Hello,
waterfall speed and length is naturally linked to sample rate and window size. One line of the spectrum is actually one FFT. Refresh rate is actually limited to 20 FPS (50 ms refresh time).
Best regards, Edouard.
@Kc7oa - Mike,
Iāll give it a try tonight with another analog receiver playing and see if thereās any delay - stay tunedā¦
73 de Marty, KN0CK
@F4EXB - Edouard & @Kc7noa - Mike,
Okay - I have the LATEST version of SDRAngel (3.5.4) loaded on my Win10 machine and I tuned to the AM band because I had a handy AM receiver tuned to KXEL (1540 kHz) and listened to the delay. The delay is NO MORE than 1/3 to 1/2 second behind the analog receiver - - and thatās as good as it gets with ANY SDR I have in the shack. Even my Flex 5000A has a slight delay to it and the SDRAngel with the LimeSDR is running very acceptably in receive. I even checked it at 10.0 MHz WWV and, again, there is no more than 1/3 to 1/2 second delay as compared to an analog receiver.
Iām off to try transmit again - stay tunedā¦
73 de Marty, KN0CK
Oh ā¦ did you just rebuild?
@Kc7noa - Mike,
Nope - I just took the latest version from Github for Windows, loaded it on, and did the liblimesuite.dll exchange, made the HF settings in the SDRAngel GUI, and turned it on - worked great right out of the chute provided youāre on the LO (lowband) antenna.
73 de Marty, KN0CK
@F4EXB - Edouard,
This evening I tried the 3.5.4 version of SDRAngel and it worked perfectly in receive, but I could not make it transmit at all - even when I looked at it on my HP 8590B spectrum analyzer I did not see any transmit spectra at all even with the settings that you recommended for SDRAngel including the lowband antenna. So I fell back to 3.5.3, used the same settings and pressed the transmit button and everything worked fine at 7.0 MHz - transmitted with the delay, but I could hear myself on my Yaesu FT857. So I have to believe that there is an issue with transmit in 3.5.4 - it just doesnāt enter that mode at all using all recommended settings and using the same SSB modulator. I even tried CW and there was no carrier at all.
For the record, I have been using the liblimesuite.dll file that @jocover recommended for receive and it still works great for that - just no transmit. I have been using that same DLL in 3.5.3 and it works receive and transmit fine.
Let me know what happened here - 3.5.3 worked fine in transmit, now 3.5.4 is not transmitting.
73 de Marty, KN0CK
Hello Marty,
I am afraid this is a Windows only problem and I am afraid I cannot give support really. Eventually I might discontinue Windows builds completely. Too many problems and too little interest for me in a flaky O/S.
I do not see any good reason why 3.5.4 would not work on transmit. It works perfectly on Linux Lubuntu 16.04 here. Last night I have started making changes to reduce latency and I made tests in both SSB and ATV without any particular issue.
It seems strange to me that you need to change the liblimesuite.dll. I build with version 17.02 and I know a 17.06 has been released. I plan to give it a try. This could be a build problem on my side. I havenāt tried the Windows build with Lime transmit I thought that building fine would be a good enough proof. Note that the build runs on Windows 7 and is based on the MinGW framework.
The only functional change that could have an impact is the addition of the audio compressor on SSB but it is optional. You can make sure it is switched off if the āCMPā button is grey.
Best regards, Edouard.
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3.5.4. have fair TX on CW tested on 50.300 freq
Rebuilt under ubuntu 17.04
After some play with sliders sdrangel went to dark and Lime
was not responding even on reset from Lime Utill, Carrier TX remain on.
After restart all ok.
Look promisingā¦
Can confirm that CMP under SSB modulator is not working.
When off some kind of unclear modulation can hear on my FT817
Delay is still around 3-4 sec here.
