[SARA] Simple spectrum/network analyser

[Matt Nottingham]

Hi,

For anyone who is messing around with one of these http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/35MHz-4-4GHz-USB-SMA-Source-Signal-Generator-Simple-Spectrum-Analyzer-35M-4-4G-/311103521591 (which have been previously mentioned on this list) I have written a simple GUI which may be of interest. It can be found here:

https://github.com/darkstar007/NetworkAnalyser

Thanks,

Matt

[Joe McCauley]

Matt,

How fast can this scan over the entire range?

Thanks,

joe

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[matt.no...@zen.co.uk]

Hi Joe,

Its certainly not the fastest thing out there - I reckon it takes
around 20-30 seconds to do a scan of 6,000 points.

If you're interested, I could do some timing measurements for you next
weekend - let me know what parameters you're interested in (bandwidth,
num points).


Thanks,

Matt

[Joe McCauley]

Well for the money it costs, I guess you could not expect it to be. If you get a chance, maybe you could try it over say a 200MHz range & see how fast you can scan at something like 10kHz resolution. I'm making an assumption that this is possible & that you can pick your start & stop frequency.

Thanks,

Joe

[matt.no...@zen.co.uk]

Hi Joe,

You can pick your start frequency and the frequency step between
points. The maximum number of points you cn do in a sweep is 9999 -
however there would be nothing to stop you then doing another sweep
that starts where the last one finished (the software I've written
currently doesn't do this, but it wouldn't be hard to do).

The time it takes per point seems to be roughly constant at 0.0042
seconds (independant of the centre frequency, the number of points and
the frequency step between the points). This means a sweep of 6000
points takes 25 seconds. To do your example sweep of 200MHz with 10kHz
resolution would require 20,000 points (and hence would require
multiple sweeps) and would take around 84 seconds.

Hope this helps.

[Joe McCauley]

Thanks for the info Matt. It seems it would be too slow for what I was thinking of.

Joe

[Steve Olney]

G'day Matt,

On Monday, March 23, 2015 at 9:00:13 PM UTC+11, Matt Nottingham wrote:

 

For anyone who is messing around with one of these http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/35MHz-4-4GHz-USB-SMA-Source-Signal-Generator-Simple-Spectrum-Analyzer-35M-4-4G-/311103521591

Do these units retain the frequency and amplitude settings (if any) after power down and re-powering ?

Steve O

[Gregg Lind]

https://signalhound.com/

--

[matt.no...@zen.co.uk]

Nope, they have the memory of a goldfish - and only do what you've
just told them to do. Well, as far as I've found out anyway. Obviously
easy to add a RPi or BBB.

[Don Latham]

Just run it with an arduino and display shield.
don

matt.no...@zen.co.uk

"Noli sinere nothos te opprimere"

Dr. Don Latham AJ7LL
Six Mile Systems LLC
17850 Six Mile Road
Huson, MT, 59846

mail: POBox 404
Frenchtown MT 59834-0404

VOX 406-626-4304
CEL 406-241-5093
Skype: buffler2
www.lightningforensics.com
www.sixmilesystems.com

[Jonathan Rawlinson]

This looks cool! Thanks for sharing! I wonder if it would be useable for Hydrogen Line studies (I could see a Raspberry Pi and this analyser making a nice unit)?

Just out of interest, what sort of interface does it use? USB COM emulator, etc?

I can see a new project forming! :D I may have to buy myself a new toy!

Thanks

Jon

[Marcus D. Leech]

On 04/24/2015 01:54 PM, Jonathan Rawlinson wrote:

This looks cool! Thanks for sharing! I wonder if it would be useable for Hydrogen Line studies (I could see a Raspberry Pi and this analyser making a nice unit)?

Just out of interest, what sort of interface does it use? USB COM emulator, etc?

I can see a new project forming! :D I may have to buy myself a new toy!

Thanks

Jon

I'll point out that you can buy a lot of RTLSDR dongles for the price of this thing, so if your intended application is actual receiving....

Having said that, having a wide-range signal generator in your "lab" is always useful...

