of the mess I see.

So you might just turn it loose and let it connect to the servers and watch a bit. 

I think that the designers took complete control over their system, and if one station is sending pure garbage constantly, they turn it down or "off" by forcing an interference mode.   The others here (the old timers) can comment more authoritatively, but I don't think that, even during initial setup, that there is a disadvantage to trying to send data.  I don't believe the servers are bogged down or hurt in any way, which was one of my initial fears that I'd futz something up by trying to test and wanted to remain off line while doing so.

Second, my little external GPS antenna is sitting in doors , by a window, and sees a lot of satellites.  For you to have to put yours outdoors and have difficult reception to me means you either have a LOT of surrounding stuff blocking the view, or a wee bit of connection problem.  I assume you've moved it about and also taken the SMA connector off and reattached. But if you're getting a good report on the controller web page that enough satellites are in the green and being tracked, worry about that later.

Unless the other fellows say to NOT let your station connect to the servers, I think you'd be better off letting data flow.  The servers protect themselves from sort of a (internet term) of Denial of Service attacks so to speak, and there are a couple very clever fellows here who peak at things to give very helpful advice as to what you might do during setup mode.

My LCD display worked OK, but I'd suspect that you didn't get the jumper right to correspond to the color of the display your have, or an errant pin was not making good contact when you seated it (or even make sure, and I'm not being critical here) that the display is indeed oriented correctly and not bass ackwards on the socket.  To be frank, I've not looked at mine in a couple weeks, so I do all stuff except to do a reboot, via the controller generated web page.  But for awhile it was nice to have, especially during boot up and all.



Oh, CONGRATULATIONS on the project!  Now, the fun begins.

[Cutty Sark Sailor]

Yeah, as Dale Says... Turn 'er Loose!  Let the network folks help you! ...  If there's an issue that bad, the server will turn you off... meantime the rest of us get to watch, and you're not doing this by yourself...
When you let 'er go, this may help... http://ourspecial.net/twinhollies/weathercenter/blitz/1042Mesa/index.html  shows your signals at the server, and the spectrum... Note that you want to run H field amp into controller input One (RJ45 next to GPS module) and E field into controller input 2...

[dfroula]

I'm somewhat concerned that you may have damaged something on the controller by not flashing the operating firmware before powering up the controller. I believe the Discovery board provides drive signals for the LCD power supply charge pump that produces the various operating voltages for the LCD. That may have been damaged if the "demo" program in the Discovery board is running while the Discovery is connected to the controller board. That could account for the LCD not working.

"After assembly of the system, you have to install the firmware over the dedicated USB port. There
is already a small pre-flashed firmware on your new STM32F4DISCOVERY, which lets the LEDs
blink according to accelerometer value. This is only a demonstration and it will be overwritten by our
firmware."

"Never flash any other 3rd party firmware on the STM32F4DISCOVERY, while it is connected to
our PCB! Otherwise parts on both of the PCBs or the CPU might be damaged!"

The first thing I do when building a system is to flash the operating firmware to the Discovery board.

Hopefullly, it is just a bad solder joint or something easy to fix!

Are you using the GPS antenna that I sent you? I did test it on my system and found it could achieve a reliable lock indoors, showing all visible satellites active. A long cable run could cause an issue, though.

Best,

Don
WD9DMP

[JonathanW]

Don,
To be fair, the build document doesn't seem to warn that the default minimal firmware will necessarily cause damage -- they seem to be warning against putting other, third-party firmware on the discovery board.  Even so, I agree: might as well flash the discovery board prior to installation, just to be sure.

As Dale mentioned, it's also possible the LCD is put in backwards...there are no tabs or guide pins to prevent it.  Be careful of following the "pin 1-9" markings, and make sure (since the header for the LCD is actually 10 pins) that you have it seated correctly.

[dfroula]

Yes, the wording is confusing, but it is logical to assume the "demo" firmware is 3rd-party to the project.

Fair or not, the controller can still be damaged by not flashing the firmware before powering up! 

I've installed the LCD upside-down before  . No ill effects, fortunately.

Don