NO LUCK

[vk4frik1]

Hi all. I have been trying to get the RS-HFIQ going with the use of a cheap 5 dollar USB Sound card. I have had no success using the instruction given on the youtube video by Techminds approx a year ago. Am I doing something wrong as I feel I have wasted my money.

Thanks

[Mike K7MDL]

More details needed about what is working and not working, why you think it is not working.

1. Have you verified control via the USB connection?   Sends commands, query status?

2. Using any PC sound application, can you see noise from SDR audio line?  Turning it on and off at minimum sand see a change?  Connect an antenna and disconnect it, again, see noise change?

Many of us are using these successfully, they work quite well.  I have 2 of them.

- Mike

[Shirley Márquez Dúlcey]

Most of those inexpensive USB sound cards only have a mono microphone input, not a stereo line input. That won't work with the RS-HFIQ; you need two channels to get both the I and Q signals. At best, you will be able to receive but will get no image rejection. Tracking down the correct drivers for those cheap cards can also be a problem on Windows; Windows will automatically download SOME driver but it may not provide optimum performance, so you may have to go looking for another one.

Aside from that, have you verified that the input on your sound card works at all? Hook up some kind of audio source (anything with a headphone output will do) using the same cable you would use to connect the RS-HFIQ, and use an application such as Audacity to record from it. If you don't get anything, either your sound card or your audio cable (or maybe both!) is defective. If your sound card only has microphone inputs, you will likely need to turn the input level nearly all the way down to get an undistorted signal.

You probably haven't gotten as far as testing transmitting. For that the output from your USB sound card has to work. Plugging headphones into that is a simple test.