On Monday, March 23, 2015 at 10:00:13 AM UTC, Matt Nottingham wrote:

Hi,

For anyone who is messing around with one of these http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/35MHz-4-4GHz-USB-SMA-Source-Signal-Generator-Simple-Spectrum-Analyzer-35M-4-4G-/311103521591 (which have been previously mentioned on this list) I have written a simple GUI which may be of interest. It can be found here:

https://github.com/darkstar007/NetworkAnalyser

Thanks,

Matt

[matt.no...@zen.co.uk]

Wouldn't that require arduino to do USB host? Otherwise some rewiring
to remove the need for USB?

Matt

[Don Latham]

I bought one of these. 138 mhz to 4.4 ghz version. So of course I had to open
it up :-)
It's labeled "spectrum analyzer BG7TBL 2014-08-19".
For the bucks, the interior is amazing! Chip count FTDI usb interface Look
out here, FTDI got po'd recently, and knock-off chips won't work properly. I
dunno if this one is real or not.
Atmega 8A micro controller, with an 11.0592 MHz clock.
Input comes thru an M810, I assume a mixer(?) (IAM8100, see below)
http://www.datasheetcatalog.com/datasheets_pdf/I/A/M/-/IAM-81008-TR1.shtml
and
ADF 4350 dds
http://www.analog.com/en/products/rf-microwave/pll-synth/adf4350.html
with a 50 MHZ ocxo? or TCXO? made somewhere in the old country :-)

Also an AD 8307 DC to 500 MHz, 92 dB Logarithmic Amplifier
http://www.analog.com/en/products/rf-microwave/rf-power-detectors/non-rms-responding-detector/ad8307.html
presumably the 8a reads this at ten bits?

I don't have the time just now to dive in to this device, but it certainly
seems potentially a lot more useful than just as a signal source.

Hey, most of this info is at:
http://www.dalbert.net/?p=219
coulda saved some time. Oh Well.

For a lot of us amateurs, this little device can probably serve as antenna swr
measurer,(with a suitable directional coupler) signal source, amp gain/bw
measurement, power meter? etc. Should be thoroughly checked out!
Don




Jonathan Rawlinson

> This looks cool! Thanks for sharing! I wonder if it would be useable for
> Hydrogen Line studies (I could see a Raspberry Pi and this analyser making
> a nice unit)?
>
> Just out of interest, what sort of interface does it use? USB COM emulator,
> etc?
>
> I can see a new project forming! :D I may have to buy myself a new toy!
>
> Thanks
>
> Jon
>

> On Monday, March 23, 2015 at 10:00:13 AM UTC, Matt Nottingham wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>

>> For anyone who is messing around with one of these
>> http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/35MHz-4-4GHz-USB-SMA-Source-Signal-Generator-Simple-Spectrum-Analyzer-35M-4-4G-/311103521591

>> (which have been previously mentioned on this list) I have written a simple
>> GUI which may be of interest. It can be found here:
>>
>> https://github.com/darkstar007/NetworkAnalyser
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Matt
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>

[Don Latham]

Almost surely. Bypass the FTDI usb and go to the Atmel directly. Probably not
worth the hassle :-)

matt.no...@zen.co.uk

[Marcus D. Leech]

On 04/24/2015 04:34 PM, Don Latham wrote:
> Almost surely. Bypass the FTDI usb and go to the Atmel directly. Probably not
> worth the hassle :-)

Source code for the Atmel is probably available somewhere. You could
program it so that it remembers its last parameters, assuming there's some
non-volatile storage for it to remember it to...

[Steve Olney]

Matt,

On Saturday, April 25, 2015 at 2:29:01 AM UTC+10, matt.no...@zen.co.uk wrote:

Nope, they have the memory of a goldfish - and only do what you've
just told them to do.

Dash it all - I was hoping for 'set and forget' behaviour.   It would be a real pain to have to run another micro just to set it to the same frequency after every power down :-(

Matt and Don:

 

Obviously easy to add a RPi or BBB.

Perhaps - but inconvenient for me.

