Linux HPSDR Obervations

[Steve Haynal]

Hi Group,

I did try linhpsdr last night. The summary is that I was able to receive and see 5W out with tune, but there were some audio issues. Overall, the program looks very nice and has some EER and PureSignal support. There are already about a dozen references to the Hermes Lite in the code.

To see 5W out on any HPSDR compatible software, you basically have to do three things. First, your have to enable the Apollo tuner, as that is the switch that is repurposed to enable the PA in the Hermes-Lite. Otherwise you will only see power out on the low power TX connector. This is done as seen below. This setting was not stored in the linhpsdr database, so I had to choose Apollo every time I started linhpsdr.

 

Next, if you are using the N2ADR filter board, you should set the filters up properly for each band. Below is the screen that does that. Note that on 40M RX, I have only the HPF filter (last check) and 10M LPF (second to last check) in place. If you set all the RX bands like this, or even without HPF and LPF, then during receive you can skim multiple bands but during TX the proper filters will be engaged.

Finally, you must set all the PA calibration settings to the lowest possible as we do not want any attenuation for a PA during transmit.

With the above changes, you should see about 5W or more out on all bands with tune.

I did see some issues with audio. During receive, audio was fine most of the time with the local audio checkbox checked. However, after maybe 5 minutes of use, I'd start to hear some slight distortion. If I uncheck and check local audio for receive again, then the distortion goes away. It is hard to hear, but clearly seen when spotting FT8. Below you can see distorted signals and undistorted signals.

I was never able to input any TX audio to linhpsdr. I have pulse audio VAC setup on my Linux machine, and I injected a tune from WSJTX to one of these channels, but never saw input when monitoring the same channel with linhpsdr. I know this setup is working as the same is fine with Quisk.

I think there is something wrong with my audio setup or with linhpsdr. The libsoundio that linhpsr uses supports multiple audio backends. I am using pulse audio, which may cause issues. What is the recommended backend? Also, I have my pulse audio set up for virtual audio cables and sampling rates of 48000 kHz. Maybe this is problematic as it is not the default, but is does work well and avoids resampling for other SDR software. For reference, I have the following changes in,

***  /etc/pulse/daemon.conf

rlimit-nice = 31

rlimit-rtprio = 9

; rlimit-rttime = 1000000

default-sample-format = s16le

default-sample-rate = 48000

; alternate-sample-rate = 48000

default-sample-channels = 2

; default-channel-map = front-left,front-right

default-fragments = 16

default-fragment-size-msec = 4

***  /etc/pulse/default.pa

load-module module-null-sink sink_name=vac1 rate=48000 channels=1 sink_properties=device.description=Vac1

load-module module-null-sink sink_name=vac2 rate=48000 channels=1 sink_properties=device.description=Vac2

load-module module-virtual-source source_name=loop1_source uplink_sink=loop1_sink

I am curious if others see better results with different audio backends or different settings.

73,

Steve

kf7o

[Steve Haynal]

Hi Paul,

Yes, please post to the group.

The LEDs indicate healthy ethernet clock and radio subsystem. The other two LEDs will light when you have a DHCP address and 1Gb connection. Since the LEDs are lighting, you have a unit with gateware programmed and don't need to check.

Quisk and SparkSDR are the most tested software with the Hermes-Lite 2.0. Theoretically everything should work with piHPSDR since you already have it working with openhpsdr radios. If not, we need to work towards making it work.

73,

Steve

kf7o

On Mon, Jun 10, 2019 at 10:52 AM Paul Marbourg <zbo...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Steve,

If this type of email should just go to the group,

please let me know. 

After about two months of slave labor associated with moving to a new QTH and remediating the old QTH for getting ready to sell it, I finally had a chance to power up the HL2 B8 last night (I did a visual inspection with magnification at time of receipt of shipment). 

I only applied power, no other cables were attached to the unit. I saw one the LEDs glowing steady and another one, closer to the power port, flashing regularly. 

So based on other’s observations, I think the initial power up went perfectly with my HL2 mated to N2ADR’s filter board. 

Next up will be a eprom factory flash test to see if Quisk recognizes the board. I suppose I could check the supply voltages first, though. 

I have a John Mellon RaspberryPi based HPSDR control head previously used with my Anan 7000dle. I wonder if it would work as-is with the HL2? 

Thanks for all your hard work on this project. 

