[hpsdr] Metis/Mercury Bandscope Data (EP=4)

[Doug Adams]

Phil

After a good deal of testing I think the problem of Bandscope data always being sent from Metis/Mercury may be a firmware issue.

Here's what has been done so far, all on a MAC (with a lot of help from Chen W7AY):

1. confirmed with Wireshark that I am sending a start command with 0x01 (I/Q only) and no other Start commands
2. re-downloaded the firmware files from OpenHPSDR web site
3. erased and re-burned both the Metis and Mercury firmware (using Flynn)
4. using a simple Panadapter program from W7AY, confirmed sending 0x01 works for Hermes (firmware v2.4, actually an ANAN-10), only I/Q data is sent
5. using the same Panadapter program with Metis/Mercury sending 0x01, both I/Q and Bandscope data are sent (firmware v2.6b & v3.4)
6. confirmed the presence of Bandscope data with WireShark ("\xef\xfe\x01\x04")

I downloaded the latest Kiss Konsole to my Windows 7 PC. Running it to the same Metis/Mercury I can see in Wireshark that even though I never select Wideband data, KK sends a Start w/0x03 and Bandscope data is being sent (as you would expect). I did not (yet) try changing and recompiling KK to use the 0x01 command.

While doing this testing Chen and I also discovered that Metis/Mercury seems to stop sending I/Q data after some period of time if no data is being returned to Metis/Mercury. Interestingly, Bandscope Data does not stop. We were able to ascertain that if we send it something every few seconds it continues forever. Hermes does not react this way. Without the "keep alive" packets that we send, Hermes will continue sending I/Q data indefinitely.

We would be happy to do more testing but can't think of what else to do. It seems that both of the issues we are seeing are unique to Metis/Mercury.

Thank you for your help,

Doug - K3TZR
douglas.adams at me.com







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