NanoVNA Custom Software

[Roland_W]

Dear All,

It look like a issue with the calibration procedure, or the calibration method is "simple".
I found some description about VNA project, with the issue of the simple method. http://hforsten.com/improved-homemade-vna.html

It could be some track for improve the software in this device.
Best regards
Roland

[NY2KW]

Instead of GaAs pin diodes you could use this:  https://www.psemi.com/pdf/datasheets/pe4250ds.pdf which supposedly has better performance up to 3 Ghz

Jerry NY2KW

[Evi]

The topic should have been called Private Software.

[joeqsmith]

Instead of GaAs pin diodes you could use this:  https://www.psemi.com/pdf/datasheets/pe4250ds.pdf which supposedly has better performance up to 3 Ghz

Jerry NY2KW

I don't see how that would ever work.   You would need to sketch out how you would use them as I am lost.

[joeqsmith]

The topic should have been called Private Software.

As my software continues to evolve, I start thinking maybe it's something that could be useful for others,  but then comments like yours bring me back to reality.  So thanks for that wake up call.

SP

[5q5r]

Inspired by Joe's great YouTube videos on the NanoVNA, I went ahead and botched together a little Python app that does some of the same things (most importantly, multiple sweeps to increase the amount of data points.)

It's open source and on github, as "NanoVNA-Saver" (because I initially just made it to save s1p/s2p files). I daren't post a link in my first post on this forum though :-)

Thanks Joe for the inspiration, and I hope some of the rest of you may find it useful.

[joeqsmith]

Inspired by Joe's great YouTube videos on the NanoVNA, I went ahead and botched together a little Python app that does some of the same things (most importantly, multiple sweeps to increase the amount of data points.)

It's open source and on github, as "NanoVNA-Saver" (because I initially just made it to save s1p/s2p files). I daren't post a link in my first post on this forum though :-)

Thanks Joe for the inspiration, and I hope some of the rest of you may find it useful.

Welcome to the forum.

I just released a viewer Q&A video for the Nano that you may be interested in as well.   

[N2CUA]

The topic should have been called Private Software.

As my software continues to evolve, I start thinking maybe it's something that could be useful for others,  but then comments like yours bring me back to reality.  So thanks for that wake up call.

SP

Thats sad .. One guy ruined it for the rest of us    
I truly appreciate your hard work and attention to detail ..
You have a lot of awesome videos .   ( is it working? lol )
You truly do though ..

Would love to play with that software ..
Can I trade you for a few mini-circuits SMA style attenuators?

I used to program .. but it was awhile ago ..  retired USAF TSgt ..
So have some extra time to play and try to keep my mind active ..

Just bought the NanoVNA .. and still learning ..
Ham radio operator - N2CUA

Either way .. thanks so much for all your great info ..

[joeqsmith]

The topic should have been called Private Software.

As my software continues to evolve, I start thinking maybe it's something that could be useful for others,  but then comments like yours bring me back to reality.  So thanks for that wake up call.

SP

Thats sad .. One guy ruined it for the rest of us    
I truly appreciate your hard work and attention to detail ..
You have a lot of awesome videos .   ( is it working? lol )
You truly do though ..

Would love to play with that software ..
Can I trade you for a few mini-circuits SMA style attenuators?

I used to program .. but it was awhile ago ..  retired USAF TSgt ..
So have some extra time to play and try to keep my mind active ..

Just bought the NanoVNA .. and still learning ..
Ham radio operator - N2CUA

Either way .. thanks so much for all your great info ..

Thank you for your service to our country. 

I'm glad you enjoyed the videos and thread.  This was put together for a friend of mine who wanted to learn a little more about VNAs and I decided to try and help them along.   Their use of the VNA is more for PCB design.  Personally, electronics has been one of my hobbies for many years.  I have been in a continual state of learning but still know hardly anything about it.   

I've never understood where certain people came up with the idea that I owe them.   It's not what I would expect from a technical community and I'm sure it's obvious that my threshold is fairly low when dealing with them.   

[N2CUA]

Yeah I never got that concept either ..
My sister is a bit like that .. but she's family so I just accept it for what it is and try to find ways to make her see ( gently ) that its just not the case .. Takes time ... but I think she is coming around .. a bit of tough love though .. 

I hope you change your mind at some point .. but thats your call of course..

Thanks for the kind words ..