I'll have to continue searching.

Thanks for the info.

Best Regards

Steve Olney

[Don Latham]

Hi Steve: Since you're not compulsive about the frequency, have a look at:
http://wb6dhw.com/For_Sale.html#Si570
This is a kit for the si 570/571 oscillators. They're programmable using the
kit with I2C.
They do remember, I think.
Don

Steve Olney

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[Steve Olney]

Thanks.

[matt.no...@zen.co.uk]

I only came in half way through this, so this may have been mentioned
before, but have you seen these:

http://df9np.de/page1.html

(looking at the price list, 1.4GHz should be around 40 euro).

[Steve Olney]

Matt,

Thanks - looks interesting.

Not sure what to make of this...

"No Shipping outside the EU (European Union) possible! "

Steve O

[matt.no...@zen.co.uk]

Yeah, I noticed that 2 seconds after sending the email....good luck!

[matt.no...@zen.co.uk]

Thanks for posting this - I've not had a chance to open mine up yet.

Thats the sort of projects I was going to use for mine - trouble is I
have a very long list of projects I want to do....

Jonathan - sorry, I missed your original email (I've been away a lot
recently). Anyway, its a simple COM interface which you send commands
down to the device. (Have a look at the run function in the BG7 class
in my code, just after it says "print 'Sending command'").

Thanks,

Matt

[Marcus D. Leech]

On 04/25/2015 04:45 AM, matt.no...@zen.co.uk wrote:
> Thanks for posting this - I've not had a chance to open mine up yet.
>
> Thats the sort of projects I was going to use for mine - trouble is I
> have a very long list of projects I want to do....
>
> Jonathan - sorry, I missed your original email (I've been away a lot
> recently). Anyway, its a simple COM interface which you send commands
> down to the device. (Have a look at the run function in the BG7 class
> in my code, just after it says "print 'Sending command'").
>
> Thanks,
>
> Matt

There are also these:

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/35M-4-4G-signal-source-development-board-ADF4351-development-board-/141390066144?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item20eb8131e0


More "raw", in that it's just the synthesizer chip, and a few support
components--you program it with an SPI interface, just as the Atmel would on
the others boards....

[Steve Olney]

Marcus,

Thanks.

Ideally I am after something that can be programmed plug-and-play from Windows (sorry).

What about these ?

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/New-137M-4-4G-RF-signal-source-module-development-board-ADF4350/131333958858

From the picture it appears you power it through a separate connector and program through a USB port.

However, the text description is ambiguous to me.    Do you need a separate control board ?   Or is it controllable via the USB port using Windows software ? 

Steve O

[Marcus D. Leech]

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My guess would be that they provide windows-compatible software that drives it through USB.

[Nathan Towne]

I haven't tried any of this, but it sounds like you connect to the comm
port and send commands to the port as character strings. The particular
comm port is identified through device manager after the device is
plugged in. The particulars of the command is given in the run method
of Matt's Python code, as he mentioned.

https://github.com/darkstar007/NetworkAnalyser/blob/master/netan.py

It looks like frequencies are specified in units of 10 Hz.

I noticed that the application that comes with the device (WinNWT4)
remembers settings between sessions, which is helpful. I use the
lower-frequency device as a fixed ADC clock. Once the frequency is set,
the program can be closed. Runs for days after that.

Nathan

[Steve Olney]

Thanks guys for all the info.

I have enough to chew over for now.

Thanks.

Steve O

[Steve Olney]

G'day All,

I bought one of these...

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/121581250308?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Downloaded v4.11.09 Windows app from here...

http://www.dl4jal.eu/hfm9.htm

 

All installed and up and running in VFO mode.  Had me puzzled for a while until I twigged to the x10 frequency factor...

Drivers installed automagically on W7 Pro.   On XP machine there was no indication of driver installation - but it still worked fine.   Maybe I had installed the drivers from another USB chip installation previously...

Settings not retained after power down - but as Nathan said, the app remembers the last setting and after setting the device, the app can be exited leaving the device ticking away until a power down.

Cheers

Steve Olney