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Softrock Ensemble Night 7

Not much time at the workbench today....


I finished the "TX Mixer (QSE)" stage tonight. It was not too complex except for the T2 transformer. It is has a bifilar primary (P1 and P2) that is 8 turns on a T30-6 core plus a 15 turn secondary. That makes for 6 leads coming from the T30 core to the PCB.

It is not too hard other than you need to concentrate on what you are doing. I have a homebrew solder-pot that makes cleaning & tinning the leads quick & simple. 

The next & final stage is the "Driver & PA."   I probably will not get to it until at least Tuesday night since the boys have "ski club" tomorrow evening. I will probably take my snowboard and go chaperon the kids.

73 de NG0R

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Softrock Ensemble Night 6

About another 45 minutes at the workbench tonight.


Tonight I worked in the TX "Opamps" section. There are about 6 SMT parts on the bottom otherwise the rest of the parts were through-hole on the top side of the board for the evening session.

Looking at the build notes it appears that I have about two more sections to build and test.

73 de NG0R

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Softrock Ensemble Afternoon 6 - More

Working nicely now...

Larger image here

I went back to the workbench after the last blog post and restarted QUISK.  It is now only consuming 30% of the CPU and performing great. Clearly there was another process running early that impacting the performance.

I started tuning around a bit and ended up going to 20m where there was some ragchew activity. This works great. (It is actually setup for 10m-12m-15m for using transverters later on.)

I have not really worked with the QUISK configuration beyond a couple of minutes of initial configuration and it was up and running. I am able to point and click on a signal and/or use the scroll wheel on the mouse. --Very cool!

I was concerned that this might be an addictive kind of tool. (I really like my radios as dedicated radios and then computers to be computers... this is clearly "crossing the streams.") After seeing the initial pieces up and running on receive it is clear that this will be addictive.

73 de NG0R

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Softrock Ensemble Afternoon 6

Running QUISK on Ubuntu 10.10 (32bit)

Click here for a larger image

I have been struggling to get the SDR software to run on my laptops.

After some screwing around last night and then again this morning (Linux+XP VM, XP on a Netbook, etc) I decided to spend sometime trying to get QUISK working under native Linux.

Here are the steps to make it work:

  1. I added a USB soundcard to the laptop (driving some external speakers)
  2. I have the Softrock Ensemble RXTX audio out connected to the laptop's internal Line/Mic "in" connector
  3. I have the Laptop and PCB connected with a USB cable
  4. I have a bench power supply providing 12.9vdc to the PCB
  5. I then I copied the conf file:
    cp home/me/quisk-3.4.12/softrock/conf_rx_tx_ensemble.py  /home/me/.quisk_conf.py

  6. I then updated the .quisk_conf.py file with the following settings:
    sample_rate = 48000
    name_of_sound_capt = "hw:0"         ##This is the internal sound card
    name_of_sound_play = "hw:1"         ##This is the USB sound card

I was able to launch QUISK (quisk.py) and then PCB initially with my signal generator as the source. Once I was able to confirm that worked I was able to connect the PCB to my 40m dipole and hear some CW near the bottom of the band.

Magic... SDR reception with Ubuntu 10.10+quisk on my laptop.

I am still battling a bit of a pulsing or surging in the audio after a few minutes that seems tied to CPU performance.  For testing purposes I have proved that I can receive signals so I should be able to move on to the next building steps. (I can come back around to work through the performance issues later.)

73 de NG0R

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Softrock Ensemble Afternoon 5

I am making some good progress on the kit on my day off for the holiday weekend.

So far I have completed the following stages: "power supply"  "usb power supply"  "local oscillator" "dividers"  "rf i/o & switching"  "rx mixer (QSD)"  "rx opamps and output"

Below N2BEN (10) is working on winding L2


L2 is a T37-6 with 11 turns


L2, L3, and L4


5 toroids in this section


I thought this looked neat.


I am back in the shack for a few minutes trying to figure out the next batch of software so I can try test the receive portion of the kit.

73 de NG0R










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Softrock Ensemble Night 4

Last night I worked on the I/Q frequency divider. Only a couple of new parts on the top side of the board.


This is my homebrew surface mount part holder. aka: board with a large paper clip


As you can see it does a pretty job holding down that chip.


The new 1/32" tip for my Weller iron showed up yesterday. That made this pretty easy work. I have a 1/64" coming from another vendor.

I connected the PCB to my oscilloscope and spectrum analyzer and I am seeing the proper signals and 90 degree phasing of the I/Q signals.

73 de NG0R