EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Electronics => RF, Microwave, Ham Radio => Topic started by: metrologist on February 26, 2017, 10:00:11 pm
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This is a sain sonic APRS module and it is not connecting to the software.
I believe I found the right prolific USB cable that it came with, and I'm sure I had it all working in Win7 before the upgrade. The cable shows as unrecognized USB in device manager. I found the youtube channel that described registering the dll and oxc, and I downloaded the recent software from the mfg.
The new software is a self executing file, but initiates all kinds of MS Offfice installs. I cancel them and the software starts fine, but will not connect to the device.
I updated to the prolific driver to various versions and have a 2008 version that is properly recognized in device manager. Still no connection to the programming software utility.
I was going to try Linux, but what software do I use to program? I just have a few puppy linux images and am not a linux user, so installing sw could be very confusing for me.
Any other ideas to get it working on Win10?
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I got the Prolific USB-Serial cable to be recognized in device manager by manually selecting on of several drivers that Windows listed (2008). I've tried the old config software that I used before on Win7 and new software that I downloaded and neither is able to connect to the device. I launched Arduino serial monitor and power up the unit and see some intelligible data and some not (îüïxXXXXXX-7>APAVT5:>Testing 4.17V +27,3CX).
Windows started making the USB beeping sounds as the device was powering up, and then it did it again a few moments later. It is like the data being sent from the AP510 is causing a problem with the prolific device. The prolific device keeps disconnecting and reconnecting in device manager when I see a string of junk appear on the serial monitor, which would be data from an APRS transmission that the device is receiving. That breaks the port connection.
Any guess if an FTDI or CH something USB-Serial IO would work, once I figure out the pins?
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One more quick update.
I tried Win XP. I loaded the prolific driver and that seems to be working, although the test program failed to open the port.?.
I tried comm with the Arduino serial monitor and I believe I am getting the full package, although most of it is unintelligible. Maybe it's chinese characters?
So I thought I had it, but the config program crashes with a type mismatch error as soon as I hit the 'read device' button. I tried three different versions of the configuration program. Funny that those seem to work in Win 10.
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For some reason, I had to flash new firmware to get the config software to talk to the device using either the old or new config software. I don't understand that because it worked before.
While I was going to update the firmware anyway, I was concerned about not being able to configure the thing afterwords, assuming it would have all default values.
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FIY, Prolific dropped support of old devices in their drivers. They did not find a better way to fight with counterfeits than making their older ICs being useless as well :palm:. Drivers will install IIRC, but you will get error 10 in the device manager.
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This was a problem and I have ordered 3 USB-Serial Chinese boards. I don't know what is good anymore. You can get FTDI, Prolific, or some Chinese thing. They all have some issue.
I also thought that Windows was going crazy but finally realized this is an RF device and that was getting into the USB circuit and making Windows do all sorts of crazy things with the mouse and keyboard drivers.
Some folks criticize these but mine seems to work well, just as I'd expect anyway. 1W and can even digipeat. I installed a bluetooth terminal app on my phone and see the data from the device scrolling along. My transmit data is all plain ascii characters and makes sense. I see a lot of unrecognized characters on the receive data, mostly diamonds with question marks inside, but some legible data. On hardware serial, my tx data is mostly all boxes and nothing makes sense there.
I'm having trouble getting my data on the network though. I always get picked right up at home, but when I go out walk or ride, no points get recorded. I know the RF is going out. I think there are more things about the system that I do not understand.
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OK, needs more power. I am not able to reliably get to any iGates. One hour drive today and no data received on the network.
LoL, there is a guy driving that has a full weather station in his vehicle.
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SBS
I found my old SainSonic AP510 APRS transceiver and wanted to try it out again. I managed to get the Prolific driver to appear to work (assuming the dicks did not reflash the chip), but cannot get the SW to connect, and CHiRP has untested support and I found evidence it worked, but for me complains that unicode is not supported, use bytes "/n/r/nl/cr/t" <--- fake garble, ignore.
The xcvr did work and it should still work, but my method of testing is looking on aprs.fi for my icon, which I have seen before with the xcvr's current configuration. I'm wondering if there are just no more igates around me. Hard to believe since I drive all around the silly cone valley. So I have some questions on that because I see what looks like igates that connect to irc, LoRa, dmr, d-star, etc... so maybe they are just forwarding digital aprs and not the original afsk? I drive right by an Rx Only iGate direwolf and one that just says direwolf rx only.
Another method I employed is to install direwolf and use a second HT held to my PC mic, and the code came through just fine, and the log is thus (obfuscated per info):
chan : 0
utime : 1705463504
isotime : 2024-01-17T03:51:44Z
source : <callsign-#>
heard : <callsign-#>
level : 12(1/3)
error : 0
dti : `
name : <callsign-#>
symbol : />
latitude : ##.###
longitude : ###.###
speed : 0
course : 4
altitude : 7
frequency :
offset :
tone :
system : Unknown manufacturer
status : Off Duty
telemetry :
comment : Testing comment 4.17V 76.1F
Finally, I did lose measurement of RF power using a SPA, and it's hitting harder than a known good HT on low power, so it's got juice.
I guess I can set up my own private direwolf base station and an actual audio cable and test range but I'd expect that to work reasonably so why doesn't the aprs.fi network log my data? Could it be a protocol issue that changed since, oh, around 2014?
How would I locate an iGate that accepts old fashioned AFSK APRS data, since I'm assuming many around me are receiving digital (i.e., black diamonds with D, L, W, etc...)? And I've tried to look up specifically what's the difference between those black diamond symbols, but it just feels like Google has me on a super filter...