HL2 failed following power outage

[David Wilde M0WID]

I had my much loved Build 7 HL2 transmitting WSPR on 10m band yesterday.  Unfortunately there was a local power outage (two actually) in our area.  Following this my HL2 no longer works.

I am wondering what tests I can do to identify the problem and then fix it, and also what the possible failure mode could have been.  

When plugged in the HL2 obtains its IP address as normal, SparkSDR connects as normal but there is no signal.  SparkSDR has a red cross on the receiver bar at the top, I am not sure what SparkSDR uses to determine there is something wrong and display the red cross.

When keying up the relay switches over but there is no output power.

The power supplies seem to be providing the correct voltages and I can see the clock pulses going into the AD9866 on my oscilloscope.

I am now thinking the AD9866 has failed for some reason.  Are there any other possible causes for these symptoms and are there any other tests that are worth carrying out before ordering a replacement AD9866?

If I do have to replace the AD9866 are there any hints for removal (I have a hot air gun) without disturbing the other parts nearby?

Most important to me though is trying to understand the possible failure mode.  It is quite possible that the HL2 was in transmit (5watts) at the time the power failed.

The HL2 is powered from a 13.8V linear supply, which in turn is plugged in to a trailing extension socket with surge protection.  The PC is also plugged into this extension and was of course on at the time.  There is nothing mains switched between the HL2 and the aerial, just the TX/RX relay in the HL2 and the filter relays in the HL2 itself.

I am thinking that a spike from the mains 240V supply while likely to have occurred is unlikely to be the cause of failure as it would have to pass through the transformer for the linear PSU, the caps in this PSU and then the through the regulator in the HL2.  Also the other parts of the radio seem to have survived.

Any suggestions for diagnostic tests to carry out and what does SparkSDR use to determine when to display the red cross?

73

Dave M0WID

[radi...@mail.com]

Gateware corruption? Did you try reflashing the Gateware? Admittedly it's a stab in the dark but it's probably one of the first things I would try if it had been me.

It's really worth buying a good quality UPS to smooth out power outages and give you time to shut things down in an orderly manner. I've got one of these and it seems relatively RF quiet:

https://www.cyberpower.com/uk/en/product/sku/cp1500epfclcd-uk

A great many UPSs are just massive noise generators so be careful. Had a Belkin before this one and it was truly one of the best RFI generators I have ever seen!

Max

[David Wilde M0WID]

Thanks Max. Yes I have reflashed the firmware, which went through perfectly.
The leds on the HL2 also operate as normal.

Dave

[Reid Campbell]

Hi David,

You mentioned that you had two power outages, do you know why they happened? I'm just wondering if you had an electrical storm in the area and your AD9866 was damaged with an inducted charge. 

Cheers 

Reid
Gi8TME/Mi0BOT

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[David Wilde M0WID]

Well, things are getting stranger.

I dug out my raspberry Pi and loaded up the hermeslite.py jupyter app to see if it had any useful diagnostics.  Nothing to see there.  I then started SparkSDR on the raspberry Pi and the HL2 works as normal!

Go back to the Windows PC and it does not, not with Spark, SDR Console or Thetis.

I tried my Atomic Pi with SparkSDR and the HermesLite works.  So this is not a HermesLite hardware issue at all, probably some windows update that got applied when the PC rebooted.  Are different ports used for the commands such as frequency, PTT etc compared to the high speed data for Rx and Tx?

The power company say the first outage was caused by an underground cable fault, the second by an overhead cable fault!

Investigations continue....

Dave

[David Wilde M0WID]

The HL2 also works fine from my corporate issue Windows laptop.  Must be a setting somewhere in the PC, but where to look?

I have loaded wireshark on the PC where the HL2 does not work and can see UDP packets to/from port 59043 on the PC and 1024 on the HL2
No packets are reported as lost.

Dave

[Reid Campbell]

I would suspect the sound interface - I've heard of updates shutting down a programs ability to use sound.

Cheers 

Reid
Gi8TME/Mi0BOT

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[David Wilde M0WID]

Good idea.  I connected my SDRPlay to the same instance of SparkSDR and that works fine, so its not sound related.

The waterfall for the HermesLite and other SDR software show no signal at all.  

The last windows update according to the update history was installed back on the 15th April, and I have used the HL2 with SparkSDR a few times since then.

I tried connecting PC and HL2 directly, no switches, no router.  The HL2 was discovered as expected but still the same issue, the HL2 can be controlled (PTT, frequency) but no RF data seems to be transferred in/out.  Temperature, current is.

Very confused operator here.

Dave