[hpsdr] ray of hope

[Sid Boyce]

The PCB layout is available Odyssey2_29_05_18_PCB.zip which contains the 
layout file 1-Odyssey2_29_05_18.lay6, however the schematic has so far 
not been made available so when the first one failed I had to return it 
to David and he sent me a replacement.

The schematic and all the documents for the PA board have been made 
available.
KA6S has designed an adapter board which provides external PTT and 
filter switching using 2 ULN2803's - https://github.com/ka6s/ody_adap.git

Apart from the schematic not being available, it's an excellent radio.

I tried adding the PA/LPF units from an old IC-737 but hit a problem 
getting only 20W out which I suspect may be due to the bias voltage 
which I provided from a DC-DC convertor - starts with ~5W on pressing 
PTT with no audio in and goes to 20W on whistle. I am in the process or 
building a linear regulator to supply the +6.7V bias as it my be ripple 
amplified.
73 ... Sid.

On 25/11/2018 10:44, Isaac Weksler wrote:
> ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
>
> I don't have much to add to Marc's comprehensive reply. I own an 
> Odyssey-2 transceiver for about a year. My experience with it is quite 
> positive. A superb piece of hardware for a very reasonable price. In 
> my opinion - this is the real Hermes follower in Open HPSDR spirit 
> come alive (without much talk and pomp). David Fainitski has designed 
> and produced a state of the art single board SDR transceiver. It is 
> compatible with Angelia. David actually ported Angelia's firmware. The 
> last version of the firmware provides 8 3.5v digital IO lines. I built 
> a small ULN2803 based board to convert them to OC lines to control my 
> Hercules amp and it works great.
> The 1 watt output from Odyssey proved to be too high for Hercules so I 
> had to put a 6 DB attenuator.
> Connectivity wise David provides 2 versions of FW: New protocol (1Gbs) 
> and Old protocol (100Mbs). The FPGA actually allows 2 slots for both 
> versions to reside in it, it can be switched by the buttons of Yaesu 
> mic that goes into a j45 connector on the front panel of the board. I 
> used both Thetis and PowerSDR for operating Odyssey and got excellent 
> results with both. Unfortunately Thetis - even v2.6.0 - is still 
> buggy, so currently I'm using PowerSDR PS MRX v3.4.9.
> The transceiver has an OLED display operated by a microcontroller. 
> Currently it displays the FW version and the IP address of the board.
> An additional FPGA slot contains bootloader. Current version of the 
> bootloader allows the FW to be programmed by a small Python app via 
> Ethernet.
>
> Everything is completely open source 
> (https://groups.io/g/ody-sdr/topic/odyssey_2_now_is_fully_opened/22673568?p=,,,20,0,0,0::recentpostdate%2Fsticky,,,20,2,0,22673568 
> ) and is available from Github. All questions, problems and help 
> requests are answered by David usually within 24 hours. David's 
> Odyssey -2 forum is where you can find out how to purchase a fully 
> assembled and tested transceiver https://groups.io/g/ody-sdr/topics .
>
> As can be seen from the technical data published the is competitive 
> (if not superior) to Apache Lab's boards and is less than half in 
> price. RedPitaya is more than 50% more expensive and is inferior in 
> many respects. Anyway, it's not a ready-to-use SDR transceiver. And 
> both Apache and Pitaya hardware is hermetically closed.
>
> Welcome are any questions on this topic. I'll do my best to provide 
> answers.
>
> 73 Isaac 4Z1AO
>

-- 
Sid Boyce ... Hamradio License G3VBV, Licensed Private Pilot
Emeritus IBM/Amdahl Mainframes and Sun/Fujitsu Servers Tech Support
Senior Staff Specialist, Cricket Coach
Microsoft Windows Free Zone - Linux used for all Computing Tasks