BDC Interface Band Control

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Dalton Williams

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Aug 14, 2024, 12:03:06 AMAug 14
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I posted this on the Plus Group bi accident.  Please excuse the duplicate posting.

I love my HL2 and look forward to making it my primary station!

I read in the HL2 specification and documentation that HL2 supports BCD band control but I can’t find documentation on how to build the necessary HL2 interface and interface cable.
 
Can someone point me to this information and whether code must be written to creat the necessary interface.
 
 I have a new VK3AMP arriving soon and wish to have the interface built and tested before it arrives.
 
Thanks,
Dalton  W5EIM 


Dalton Williams
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20 Years & 34,800 Miles on the water
Amateur Radio W5EIM
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James Ahlstrom

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Aug 14, 2024, 4:13:33 PMAug 14
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To send BCD bands to an attached amp, you can buy the IO board that goes inside the HL2. Each amp is different, so the IO board will need special code. Maybe someone has written it, but if not, you will need to write it.

Jim
N2ADR

tmoto...@gmail.com

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Aug 14, 2024, 8:40:23 PMAug 14
to Dalton Williams, Hermes-Lite

Im using Thetis and the OC port on my ANAN7000 to do the BCD connection to the VKAMP.

On the VKAMP I select ANAN/SunSDR and it uses the standard BCD mapping.

 

I thought someone had mapped the band data already for the I/O board, which youd have to load into the PICO and wire the internal header to DB9 using what ever pins you want. I obviously would wire the same callouts as my ANAN so I can swap the cable from my 7000, or one of my HL2’s to the AMP.

 

 

I kinda remember someone doing an implementation using the USB cable method….using a C232HM-DDHSL-0 which is USB to wire dongle that you terminate to a DB9 for the amp..

I use the 4 bcd outputs plus ground. I run the TX or EXT TX rca out to my tuner then the amp. You can activate say pin 5, 6 or 7 to do TX, but I left this the normal RCA out path for the Tuner as I mentioned. This way if the tuner sees a high swr and alarms – I break the TX to the amp…

 

Here is my OC Mapping on the Thetis, I was on 40m as you can see…

 

I set both the TX and RX sides as the AMP moves as soon as I change bands.

 

 

 

 

For the VK amp side…

A is Pin 1

B is Pin 6

C is pin 2

D is Pin 7

GND is Pin 3

 

TX if you wish is Pin 5

 

 

Tom – K2TC

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Steve Rickard

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Sep 25, 2024, 1:58:29 PMSep 25
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I would like the details of wiring the DB9 to the IO board to enable BDC Interface Band Control as described by Tom.

Thanks,
Steve, KW7F

Steve Rickard

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Sep 25, 2024, 2:55:53 PMSep 25
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Oops, meant BCD not BDC..

Steve, KW7F

Mike Lewis

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Sep 25, 2024, 7:20:41 PMSep 25
to Steve Rickard, Hermes-Lite
I posted my VHF BCD/PTT main.c file on my GitHub site so it is easier to find and retrieve in the future.


  • K7MDL

From: Mike Lewis <k7...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2024 4:13 PM
To: Steve Rickard <steve....@gmail.com>; Hermes-Lite <herme...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: BDC Interface Band Control
 
This has been asked several times before in this forum.  Here is a paste of one of my replies and the associated VHF focused pico main.c file I use.  It can be a starting point for your needs.

---------

As mentioned in other posts, I and maybe others have code posted for produce BCD from TX frequency on the IO board, and repeat PTT (EXTTR).   In my code example it was a list of VHF frequencies combined with forcing Aux RF for RX on VHF bands and ANT for RX on the HF bands.  You can change the frequency list very easily.  Today the HR50 and BCD code are somewhat standalone, some code effort is required to integrate the 2 to work at the same time.  Not hard but still needs to be done.   I attached my VHF focused BCD version of main.c.    In this version the BCD will only match the TX frequency as I found most SDR apps when I wrote this did not send RX_Freq info out yet.

From: herme...@googlegroups.com <herme...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Steve Rickard <steve....@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2024 11:55 AM
To: Hermes-Lite <herme...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: BDC Interface Band Control
 
Oops, meant BCD not BDC..

Steve, KW7F

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G4ZAL

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Oct 3, 2024, 1:26:39 PMOct 3
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Hi Mike, K7MDL

Your main.c file seems to be missing in your link - all I see is the README?

I'm interested as I am considering purchasing the HL2 io board from makerfabs as I would like to unify my CAT controlled, wireless linked,  remote tuned antenna.
I currently read out the HL2 'VFO' frequency by serial port and then tweak things to suit in an external Arduino.
It works good, but is different to my Anan, which does output BCD band data.
My original HL2's are from 2019 and 2023 - the io board wasn't around then,  hence rolling my own.

Nigel
G4ZAL

Mike Lewis

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Oct 4, 2024, 2:22:26 AMOct 4
to G4ZAL, Hermes-Lite
Fixed, main.c now appears.

The limitation with the HL2's native serial output is that it is limited to the actual hardware TX frequency and does not know about transverters.  The IO board will receive the "dial" frequency over i2c so you can now send on serial for the actual band of interest, which may not be in HF range.

  • Mike


From: herme...@googlegroups.com <herme...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of G4ZAL <devon...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 3, 2024 10:26 AM

G4ZAL

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Oct 6, 2024, 2:31:47 PMOct 6
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Thanks Mike, will take a look and see if i can adapt your software to suit my need.
Will have to place an order on Makerfabs for the I/O board, although they are on a weeks Chinese holiday right now.

Does anyone else use the I/O board for BCD data output and have any software to share?

Nigel
G4ZAL

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