Another AliExpress source and a question

[Dave Lapp]

Hi,

I've seen the postings about people buying the RadioBerry made by HamRadioShop. This the dark-ish (purple?) board with the CL016 fpga. Instead of buying that one I bought an Aursinc one also off AliExpress (link below) but they may be available on other sites. This one is green and has a CL025 fpga. I bought it mostly because I'm thinking of playing around with this and felt that the larger fpga would give more "room" for experimenting.

It arrived last Fri. Ordered Aug 21 and arrived in Canada Sept 1 so not bad shipping time. After searching for my lone RPi4 and a few false starts in installing the various software pieces (it helps if you read *and* follow the directions) I managed to get it working.

My first concern was that it would have a CL016 fpga but it loads the CL025 rbf and works so it appears to be as advertised. At first I thought it a bit deaf but when I compare it head to head with an HL2 it seems to be about the same.

Now my question: one of the reasons that I thought it was deaf was because there was no indication of overload with the Rx gain set fairly high. Is this expected?

Thanks,

Dave VE3LHO

Link to Ali Radioberry I bought:

https://vi.aliexpress.com/item/1005005732017314.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.1.4f1244afKqc6r1&algo_pvid=831b746e-a0cb-43a6-baf3-3bb7e7c03582&algo_exp_id=831b746e-a0cb-43a6-baf3-3bb7e7c03582-0&pdp_npi=4%40dis%21USD%21169.00%21169.0%21%21%21169.00%21%21%40210318cf16940437090634731e0b55%2112000034147497086%21sea%21CA%211710902281%21&curPageLogUid=ZNKrNsqg4d6m

[pa3gsb]

Hi Dave

Iam not sure the hermeslite is also having 2 leds for good level and overload. Besides that there is also in the protocol an indicator which can be used by the SDR program.

For the radioberry @RPI there is no indicator at all.

For the radioberrt @juice there is an indicator in the protocol.

It is not that hard to add that to the radioberry @RPI ; if you have a strong need please make the change and iam willing to merge your fork.

73 Johan

PA3GSB 

Op donderdag 7 september 2023 om 01:58:30 UTC+2 schreef david...@gmail.com:

[Dave Lapp]

Thanks for the reply Johan. That clears things up. My immediate interest was whether the indication should be shown on the screen and if its absence indicated that there was some problem with my new Radioberry. Sounds like it isn't expected.

I don't personally see a need for LEDs. On my HL2 I'm rarely in front of it where I can see the LEDs. I don't think I'd use them on the Radioberry either.

I do like having the indication on the screen. I assume adding protocol support on the RB+RPI would require changes to the gateware (to detect and pass the status over to the RPI) and to the Radioberry software (to pass this along in the appropriate protocol field). That might actually be a good first exercise in learning how to work with this system. I'm somewhat comfortable with the idea of changing the software but I've never done any Verilog. I'll let you know when I have something to merge but don't expect it to be quick :-)

Thanks,

Dave L.

VE3LHO