Must test more later today about TX delay and report here againā¦
73 Djani
@F4EXB - Edouard,
Iām perfectly good with switching over to my Linux box (Ubuntu 16.04) to check out SDRAngel, but itās just been easier to just pull the Windows version and install it to my Win10 PC to check out each version - no building required. Iāll have to set up an environment for SDRAngel on my Linux box to make that happen and I can certainly do that this evening and report back. If you have any version ready without the transmit delay Iāll build on that and do the checkout. It would be good to see the comparison between Windows and Linux for how things function. Iāve noted that when the sampling rate or the filtering is being changed while not transmitting seems slow in the Windows build - I chance a value then I have to wait for the control to ācatch-upā before I can change it again. Possibly the Linux build wonāt have this issue.
The only reason I was switching out the DLL file in the Windows build was that the DLL wasnāt recognizing my V1.4 LimeSDR for some reason no matter what I did to restart the PC or plug/unplug/plug the LimeSDR for the PC to recognize that it was there and then for SDRAngel to find it. Exchanging the DLL made it possible for the LimeSDR to be seen and then I could check out the other functionality. I can also go back and use the stock DLL to see if itās on my end that this happens.
Again, Iāll try any version you have ready on my Linux box later this evening when Iām home from work. Iām anxious to try this on Linux anyway just to see performance differences between the two platforms (Linux and Windows), too. Keep me advised -
73 de Marty, KN0CK
Hello Marty,
If youāre on Ubuntu 16.04 Iām pretty sure the .deb works because it is built on a Ubuntu 16.04 server (my NAS in fact). You just need to do sudo apt-get -f install afterwards to force the installation of dependencies if some are missing. This would save you the hassle of setting up a build environment. On the other hand this would make it possible for you to try the dev branch.
The .deb package installs everything in /opt/sdrangel.
Performance wise Iām pretty sure Linux will be better.
I could also fire up Windows 10 on the secondary disk of my laptop and have already all the gear connected. However I have no build environment on this one the builds are done on another Windows 7 only laptop.
Best regards, Edouard.
Hello Djani,
the compressor has a squelch to prevent background noise to enter the AGC and rise at high level when there is no voice. So you have to adjust the threshold depending on your volume settings both should work together. This is the only critical part other default values should be fine to get some output. This is explained in the plugin readme.
Also it seems that QtAudio messes up the system audio settings when you start transmitting so it is a good idea to keep the controls open and check them after transmission has started.
Best regards, Edouard.
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Is this why there is such a hard time getting the microphone level to work with modulation?
If I have settings right to get a tone to modulate pure, measures 1% distortion, and use the same settings and switch to mic input. The mic audio gets clipped badly, FM deviation looks like square wave when I whistle a tone. If I turn down the mic in the mixer panel it gets so low that all the noise in the background gets amplified loudly and it is too noisy. I have AGC off.
BTW, the TX latency is way down in the latest build. I rebuild every time there is an update. I still get a hard freeze randomly when I change settings on the fly.
Hi,
If you donāt use compression (AGC) there is no reason that the background noise would grow up. It may well be the case otherwise if it passes the squelch (power threshold) level. The audio input is a bit picky you have to control it simultaneously with pulse audio control (pavucontrol is convenient for that).
If you checked out the latest commit on dev branch then yes I have made changes to the main samples buffer size calculation in the LimeSDR output plugin so that it will have much less latency, Above 192 kS/s in the baseband the FIFO has a 0.25s fixed delay size . 192 kS/s is the limit (hence 48000 samples) below which I canāt get along without chopping.
Iām also making changes to the other Tx plugins (BladeRF, HackRF) to get a fixed time sized FIFO when possible. This could also help at high rates where the fixed length FIFO was maybe in fact too short.
I also made changes to the audio plugins (AM, NFM, SSB, WFM) so that the audio FIFO is 100ms instead of 1s. They still work fine apparently and it doesnāt ruin the efforts made on the sample FIFO.
Best regard, Edouard.
OK, itās not AGC but maybe that would help me. It seems I am getting too high of input signal to modulation ratio. Is there a setting for this? Is it the deviation in NFM? I am not overdeviating, I am deviating at too fast a rate and hitting the limit with the microphone. Similar to clipping of an amplified signal but itās probably digital.
On AM I can not get to 50% modulation without distortion. It may be the same reason.