You would think with all the available data on the USB bus coming from the VNA that there would be a more robust interface ..
But still ... for the price its great and I dont have to lug my Rigol spectrum analyzer around when helping friends with their antennas ..

Randy

[Psynosaur]

Thanks to the OP joeqsmith.

Your videos are very educational and well put together

Then thanks 5q5r for your nanovna - saver app, it quite a treat playing with it

Kind regards

Keep the information coming!

ZS1SCI

[joeqsmith]

5q5r

I tried your prebuilt EXE on Windows 10.  It connected to the Nano and I was able to get it to plot the data without any problems.   It looks like a very good start.   So far, I think you are the only one who has stepped up and shown something other than lip service.   With the number of people asking for open source, Python code, you are making a lot of people very happy.

[joeqsmith]

Yeah I never got that concept either ..
My sister is a bit like that .. but she's family so I just accept it for what it is and try to find ways to make her see ( gently ) that its just not the case .. Takes time ... but I think she is coming around .. a bit of tough love though .. 

I hope you change your mind at some point .. but thats your call of course..

Thanks for the kind words ..

You would think with all the available data on the USB bus coming from the VNA that there would be a more robust interface ..
But still ... for the price its great and I dont have to lug my Rigol spectrum analyzer around when helping friends with their antennas ..

Randy

I'm a bit surprised myself that the PC software was released in its current state.    You could have a look at 5q5r's code.  Obviously they are just getting started but it looks promising.

https://github.com/mihtjel/nanovna-saver

[hendorog]

I haven't been following this thread, but if anyone is interested:

Here are some examples of offline calibrations, comparative tests with my HP 8753 and another NanoVNA, and a TDR example.

https://github.com/hendorog/nanovna_test
This uses the free Jupyter Notebook which you need to install if you want to play on your machine with this code.
Apologies in advance as the comments are pretty sparse, most were done as part of conversations on groups.io.

Note, I am not grabbing the data automatically yet, this is just for offline analysis at the moment. I have been using the NanoVNA C# app to get the s1p files to date.

[radiolistener]

hendorog, what mixers are used in your nanovna version - SA602 or SA612?

Can you take S1P for some load different than 50 Ohm?
For example 500 Ohm (SWR=10.0) will be a good choice for testing nano vna precision.
You can create such dummy load with SMA connector and two 1k SMD resistors soldered on it.

Such dummy loads - 500 Ohm and 5 Ohm is a must have for VNA testing and calibration. They both should give SWR=10.

[hendorog]

hendorog, what mixers are used in your nanovna version - SA602 or SA612?

Can you take S1P for some load different than 50 Ohm?
For example 500 Ohm (SWR=10.0) will be a good choice for testing nano vna precision.
You can create such dummy load with SMA connector and two 1k SMD resistors soldered on it.

Such dummy loads - 500 Ohm and 5 Ohm is a must have for VNA testing and calibration. They both should give SWR=10.

The last graph on this page https://github.com/hendorog/nanovna_test/blob/master/NanoVNA%20test.ipynb shows nanovna and 8753 measurements of a reference attenuator provided with my cal compared with reference data provided by Dr Kirkby.
(Note the 8753 was intentionally setup to match the nanovna, without any cal kit information. When properly configured for the cal kit, the 8753 will match the green line closely)

This gives a good idea of the out of the box accuracy of the device using its own (uncharacterised) cal kit against an independently measured standard above 50MHz.

Will do some more tests for you, but if I don't get it done tonight it might be a while due to other commitments.

My two devices (white gecko and black hugen) both have 602 mixers. I have read that the two models of mixers are internally identical but no idea if that has been confirmed.

[hendorog]

Also, just to add there is a known bug in the released NanoVNA sharp application when using it to do calibrations.

The measurement of the other standards are discarded unless the Short is the first standard measured.

This is because the Short button click event in the NanoVNA sharp app does a call to the 'cal_reset' operation - which wipes any earlier measurements out.

So if you do a cal in Open Short Load order using the NanoVNA sharp application, there will be an error of about 0.3dB - not much, but significant enough to be important when doing comparisons as can be seen in the attached pic.

First pic attached showing the effect of doing OSL cal order.
Second pic attached which is the same as in the previous post, showing the workaround of doing SOL cal order.

[N2CUA]

Inspired by Joe's great YouTube videos on the NanoVNA, I went ahead and botched together a little Python app that does some of the same things (most importantly, multiple sweeps to increase the amount of data points.)

