Info required for interfacing SPE Amp to IO Board

[Peter Other]

Hi Folks,

From the outset I will flag I am inexperienced with this hardware/software.  I hope someone can give me some guidance on how to set-up the Hermes IO board serial output to control band witching on my SPE 1.5k-FA.  My set-up is as follows

·         Hermes lite 2

·         N2ADR IO board

o   Jim’s firmware is loaded

o   Jumper J12 pin 2 to Jumper J7 pin 5

o   Jumper J6 pin 8 to Jumper J7 pin 2

·         Thetis v2.10.3.3

·         SPE 1.5k-FA

o   Using FT817/847 CAT emulation

o   4800 baud

o   Only RX232 and GND are connected to the IO board

The SPE is capable of auto band switching when a signal is injected into the amplifier, but ideally, I would like to utilise Jim’s IO serial connector.  The SPE is also capable of running other CAT control emulations, these include, Icom, Kenwood, Ten-Tec, Flex and Elecraft

[Mark Erbaugh]

The I/O board is not necessary to control the SPE amp. Just wire a serial port from the PC (either a physical serial port or a USB to serial converter) to the amp as shown in the above diagram. In Thetis, set up one of the CAT Control ports to use that port (I used CAT2). Set the SPE Cat to Flex and match the baud rate of the PC and the amp. That's it. The amp will respond to frequency changes. The amp will also control the drive power of the HL2 when it is in Operate mode.

73,

Mark

[Peter Other]

Thanks Mark

Yes that’s how I interfaced the amp. I was wondering if it were possible to do it directly from the IO board’s serial port

Cheers

Peter

[Mark Erbaugh]

It should be possible to use an OTG adapter to convert the Pico’s USB-C port to USB-A and the use the same USB to serial port adapter to connect to the amp. The Pico can be easily programmed to send frequency data to the amp. The issue I see is how the Pico can set the drive level. I haven’t researched what all the Pico on the I/O board can communicate with the Thetis software.

73,

Mark

[Peter Other]

Thanks for the quick response Mark.  I'll do some more follow-up and see how it goes.

Cheers

Peter

[MrZerohour1967]