I will try experimenting with all the controls later.
I got it sounding great. There is a quarter second delay, as said. I had to turn my mixer control for the mic down to 25%, Then I turned the deviation and volume on the modulator up. Deviation at 7.5 and volume at 2. I have the audio BW at 10 and the RF BW at 12.5. It sounds great through my Yeasu VX-6 at 145MHz.
@F4EXB - Edouard,
Okay - break out the hand puppets for meā¦I have the sdrangel-3.5.4.tar file untarred and have the sdrangel-3.5.4 subdirectory in my āhomeā subdirectory and looked through all the documentation on how to compile for different Linux flavors, but even though Ubuntu is listed, Iām not seeing how to compile the source I have to make the new app under Ubuntu 16.04. Can you provide the steps for me to compile the app having this sdrangel-3.5.4. Admittedly, Iām not as familiar with this app as I have been with LimeSuite and other apps to compile those. I believe that I have all the dependencies met because I had a version of SDRAngel on this machine (a version 1.0 if you can believe it) but I cannot recall how to compile this new version on Ubuntu 16.04.
Just the steps to produce the app will be GREATLY appreciated - my apologies for being a Linux Knuckleheadā¦ 
Let me know what I need to do to build the app and Iāll work it tomorrow evening - itās about midnight here in Iowa and I have to hit the rack for work tomorrow.
Thanks in advance for your help with this, Edouard -
73 de Marty, KN0CK
Hi Martyā¦ This is what I useā¦ YMMV, dus to locations of libs, and presence or absence of SDCC. Also, depending on your core count, -j8 may not be correct.
~/Development/sdr/sdrangel/ā« mkdir build && cd build
~/Development/sdr/sdrangel/buildā« cmake -DLIMESUITE_INCLUDE_DIR=/usr/include -DLIMESUITE_LIBRARY=/usr/lib/libLimeSuite.so -DLIBDSDCC_INCLUDE_DIR=/usr/local/include/dsdcc -DLIBDSDCC_LIBRARIES=/usr/local/lib/libdsdcc.so ..
~/Development/sdr/sdrangel/buildā« make -j8
I note that the readme has the followingā¦ I have not tried this.
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@F4EXB tnx for advice
@martywittrock this is my how to under ubuntu 17.04
$ git clone https://github.com/f4exb/sdrangel.git ./sdrangel
$ cd sdrangel
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake ā¦/
$ make -j4
$ sudo make install
$ sudo ldconfig
than
$ sdrangel
must run sw in terminal and graphic environmentā¦
73
Dj
2 Likes
@9a4db - Djani,
THANK YOU very much for the steps. This morning I pulled down the latest SDRAngel load from Github and the compile went fine to your steps. But when I tried starting the app it complained about āsignalsā not being there (dependencies - not RF ). I think I have dependencies that are probably not compliant with the latest SDRAngel version - I had a REALLY old version of SDRAngel (a 1.0 version) on my Linux box and itās pretty likely that some things have changed a lot since then and now.
Given that, what dependencies did you have to obtain to make Ubuntu 17.04 work? Iām going to take my 16.04 version I have now and just format and start over with 17.04. Doing that, Iāll run into dependencies that have to be there so please do let me know what you did for 17.04 for SDRAngel to play fine.
MANY thanks again for documenting the steps for me - that really helped.
73 de Marty, KN0CK
@gerryk - Gerry,
THANKS for the info - Iāll give that a spin, too. @9a4db Djani sent me some steps for compiling, too, and I think my current 16.04 version of Ubuntu and the older SDRAngel version I had has a bunch of dependencies that have changed for this latest version of SDRAngel. Iām REALLY motivated to get this going on my Linux box since it appears that SDRAngel is not going to be supported on Windows much past the 3.5.3 version that still has the huge transmit delay - the latest (3.5.4.7) appears to have remedied that and @Axeman (Lance) has it working on 2m in good shape - - another reason Iām motivated to get this going to check it wideband (HF to UHF), too.
Thanks again for the info, Gerry - 73
de Marty, KN0CK