[hpsdr] Hermes check out

[Jeremy McDermond]

I have some notes after getting to the mechanical parts of Hermes after the MicroHams conference in Seattle.

I ordered a Hammond extruded enclosure from Digikey because I didn't want things getting damaged around my shack.  Sometimes things are rather perilous.  I ordered Hammond part number 1455Q1601, DigiKey part number HM1171-ND.  You can see some pictures of the finished product here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/ELzhMfS3ECZ6Ca29UGOStNMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/-IiBDmjqqU6KqfF3D0_vi9MTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/diXrYXBPFcRo3TOybHEr3tMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/U-iAzyHImnQqDYUOQDX22NMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink

You'll have to forgive the Ethernet hole a little.  It turned out a little more rat chewed than I had intended with the Dremel tool.

There are a couple of notes in this process.  First, I put the Hermes board in the fourth slot down in the enclosure attempting to leave plenty of room for Apollo in the future.  This turned out to be a mistake because the Molex KK series connector that provides power to Hermes is tall enough that it will not fit in the vertical space between the board and the top.  I had to do a little bit of custom engineering to cut some small slots in the Molex body to make it fit.  I chose to use a coaxial power connector instead of Andersen Power Poles like I usually use because of space considerations inside the box.  There really wasn't a great Anderson mounting method that would have made those connectors work.  It's not a huge deal because my K2 and future KX3 both use the same size of connector I put in Hermes.

The other big issue with this setup is that Hermes is slightly too short for a good fit in the case.  If one snugs up the SMAs on the RF side of things, the Mic/Phone/Key connectors are far enough back from the mounting plate that the headphone hack doesn't go in quite all the way.  The Ethernet works fine, though.  If you actually make the audio connectors so they barely peak through, there is hardly any threads left on the SMAs.  Some kind of custom end plate might remedy this situation, though.

Otherwise, electronically, Hermes powered right up on the first try.  While I did read Phil's "Startup Manual," I didn't follow it because I assumed my A&T board was properly tested by Scotty's fine crew and that it had firmware in it.  Additionally, the second part of the document was specific to PowerSDR, which I don't use.  Nonetheless, Hermes powered right up and came up on my network.  Heterodyne talked to it the first time around and worked perfectly that I can tell so far.  I haven't had much of a chance to look at spurs or other performance as I just got the mechanical issues dealt with.

One other thing of note to Macheads.  It appears as though MacOS X keeps its Link Local IPv4 address (APIPA) even if the interface has a real address.  This means that even if you plug Hermes into a net without a DHCP server, Heterodyne still finds it and talks to it, so there's really zero configuration in simple configurations.

--
Jeremy McDermond (NH6Z)
Xenotropic Systems
mcdermj at xenotropic.com




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