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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



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Softrock Ensemble Afternoon 4

So... how do you test a Softrock Ensemble RXTX when the software is designed for Windows and you are running Linux?  (Ok... I am running Ubuntu 10.10)

I fired up Oracle (Sun) VirtualBox and launched a virtual machine running Windows XP.

I downloaded the various drivers and software packages listed at:
http://www.wb5rvz.com/sdr/ensemble/03_lo.htm

Once my laptop was ready I moved it to the workbench near the test gear. I connected the Softrock to the laptop with the USB cable, then I configure the USB pass-thru (right click on the USB icon)  so that XP could see the USB port, then XP prompted me for the driver location.  It took all of 60 seconds from connecting the cable to XP finishing installing the driver.

I ran the various setup and test steps with no issue. I connected a test probe between the SDR PCB and my oscilloscope and then my frequency analyzer.  As I changed the frequency in the software it would change on the scope.

That test step was extremely uneventful... very nice.

73 de NG0R

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Softrock Ensemble Night 3

Another quick night at the workbench but some forward movement!


Tonight's steps were around building the LO.  On the backside of the board there are a several additional SMT capacitors and then the Si570. On the front side the additions are some resistors, a PNP transistor, a couple of diodes and the Atmel CPU.

Oh yeah, the first toroid T1 was installed as well. 

I think that I am the point where I can contact a PC and try to test the LO. That means that I need to load up some Windows software. I will probably need to fire up XP in a Virtualbox session on an Ubuntu laptop that I can bring over to the workbench. --I will save that for another night.

73 de NG0R

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Softrock Ensemble Night 1

I spent some time this afternoon cleaning off the workbench so that I can make room for the next project. I have quite a few kits sitting on the shelf awaiting some attention so I decided to start the Softrock Ensemble RXTX kit. (I will go back to homebrewing after I complete some of the kit backlog... I am feeling guilty.)

I sorted the parts into some basic groups.


My son N2BEN (10) is helping me solder.


We finished the initial 5vdc power regulation stage.


I will see if we can try to put 30-60 minutes in per night to see if we can try to keep this moving along.

Some good build notes at:
http://www.wb5rvz.com/sdr/ensemble/

73 de NG0R

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A white December in MN


It has been blowing and snow here for the better part of 24 hours. We had no plans so we stayed home and did stuff in side of the house.

The map above is pretty interesting because all of the state highways in our area are either closed or listed with danger warnings. The wind is blowing pretty hard so it has been largely white-out conditions all day. Now that it has gotten dark I suspect the plows will largely shut down till morning since they will not be able to keep up.

This is the third storm in about 3 week weeks. Winter 2010-2011 is turning into a classic Minnesota Winter. (The estimated high temp for tomorrow is +1F.)