SDRPlay support beta

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi Group,

there is a beta version here https://www.sparksdr.com/download/sparksdr2_0_7_0_win64.zip that should work with SDRPlay radios. It is 64bit win 8.1/10 only for now. 

You need the up to date driver/api from the SDRPlay website, this will already be installed if you have used other sw with a sdrplay radio.

To limit the size of the beta test It requires you to have a Hermes Lite or other radio already supported by spark and you will have to press the discovery button after the other radio has been discovered.

Nearly all the testing has been done with the RSP1A, others should work but with only one receiver on the duo.

Please report any issues, successes, ideas here.

73 Alan M0NNB

[svem...@gmail.com]

Hi Allan!

Congratulations to new version 2.0.7.0 of SparkSDR! Really intresting to see it when not beta any more and all feature are in place!

I do not find my 2 x RSP1 but SparkSDR find only my RSPdx. I have started 3 freq on 50 MHz with RSPdx but must have my RSP1 to work!

But where is PskReporter in beta?

I have another setup with HDSDR, WSJT-x, PskReporter, DXMAPS 4.2 and WSJT-DX Aggregator . Works great! For me its a real prio 1 to have SparkSDR to work with DXMAPS and WSJT--DX Aggregator for my 50 MHz activity.

73 de Sven SM6FMB

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi Sven,

I accidentally hid the psk reporter button in hiding other tx only controls, I've fixed that and will release tomorrow with anything else that people find before then.  Do your log files have anything in about the RSP1?

73 Alan M0NNB 

[Joe LB1HI]

Hi Allan,

A very short test. I'm very busy.

They work fine but ..

To put it succinctly.

I tested on an older computer

After a short time, the RSP hanged.

This has happened before sometimes when the computer is very overloaded with other activities.

I was expecting something quite the opposite.

Because there was no need to run WSJTX.

But still it hanged three times.

On the same PC, SDRUno plus WSJTX does not crash RSP.

Two screenshots.

one correct operation.

On the other hand, the second one after the RSP crash.

PC doesn't freeze, still runs fine and smooth.
73, Joe LB1HI

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi All,

thanks very much for the reports, there is a quick fix for the hidden psk reporter button and a tweak that may stop the lockups here https://www.sparksdr.com/download/sparksdr2_0_7_1_win64.zip .

Sven, I'm not sure what is going on with the RSP1 the logs indicate the driver does not report their existence, has anyone else had any luck with a RSP1 (not A)?  

73 Alan M0NNB

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi All,

there is a new beta here https://www.sparksdr.com/download/sparksdr2_0_7_2_win64.zip this fixes a few things that could stop radios starting or being detected. It has been tested on the RSP1A,duo and dx and the basics seem to work. There is better error logging that might help diagnose the RSP1 issue but I still have a bit more logging to add. There seems to be a problem with running two radios at once.

73 Alan M0NNB

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi all,

this https://www.sparksdr.com/download/sparksdr2_0_8_0_win64.zip should allow multiple SDRPlay radios to run at the same time (up to 6).

Sven has reported that profiles are not working for him with sdrplay radios, I've not found the cause of this yet and they work for me, is anyone else seeing this bug?

73 Alan M0NNB

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi all,

this https://www.sparksdr.com/download/sparksdr2_0_8_1_win64.zip has a couple of very small tweaks:-

antenna selection is saved in profiles.

serial no is displayed below the radio type.

It also fixes what must be a very old bug that nobody has ever mentioned that caused distortion when playing two am stations at once.

To make profiles work you need to first click discover, this is caused by the beta restriction that only discovers sdrplay radios once a hpsdr radio has been detected.

