Re: [gqrx] Gqrx, airspy and spyverter

[Alexandru Csete]

On Wed, Nov 25, 2015 at 10:13 PM, Daniel Tiganas
<dan.t...@intrasys.ro> wrote:
> Hi Alex,
> Short question. Is there a way to control the bias-tee software-switch 4,5V
> output of the airspy device to power up the spyverter converter? It would be
> a nice add-on for airspy owners so we don't have to use an external power
> adapter for spyverter. Thanks in advance, again, keep up the good work!

Hi Daniel,

I have not tried it myself, but it should be possible to enable bias
tee by adding "bias=1" to the device string, i.e. the complete device
string would become:

airspy=0,bias=1

Source: http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/GrOsmoSDR#AirSpySource

If it's exposed through the gr-osmosdr API, I may add a button later.

Alex

[Daniel Tiganas]

Great!! Thank you very much, I will try this as soon as my spyverter will arrive.

The very nice feature would be to also adjust the LNA to -60000000 whenever bias is set to 1. Of course, this is a very low priority change.

Thanks again for excellent work!

[Daniel Tiganas]

Thanks a lot Alex, it works with bias=1 as device string. Only note though, the LNA for Spyverter is 120MHz, not 60 as I previously stated in the last post.

Have a nice day!

vineri, 27 noiembrie 2015, 20:27:39 UTC+2, Alexandru Csete a scris:

[Dave B]

I'm having problems getting the Airspy/Spyverter working in Ubuntu 14.04 with the airspy=0,bias=1 string, there's no signal at all. Setting it to airspy=0,bias=0 or airspy=0 gets me a straight line signal but no radio reception. Removing the Spyverter, and the Airspy works normally. If I plug in a second USB cord to the Spyverter it works fine. If I boot into Windows the Spyverter switch in SDR# works fine without using the USB cable to power the Spyverter.

[David Ranch]

Hello Dave,

There are a few things required here:

   - Is your Airspy running the newest firmware?  Older versions evidently had some issues here
   - What version of osmosdr are you running?  Newer versions are required to properly pass the bias=1 string

I have all this working on Centos6 and is documented here http://www.trinityos.com/HAM/CentosDigitalModes/hampacketizing-centos.html#42f.airspy-sw .  Most of those steps will also apply to Ubuntu so give it a read.

--David
KI6ZHD

[Dave B]

Update... This seems to be hit or miss. If I switch USB ports then the airspy=0,bias=1 string works. It doesn't matter if gqrx is restarted or if unplugging and replugging the USB cable. Then switching back to the other USB port it still works. It seems like the new string isn't working on the USB port that was previously using the default airspy=0 string. Does that make sense?