Hoping to find some pointers or help on using the Lime SDR mini. I have one here that I bought a few years ago, its currently connected to a Pi based Portsdown 4 system which tells me from the “Lime FW Info” menu item that I have:
If I run the Lime Report from the Portsdown then all tests pass (including loopback).
If I TX some DATV from the Portsdown that works OK and I can RX my signals from the LimeSDR elsewhere.
So far so good.
However, I can’t get the RX side of the device to work when I connect it to my PC and use SDR Console (or ADR Angel). I have the device drivers installed OK (I think, it shows as a FTDI FT601 USB 3.0 Bridge Device), and I can run the LimeSuiteGUI and connect to the device OK.
If I run the standalone LimeQuickTest then the Loopback test fails, other tests pass.
When I run SDR console, it appears to find and start the device OK, there’s just nothing on the waterfall despite an antenna connection to the RX port.
[ TESTING STARTED ]
->Start time: Mon Jan 27 16:37:04 2025
->LimeSuite version: 20.10.0-g1480bfea
->Device: LimeSDR Mini, media=USB 3, module=FT601, serial=1D42591E103856, index=0, HW=2, GW=1.30
Serial Number: 1D42591E103856
Chip temperature: 37 C
[ Clock Network Test ]
->REF clock test
Test results: 48588; 61785; 9446 - PASSED
->VCTCXO test
Results : 6711029 (min); 6711193 (max) - PASSED
->Clock Network Test PASSED
[ FPGA EEPROM Test ]
->Read EEPROM
->Read data: 12 07 1B 12 07 1B 02
->FPGA EEPROM Test PASSED
[ LMS7002M Test ]
->Perform Registers Test
->External Reset line test
Reg 0x20: Write value 0xFFFD, Read value 0xFFFD
Reg 0x20: value after reset 0x0FFFF
->LMS7002M Test PASSED
If you have something connected to the antenna ports during the test, the result can be affected. But in any case, your values are close enough, and the board should be working as expected.
Which Rx antenna is being selected in the software? Because the chip itself has 3 possible path selections (LNAL, LNAH, LNAW), but on LimeSDR Mini boards, only two of them (LNAH,LNAW) are physically connected to the Rx antenna port.
So if the software would be trying to use LNAL, then it would not see anything.