73 Alan M0NNB

[PE3ES / F4VTQ]

Did some little testing first on the 2.0.7.0 till I saw a new version 2.0.8.1 using a SDRplay RSP1a

Some comments, might be redundant or a result of user error

separate notches for AM BC and FM BC would be convenient

gain needs more headroom, the signal becomes usable around gain 6/7 and that leaves only a few more steps to reach the max

some predefined filter settings per mode would be nice

locking/coupling the filter left/right to each other would be nicer and easier than only the right to the left

showing only profiles for the connected radio or some information what profile goes with which radio would be helpful

and a thing a bit harder to explain.

when you start a receiver with a given BW and add another one, than close the original receiver it still remembers the original receivers starting frequency and BW as being the one that is used to allow or block all new receivers

falling back to the newer receivers frequency/BW would be convenient

sometimes strange things happen in the waterfall display when trying to tune to a signal (yes, I agree, this is a very helpful comment ;-) When needed I can do some screenshots/videos to explain better what I have seen.

I noticed I can not control my STEMlab Red Pitaya through SparkSDR, it is seen as this needs to happen before I find my SDRplay but no signals in the waterfall/spectrum display.

Thank you for all the work!!

Op dinsdag 6 juli 2021 om 16:39:21 UTC+2 schreef ahop...@googlemail.com:

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi,

thanks for the report.

The notches are implemented in the RSP hardware and are not something I can control other than on and off.

The same is true for the gain, different models have different ranges but I cannot pick anything other than the hardware steps, The min gain on some models depends on band and I mean to add some way to indicate this but it won't actually affect the outcome(I think).  There is a similar issue with antenna selection which can depend on frequency.

I shall ponder bandwidth presets, the idea of locking the filters in only one direction was to add flexibility, otherwise I might as well hide one slider when locked, maybe something for the documentation or an indicator of the master.

I have a plan to rework the profiles and favourites, adding some more detail is a good thought, for now you could use the name creatively.

One thing to point out is that everything above the frequency display is a radio setting that affects all receivers so the samplerate/bandwidth is the same for all receivers on a given radio.

The deleting a receiver is an interesting one, the bit of code that shares the radio's bandwidth between receivers is complex and has a set of rules that cannot be perfect for all uses, one thing it does is try to minimise tuning the radio hardware so as not to disturb other receivers i.e. tuning around a band or deleting a receiver should not reduce the number of wspr or ft8 decodes on other receivers. I have to do some more work on this to optimise avoiding the dc spur on these radios in some modes with multiple receivers and will see if I can tweak anything for deleting.

screenshots/videos of anything odd would be very useful.

The beta effectively uses any hpsdr radio as a dongle to limit the size of the beta release.  I don't have a red pitaya so am totally reliant on users to tell me if it does or does not work, I believe a number of people use them so maybe someone on the group can help with getting that going.

73 Alan M0NNB

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi All,

another small tweak here https://www.sparksdr.com/download/sparksdr2_0_8_2_win64.zip this has less restrictive windows audio settings requirements so it should be easier to get sound out.

73 Alan M0NNB

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi All,

yet another small tweak https://www.sparksdr.com/download/sparksdr2_0_8_12_win64.zip this adds a 2MHz sample rate which uses the sdrplay LIF mode which avoids dc offset and iq balance issues. This is really a stepping stone to full duo support as this sample rate is needed to use both tuners at once.

73 Alan M0NNB

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi All,

this https://www.sparksdr.com/download/sparksdr2_0_8_13_win64.zip has a first cut of supporting both receivers on the RSPduo. The radio it put into two receiver mode when a sample rate of 2000000 is selected. Each virtual receiver has an adc setting that sets which of the tuners is used.  Diversity/beam forming should also work but I've not tested it.  This was built with a new version of the sdrplay api, you may need to update by installing the latest version of Uno ( I had to reboot after doing this ).

73 Alan M0NNB

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi All,

this https://www.sparksdr.com/download/sparksdr2_0_8_14_win64.zip fixes a problem I introduced in 2.0.8.13 which broke the 2M sample rate and could have caused all sort of weirdness.

73 Alan M0NNB

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi All,

this https://www.sparksdr.com/download/sparksdr2_0_8_15_win64.zip has a significant number of performance tweaks that should reduce cpu usage and various other sdrplay tweaks. Treat it as a beta, I'm half way through a range of performance mods  so this is just a snapshot at a point where it seems to work.