73

Paul

WN7T

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 8, 2019, at 11:46 AM, Steve Haynal <softerh...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Group,

I did try linhpsdr last night. The summary is that I was able to receive and see 5W out with tune, but there were some audio issues. Overall, the program looks very nice and has some EER and PureSignal support. There are already about a dozen references to the Hermes Lite in the code.

To see 5W out on any HPSDR compatible software, you basically have to do three things. First, your have to enable the Apollo tuner, as that is the switch that is repurposed to enable the PA in the Hermes-Lite. Otherwise you will only see power out on the low power TX connector. This is done as seen below. This setting was not stored in the linhpsdr database, so I had to choose Apollo every time I started linhpsdr.

<apollo.png>

 

Next, if you are using the N2ADR filter board, you should set the filters up properly for each band. Below is the screen that does that. Note that on 40M RX, I have only the HPF filter (last check) and 10M LPF (second to last check) in place. If you set all the RX bands like this, or even without HPF and LPF, then during receive you can skim multiple bands but during TX the proper filters will be engaged.

<filters.png>

Finally, you must set all the PA calibration settings to the lowest possible as we do not want any attenuation for a PA during transmit.

<pa.png>

With the above changes, you should see about 5W or more out on all bands with tune.

I did see some issues with audio. During receive, audio was fine most of the time with the local audio checkbox checked. However, after maybe 5 minutes of use, I'd start to hear some slight distortion. If I uncheck and check local audio for receive again, then the distortion goes away. It is hard to hear, but clearly seen when spotting FT8. Below you can see distorted signals and undistorted signals.

<linhpsdr.png>

I was never able to input any TX audio to linhpsdr. I have pulse audio VAC setup on my Linux machine, and I injected a tune from WSJTX to one of these channels, but never saw input when monitoring the same channel with linhpsdr. I know this setup is working as the same is fine with Quisk.

I think there is something wrong with my audio setup or with linhpsdr. The libsoundio that linhpsr uses supports multiple audio backends. I am using pulse audio, which may cause issues. What is the recommended backend? Also, I have my pulse audio set up for virtual audio cables and sampling rates of 48000 kHz. Maybe this is problematic as it is not the default, but is does work well and avoids resampling for other SDR software. For reference, I have the following changes in,

***  /etc/pulse/daemon.conf

rlimit-nice = 31

rlimit-rtprio = 9

; rlimit-rttime = 1000000

default-sample-format = s16le

default-sample-rate = 48000

; alternate-sample-rate = 48000

default-sample-channels = 2

; default-channel-map = front-left,front-right

default-fragments = 16

default-fragment-size-msec = 4

***  /etc/pulse/default.pa

load-module module-null-sink sink_name=vac1 rate=48000 channels=1 sink_properties=device.description=Vac1

load-module module-null-sink sink_name=vac2 rate=48000 channels=1 sink_properties=device.description=Vac2

load-module module-virtual-source source_name=loop1_source uplink_sink=loop1_sink

I am curious if others see better results with different audio backends or different settings.

73,

Steve

kf7o

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<apollo.png>

<filters.png>

<pa.png>

<linhpsdr.png>

[Steve Haynal]

Hi Roger,

Thanks for the feedback. What is puzzling about my setup is that I used the same PulseAudio VACs for linHPSDR and Quisk, but I don't see the same problem with Quisk. Maybe Quisk is treating the audio channel slightly differently.

73,

Steve

kf7o

 

On Tue, Jun 11, 2019 at 5:05 AM Roger Rehr W3SZ <w3...@comcast.net> wrote:

Hi Steve,

I have some observations with different hardware/software that may provide some insight as to your intermittent receive audio distortion.

I have seen what I think is similar receive audio distortion episodically using the Atlas/Metis/Mercury/Pennylane platform running with my own software on Windows 10 and using VAC to provide the link between my software and WSJT-X.

This problem is a relatively recent issue (beginning within the past year), although I have been running my software for several years and I have been using Windows 10 since its initial release.  The hardware has been unchanged since it was initially released.

The problem had been relatively infrequent until this past weekend when it began occurring every 10-15 minutes.  It could be resolved on each occasion by closing and then reopening WSJT-X.

There were a number of Windows 10 updates last week that I suspect may have caused my problem to worsen.

I suspected that the issue might be related to VAC's "reaction" to the Windows updates, and so I substituted VoiceMeeter Banana for VAC.  I found that with the VB virtual audio connections, I had no audio distortion appear over a course of several (6) hours.  Once I had substituted VB for VAC, I didn't see any distortion over the entire remaining operating session.

