Super frustrated

Ok… so I know that I am not the radio engineer, so for the last 2 wks I have been working to the this beautiful piece of kit to work! Well, now I am fairly convinced that this unit is DOA.

The initial quickTest was flakey, but worked on and off, @Zack indicated that the failure was just on the boarder, I am ok… off I go again to get the Lime to SDR… well no signals like ZERO, lots of noise but no solid signals… now I know I didn’t look hard but, should not be terribly difficult.

So I go through this process: https://wiki.myriadrf.org/LimeSDR-USB_Quick_Test

AND it doing ZERO… what is up??? AND for reference I asked from Crowd Source for an RMA, still have not herd from them SEND email to Lime manufacture… NOTHING back. I would hope that it is because of some oversight, but I still want some response… ANY one here have suggestions?

THIS is the output from the FFT with you do the quick test. (forgive me if I have messed something up, but I followed the directions to the ‘t’)

Anyone have ideas OR suggestions?

From the screenshot it appears that you are receiving 139 MB/s, while with the self_test.ini file you should receive only ~92 MB/s, that would indicate that you did some configuration changes yourself.

Try this configuration file: Tx Test signal Loopback to Rx
Connect to board, Load the file, press “Calculate” in CLKGEN/SXR/SXT tabs, run FFT viewer in SISO mode, you should see something like this:

As far as I know, no changes, other than to load up the setup.ini file. I will try this file too… for reference: same steps as the quick test?

BTW thank you.

well I don’t see any setup.ini file in the quick test page https://wiki.myriadrf.org/LimeSDR-USB_Quick_Test, only self_test.ini and example.ini.

With my file, there is no need for WFM playback and RF loopback. My file uses only chip’s internal loopback, just to see if the board is working and you can receive signals.

Sorry about that… yes it is the self_test.ini. I will load the file up and then try it.

OK… so again, maybe I’m missing something. BUT your file and calibrate for the CLK, SXT SXR and fails every step of the way:

So… hoping you might shed some light on this perhaps?

Ok, this is strange that all three would fail, no additional info is visible as the log window is black.
I see you are running on Mac, is it possible that it does not provide enough power through USB for the board? I suggest to try the same test on other PC, just to rule out power issues.

Ok… gotta see if I can find a PC.

Ok, so… I think you are onto something. Looks much better and it works better with the board. Selections seem to work right. The only thing I don’t know about is the freq… looks like mine is not set right. BUT it is set.

Thanks again for the help… appreciate it a lot! Running now on an old laptop. Maybe that is what I’ll use for now.

Blockquote

This looks much better… so question, IS the reason that it’s acting like this is because the power from the usb C is not enough? OR maybe the Mac software is not right?

Don’t know what kind of Mac you have, but you are still connecting through USB C -> USB 3.0 dongle, so I guess that might be the limiting factor. The software is the same on all platforms (except for USB comms, but you had controls and samples on Mac, so it’s working), your LimeSDR board is also functional as shown by your windows machine. So yeah, that leaves only the USB port power supply difference between the host machines. If you want to use the LimeSDR with your Mac machine, you might try using external power supply for the board.

@ricardas thank you for your time.

@ricardas RF super hero :man_superhero:

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