73 Alan M0NNB

[Trevor Smithers]

2.0.8.15

Have been running this version since release and it seems quite stable with HL2, Red Pitaya, 2 x RSPduo and 1 x RSPdx all running at same time.

Start up and Discovery is much faster which I assume was part of the focus of your improvements.

Trevor  G0KTN

[Trevor Smithers]

Should have mentioned I haven't managed to get a Duo running properly with both tuners yet.

I suspect I need to test it on its own rather than try to shoehorn it in with all the other receivers.

Trevor  G0KTN

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi Trevor,

thanks for the reports, duo works for me with both tuners but Sven has also had problems so I suspect there is still an issue, It should work if you select a sample rate of 2000000 and then set the adc dropdown below the frequency display to 1 or 2 for tuner 1 or 2.

73 Alan M0NNB

[PE3ES / F4VTQ]

Hi all, and Alan ;-)

Some questions on the SDRplay support, 

-will it at a later stage be possible to use a Raspberry Pi (like I now do with my Hermes lite V2) instead of only Windows

-can I use a USB connected SDRplay (RSP1a) remotely via for instance VirtualHere or via the SDRplay TCP-server (I am so used to my network connected equipment like the Red Pitaya and the Hermes, so really spoiled)

I intend to move away from my band-hopping RSP1a OpenWebRx on a RaspberryPi to this new SparkSDR version as it supports (I hope) multi slice receivers giving multi-band possibilities to my RSP1a.

Thanks

Erwin

Op woensdag 17 november 2021 om 13:42:28 UTC+1 schreef ahop...@googlemail.com:

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi Erwin,

the plan is for sdrplay radios to work on all platforms spark supports, once I have a robust non beta version running on windows I shall release betas for the other platforms.  Some of the performance tweaks I'm doing should improve things on rpi generally.

I have a long term plan to support tcp servers both for sdrplay and rtl dongles etc, there is also an unfinished and undocumented feature in spark that allows a local copy of spark to use radios connected to a remote copy, finishing this is probably then next big job after sdrplay support.

73 Alan M0NNB

[PE3ES / F4VTQ]

Very good!

I have it working now with both the Hermes and the RSP1a in parallel.

Did not try my Red Pitaya's as these are otherwise occupied at the moment.

Observation 1:

The 1 Hermes FT8 20 meter slice is not decoding but waterfall shows the nice wiggely FT8 lines, in parallel the 2 RSP1a receivers on 10.136 and 14.074 are nicely decoding FT8 spots.

When I switch the Hermes back to my Raspberry Pi Hermes+SparkSDR the decoding (of 10 parallel receivers) works as usual.

Did I miss some setting to get 2 different hardware decode in parallel ?

Observation 2:

To get 2 bands on my RSP1a decoding FT8 I had to split the max bandwidth of 6.144 and start a receiver at 12 MHz first and then add the 2 more as mentioned in my first observation. Is that the right way to get parallel receivers for the RSP1a? I could thereby fit at max 3 bands in 1 working SparkSDR setup. For instance using 160 m, 80 m and 60 meter, but not for other combinations that are more spread out (even 18-21-24 would not fit I think)

Op vrijdag 19 november 2021 om 12:21:11 UTC+1 schreef ahop...@googlemail.com:

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi Erwin,

it should just all work with multiple radios. There is some code that tries to avoid the dc spur on the sdrplay as it tries to distribute virtual receivers and tune the hardware, maybe this has a bug as it should not matter the order you start them.

I've just finished the next stage of performance tweaks but need to do a load of testing as it cuts across a lot of code, if you can save a profile for combinations that fail that would be very helpful as I can then test them here.

Thanks for the report, it is much appreciated.

73 Alan M0NNB 

[PE3ES / F4VTQ]

Profile enclosed

Error logs : no errors, only trying to discover on a few ip-addresses and finding the Hermes

Op vrijdag 19 november 2021 om 16:27:17 UTC+1 schreef ahop...@googlemail.com:

[PE3ES / F4VTQ]

Hi Alan,

A question on the max bandwidth your beta is using at the moment. As far as I can see it is max 6.144 MHz. What is the reason you are not using the SDRplay (all models) max of 10 MHz? That would help a lot in getting more bandslices in to do FT8 or WSPR decoding.