The main points are that (if you and I are seeing the same phenomenon) [1] this audio distortion does not appear to be hardware or SDR-software-specific or even OS-specific and [2] appears at least in my case to be related to VAC.  So perhaps your virtual audio solution there is a culprit too.  I don't know if there is an alternative virtual audio cable solution that you can try to see if that cures the issue for you.

If the above misses the mark, please accept my apologies.

There are 3 images below:
1.  Transient appearance of this phenomenon that disappears in the middle of a receive cycle
2.  Continual presence of phenomenon on 3 receive cycles
3.  Two successive "odd" receive cycles with first cycle normal and second showing the phenomenon.






73,
Roger Rehr
W3SZ

On 6/8/2019 2:46 PM, Steve Haynal wrote:

Hi Group,

I did try linhpsdr last night

I did see some issues with audio. During receive, audio was fine most of the time with the local audio checkbox checked. However, after maybe 5 minutes of use, I'd start to hear some slight distortion. If I uncheck and check local audio for receive again, then the distortion goes away. It is hard to hear, but clearly seen when spotting FT8. Below you can see distorted signals and undistorted signals.

I think there is something wrong with my audio setup or with linhpsdr. The libsoundio that linhpsr uses supports multiple audio backends. I am using pulse audio, which may cause issues. What is the recommended backend? Also, I have my pulse audio set up for virtual audio cables and sampling rates of 48000 kHz. Maybe this is problematic as it is not the default, but is does work well and avoids resampling for other SDR software. For reference, I have the following changes in,

default-fragments = 16

default-fragment-size-msec = 4

[Marty Wittrock]

Steve/All,

I'm seeing the same issue with LinHPSDR as run on a RockPro64 under Ubuntu 18.04 and MATE desktop. I see an issue that once the audio is defined in LinSHPDR (RX tab) it'll be clear audio for about 45 seconds and then the audio gets so distorted that it's not intelligible anymore, followed by complete disconnection. Reconnecting the same audio path cleans it up for about 20 seconds and then the distortion and disconnection happens again. I love the app, but this issue with audio is really annoying. I even resorted to plugging in a USB audio dongle to see if I could force the audio path to use that resource and stay - - only to have the same issue (clear for 20 seconds, distortion sets in, then audio completely disconnects). Strange issue to have since it seems to receive perfectly with the HL2 until this audio issue happens.

73 de Marty, KN0CK

[Sid Boyce]

Hi Marty,
That's a very strange one indeed.  It usually means it's running short
of resources - CPU or memory.
I'd expect the RockPro64 to be more than capable of handling that as the
ODROID-C2 with 2GB or memory and no swap is perfectly happy.

Check with top command to see if there is anything hogging CPU's e.g 100%+
# pidof linhpsdr
Returns a number.

# ps hH p <linhpsdr pid> | wc -l
returns how many CPU threads linhpsdr is using.
73 ... Sid.

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[Steve Haynal]

Hi All,

Which audio backend are people using with linHPSDR? Pulse?

73,

Steve

kf7o

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[Marc OLANIE]

Pulse Audio here.

 

I should precise that my version of LinHPSDR has been compiled in June last year. No dropout so far with only 1 receiver, no saturation (unless I don’t « push » pulse Audio above the 100% volume limit)

Dropout occures as soon as I’m adding a second receiver, but the hardware config is poor (old toshiba « portege » M400 table pc with core duo @1,8GHz/ 768MB ram)

 

73’

Marc f6itu

 

 

 

 

De : herme...@googlegroups.com <herme...@googlegroups.com> De la part de Steve Haynal
Envoyé : dimanche 16 juin 2019 07:09
À : Hermes-Lite <herme...@googlegroups.com>
Objet : Re: Linux HPSDR Obervations

 

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Emeritus IBM/Amdahl Mainframes and Sun/Fujitsu Servers Tech Support
Senior Staff Specialist, Cricket Coach
Microsoft Windows Free Zone - Linux used for all Computing Tasks

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[f6itu]

Hi

Does someone knows how to avoid rx mute outside ham bands  in LinHPSDR ? 

I used to use an old version this software... but the last version I compiled a few days ago is killing all signals as soon as I leave a ham band. Even without filter configuration. that's frustrating. 

Diging in the different files didn't gave me any clue concerning this evil "band plan" wizzard. No specific params in the configuration window either... and no info in the documentation

73'

Marc f6itu

[in3otd]

um, just pulled the latest version, works fine here, no audio muting seen at any frequency. Audio output is (always) relatively low but I think it has always been so.

73 de Claudio, DK1CG / IN3OTD