It's open source and on github, as "NanoVNA-Saver" (because I initially just made it to save s1p/s2p files). I daren't post a link in my first post on this forum though :-)

Thanks Joe for the inspiration, and I hope some of the rest of you may find it useful.

Would you be up to helping me set up my Python on windows 10? Its installed but having issues with installing PyQT5. Python is completely new to me ..  Not sure if its worth all this just to have a better interface ..

[radiolistener]

My two devices (white gecko and black hugen) both have 602 mixers. I have read that the two models of mixers are internally identical but no idea if that has been confirmed.

It looks that SA612A works much better. My NanoVNA have SA602A mixers. Here is my 500 Ohm terminator measurement:

Series RLC:


Parallel RLC:


Also see S1P file for SA602A version with 500R terminator on CH0 in attachment.


Here is also screenshot for 500R terminator from another user, who have NanoVNA with SA612A:


As you can see, SA612A looks much better and works almost up to 900 MHz with above 200 Ohm result. While SA602A is going below 200 Ohms at just 160 MHz. But I'm not sure. May be this is just quality issue with my NanoVNA (for example bad soldering or something like that).

It will be good if you can confirm that your SA602A version also has bad performance on Series RLC screen. So, if SA602A is the root of cause for that, then it probably can be fixed by replacement SA602A mixers with SA612A

[N2CUA]

Inspired by Joe's great YouTube videos on the NanoVNA, I went ahead and botched together a little Python app that does some of the same things (most importantly, multiple sweeps to increase the amount of data points.)

It's open source and on github, as "NanoVNA-Saver" (because I initially just made it to save s1p/s2p files). I daren't post a link in my first post on this forum though :-)

Thanks Joe for the inspiration, and I hope some of the rest of you may find it useful.

Would you be up to helping me set up my Python on windows 10? Its installed but having issues with installing PyQT5. Python is completely new to me ..  Not sure if its worth all this just to have a better interface ..

I got it working .. Just have to learn PYTHON now .. lol

[hendorog]

My two devices (white gecko and black hugen) both have 602 mixers. I have read that the two models of mixers are internally identical but no idea if that has been confirmed.

As you can see, SA612A looks much better and works almost up to 900 MHz with above 200 Ohm result. While SA602A is going below 200 Ohms at just 160 MHz. But I'm not sure. May be this is just quality issue with my NanoVNA (for example bad soldering or something like that).

It will be good if you can confirm that your SA602A version also has bad performance on Series RLC screen. So, if SA602A is the root of cause for that, then it probably can be fixed by replacement SA602A mixers with SA612A

Interesting - based on the hint I mentioned, I searched and found this story on the internet:
https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2009/06/na5n-on-ne602.html

I'll do that test, tonight if I have time, and I will also sweep the loads on my 8753 for comparison.

[radiolistener]

it seems that my NanoVNA with SA602A may be OK. Probably this measurement error caused by 1 cm SMA-M to SMA-M adapter. I tried to add two adapters on another VNA and got similar measurement error.

Just incredible, 1 cm SMA to SMA adapter leads to so high measurement error... 

[N2CUA]

it seems that my NanoVNA with SA602A may be OK. Probably this measurement error caused by 1 cm SMA-M to SMA-M adapter. I tried to add two adapters on another VNA and got similar measurement error.

Just incredible, 1 cm SMA to SMA adapter leads to so high measurement error... 

Can you try a calibration with all cables and connectors that will be used in place ?
Other than the needed calibration items of course

[Flynt]

A greeting to the whole group.
I'm a new user.

I tried to follow all the Treead, but I don't read English well, (I'm Italian).

I would like to ask you if anyone can kindly tell me where to recover this software "Custom Lab View for Nano VNA"

THANK YOU ANTICIPATEDLY WHO WILL MAKE ME AID ...

[_Wim_]

A greeting to the whole group.
I'm a new user.

I tried to follow all the Treead, but I don't read English well, (I'm Italian).

I would like to ask you if anyone can kindly tell me where to recover this software "Custom Lab View for Nano VNA"

THANK YOU ANTICIPATEDLY WHO WILL MAKE ME AID ...

Hello Flynt, for the moment this software is not available for download. It was developed by joeqsmith to show what is possible with the Nanovna, to make some educational youtube video's about the NanoVNA and to inspire others to make apps of their own (which has worked already, thanks to 5q5r)