Quote : You need to select ZIF mode on the Main panel instead of LIF mode (Using the IF mode toggle button). After selecting ZIF mode, the sample rate can be changed, whereas in LIF mode, the input sample rate is fixed at 2 MHz and so this represents the maximum bandwidth in LIF mode. In ZIF mode, you can select up to 10 MHz bandwidth.

so I do assume you already have it set to ZIF mode

Op vrijdag 19 november 2021 om 21:23:01 UTC+1 schreef PE3ES / F4VTQ:

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi,

the 6.144MHz was an easy starting point to use the downconverter in spark in its most efficient mode as it divides down to 48K and 384K easily. I have since made the down converter better at fractional ratios as that was needed for the duo in LIF mode to support both tuners. So 6.144,  0.1536 and 0.0768 use ZIF and .2000 uses LIF . Now I Have the fractional downconverter working faster I should be able to add the 10MHz rate, just concentrating on making the duo work reliably first.

73 Alan M0NNB

[PE3ES / F4VTQ]

Thanks, I think you mean 1.536 MHz 0.768 MHz and 2.0 MHz for the lower three BW.

I am now running a little test as you asked with the Red Pitaya's included. RP 122.88-16 are the 2 lowest IP. at right. The .8 and .9

The Hermes I do not touch as it is otherwise occupied at my Raspberry Pi4 running the 10 RX firmware. When I would start it here, SparkSDR simply takes over from the RaspberryPi without checking if it is in use. A lock mechanism would be a nice future feature.

The left hand side Red Pitaya is a 125-14 and then the RSP1a in the middle.

All works fine!

Op maandag 22 november 2021 om 13:51:57 UTC+1 schreef ahop...@googlemail.com:

[PE3ES / F4VTQ]

and looking at the performance I can even load it more ... Now 13 RX from 3 pieces of hardware

Op dinsdag 23 november 2021 om 21:52:09 UTC+1 schreef PE3ES / F4VTQ:

[PE3ES / F4VTQ]

After the night before

Op dinsdag 23 november 2021 om 22:03:49 UTC+1 schreef PE3ES / F4VTQ:

[PE3ES / F4VTQ]

This morning I realized that the profiles do not keep the SDRplay RPS1a radio settings. So every time I restart SparkSDR I need to re-discover the RSP1a and add all virtual receivers for it. 

This has probably been mentioned before but I could not find any reference to it via searching.

Op woensdag 24 november 2021 om 09:29:03 UTC+1 schreef PE3ES / F4VTQ:

[PE3ES / F4VTQ]

Probably the same as in this post : 6 jul. 2021 12:45:03

Sorry for stirring up ...

Op vrijdag 26 november 2021 om 10:56:35 UTC+1 schreef PE3ES / F4VTQ:

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

No problem and thanks for the reports, yep this happens if you do not discover before starting a profile, the problem will go away when I remove the restriction requiring a hl2 to work.

Hoping to get a new beta out today or tomorrow which fixes lots of sdrplay issues.

73 Alan M0NNB

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi Group,

this has more sdrplay tweaks https://www.sparksdr.com/download/sparksdr2_0_8_16_win64.zip 

It should use less cpu and tuning and gain setting should be smoother.  There is also stereo on broadcast fm now.

73 Alan M0NNB

[Trevor Smithers]

2.0.8.16

Prog start up appears much faster as does "Discovery". The addition of the external clock output is appreciated - works perfectly.

Currently watching the GB3UHF digi beacon and its spot on freq. Just needs the addition of the JT65b mode to decode it, hint, hint :-)

73 Trevor  G0KTN

[ahop...@googlemail.com]

Hi Group,

hopefully the last beta for win sdrplay support https://www.sparksdr.com/download/sparksdr2_0_8_17_win64.zip this now has 8 and 10M sample rates, a few more perf tweaks and very basic sstv rx reenabled.

73 Alan M0NNB