Just bought Hermes Lite 2...lots of questions.

[Aaron]

I just ordered my HL2...almost bought a used 7300 but I figured for $100 more, the amazing audio the Hermes puts out was more than worth it.  The nature of the radio I want is to be accessible from anywhere in my house, and eventually remote (but, that will come later down the road MAYBE).  I have a decent gaming desktop that I just bought about a year ago so I know it is more than capable of running Thetis.

Now, onto some questions.

1.  5W is not enough for me, so I have purchased an XPA125B amp.  I am primarily using an EFHW in my backyard and I really don't want to go through setting up a tuned antenna rack for many reasons, the EFHW works fine for my needs, for now.  The XPA125B will tune it fine, as well, and offer some SWR protections, etc., not to mention roughly 100W of output signal.

With regards to setting up the XPA125B.  I have read that the IO board, in conjunction with configuring the board and soldering some pins to the board, as well as making a specific DB9 to DIN4 I can achieve automatic band switching, cool, but I am sort of bittersweet.  I know this will be a lot of tinkering around to get it to work but when it does, this is going to be awesome.

2.  Power supply for HL2 - so it appears that the barrel connector power supply is...non-existent.  Can I get the proper barrel and wire it to a 13.8V power supply, along with my amp?

3.  Speaking of Amps....is a relay buffer interface absolutely necessary?  I don't want to fry anything and if that is the standard, I am all for it.

4. Internet - so as of right now, I do NOT have a direct ethernet connection into my makeshift shack.  I DO have good, stable mesh wifi setup, in particular netgear mesh wifi pods.  Has anyone tested this out where you essentially install a mesh wifi pod / satellite and connect HL2 directly into this pod via ethernet?  My understanding is the pod to pod communication is MUCH faster than regular wifi.  And, the pods will be around 30ft apart, but will have to go through two walls.  I have tested this out and I get roughly 7-800Mbps between the two pods, so there is plenty of bandwidth there, unsure about latency though...

This is all for now, if anyone can help me out with some insights that would be great.  This is a new project for me and my goal is to set this thing up without any mistakes, the last thing I want is a smoked hermes.

[Heath Petty]

I have some feedback, this is all based on my experiences. 

1. I really don't like using the XPA125B amp with any radio except a xiegu radio. People have made it so you can control it remotely, but its a pain. The tuner is not nearly as good as the G90's tuner. You have to be really careful with input power, If I put anymore that 1w into the one I had it would overdrive the amp and fault. You don't needa PTT buffer with it, the PTT port on the HL2 will trigger the PTT just fine. My favorite 100W amps that I own right now are the Juma PA100D and the hardrock 50plus. Both can be controlled and monitored remotely (my shack is in my garage), and are robust amps. I have also heard good things about the neptune amps. 

2. The barrel connector on the HL2 is a standard 5mm x 2.1 mm size, you can find them all over Amazon. Center pin positive, don't get that reversed. 

3. Answer this above.

4. Network jitter is what causes issues with the hermes ethernet connection. My wifi is very jittery, and that causes all kinds of issues on TX. RX is ok with some glitching. I have my garage and office on an ethernet 1GB network, and it works flawlessly. For accessing my HL2 on any other network, I have a small n100 based shack computer that I connect to. With that I can do remote head with Quisk and piHPSDR, or I can just connect to it to do digital modes right on the computer using remote desktop. There is also a UDP buffer daemon you can run on a pi or other small Linux system, then connect thetis to that over your wifi (or internet) that will help with smoothing out the jitter. You can search this list for how much jitter will cause issues. When you are set up, you can try to connect over the wifi, but if you get relay chatter when transmitting, that's a sign the jitter is too high on the connection. You can adjust UDP buffers if you are right on the threshold to get a more stable connection. 

Heath

NQ7T

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