[hpsdr] Standalone Testing of Alex

[Graham / KE9H]

Tony:

For ALEX development and factory testing, I designed a simple PC board
with a PIC, a program written in PIC assembler,  a few buttons and
an LCD to allow stand alone control and testing.

I don't know how much trouble you would want to go to for
stand alone testing.

If I had to do it today, I would probably buy one of the FTDI brand
USB to SPI cables and write a PYTHON script to control it
from a PC.

So, you will either need some kind of SPI control source to
set the relays for testing, or a known good radio such as
Mercury, or Hermes to control it.

As Joe, K5SO, correctly said, using a known-good radio to control it
would only allow you to test it in the configurations and at the
frequencies the radio programmer intended.

--- Graham / KE9H

==

On 6/24/2013 11:59 AM, Joe Martin K5SO wrote:
> ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
>
> Hi Tony,
>
> The easiest way to test Alex functionality is to use one of the boards that normally controls the Alex filters via the SPI bus connection (via the Alex ribbon cable), such as Mercury, Hermes, or Angelia in conjunction with a computer that is running one of the versions of HPSDR PowerSDR (I’d use the latest mRX version, personally).
>
> Of course, that is not “stand alone” procedure clearly, but it is likely the easiest method to accomplish a full test of the Alex boards.  Because Alex operates via an SPI bus from a controlling board (Mercury, Hermes, or Angelia) and also because the Alex boards get their operating voltages via the ribbon cable to Mercury, Hermes, or Angelia, any “stand alone” method you use will have to supply not only the SPI bus signals (so the test wouldn’t be “stand alone” in any case) to test full functionality of the Alex boards (including SPI bus operations) but also you will need to supply operating voltages for the Alex boards as indicated in the Alex schematic/manual.
>
> To simply test specific filters you might consult the Alex manual/schematic to see how you might apply temporary wire jumpers to the various relay pairs to achieve the desired filter you wish to test; even so, you must supply operating voltages to the relays and that could get a little messy, I think.
>
> 73,  Joe K5SO
>
>
> On Jun 24, 2013, at 9:51 AM, prosdr at gmail.com wrote:
>
>> ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
>>
>> Dear All,
>>
>> What is best way or is there any way to test Alex Tx and Rx board standalone without interfacing to hermes and munin
>>
>> Thank you in advance
>>
>> 73
>>
>> Tony
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