Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Can't get SDR Transceiver running

[Matthias Weber]

Hello Jack!

Thank you for your answer. Unfortuately I haven't found time to answer
so far. I found time for testing last saturday. Some more feedback for
you. ;)

Which test cases did you have?

It worked quite well listening to short wave bands like 40m and 80m. I'm
not sure if I could test 20m and so on as I've got a problem with
connectors. Because the USRP has SMA connectors, but I already had
SMA->SMA adaptors. The antennas in our shack have N and PL connectors. I
myself don't have adaptors that fit so I could have those of another ham
but not for much to long. As I said short wave seems to work quite well
for rx in all modes.

I had problems testing 2m in FM. We have an echolink relais in the next
big city where our mobile trx don't have problems to demodulate. The
USRP doesn't see any signal, I also played with the squelch. I also used
my mobile trx for tx and the USRP received some signal but only from
short distance. :( So this doesn't seem to work very good. Do you need a
pre-amp? Iirc we also used our directional antenna (??-el yagi) which
didn't work.

Unfortunately the GUI is not really easy to use. It's hard to move the
slider to "scan" a specific frequency range. Doing some research I came
across the "simple SSB receiver" OZ9EAC (Alexandru Csete, also
participating in the list). Haven't had time and equipment so far to
make some tests but the GUI for scanning the frequencies is probably
better. Would be cool if you could interface a DYI rotary encoder
compared to a traditional VCO (which might not even be a big problem).

Something that'd really be great: have some nice component in the GUI
(whatever this would be) for the frequency (discussed above). Afterwards
it would be great if you could change the mode within a dropdown menu
(CW, AM, USB, LSB, FM, ...) or some other GUI component.

You could also add a waterfall sink which shouldn't be a problem --
started experiment with GRC on saturday evening. :)

Still looking for a TX board as shipping from US seems to be pretty
expensive. :( Have you used an amplifier for TX? Like one from
minicircuits...?

Thank you.

Regards,
Matthias


-------- Original Message  --------
Subject: Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Can't get SDR Transceiver running
From: Jack Sun <address@hidden>
To: Matthias Weber <address@hidden>
Date: 21.06.2010 00:25

> Hi Matthias,
> 
> Great to know that the problem was indeed the location of where the
> daugheterboard is mounted on. If I have the time, I will try to put an extra
> drop down box in the main GUI screen so the user can choose the side A or
> side B. Also, please let me know how the software is working for you. We've
> done some test cases while working on the project, but it is always nice to
> hear back how other people are doing with our software in terms of
> functionality, etc. Nonetheless, thank you for your feedback on the side A/B
> mounting. It is something I will get to when time allows.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Jack