jks

About

Username
jks
Joined
Visits
32,305
Last Active
Roles
Member, Administrator, Moderator
Points
331
  • Network setup advice needed

    Sorry, I got called away by a conference call.

    If your Kiwi hasn't updated to v1.677 before 3:00 UTC then when it does it will get the change. If it updated prior to 3:00UTC then go to the admin update tab and do a manual build via the "build now" button.

    After rebuilding, on the admin network tab you will find a new menu item "power on restart delay (secs)". With values "no delay, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, 150, 180". The default is/was 30 secs. So try 45 or 60 and see if that fixes your problem.

    Remember that this delay is only applied after a Beagle/Debian restart, as would occur after a power fail recovery.

    Thank you! I'm sure others will have this same issue.

    Nate_R
  • Who you are, where you are and what are your KiWi's ?

    Okay, I added a plugin that allows some content to be added to profiles. For now just Location, Callsign and "Additional information". Let me know if you think we should have others. Look at my profile as an example (click "jks" at the top of this post).

    The content isn't presented very optimally. It just appears at the top of the user's profile page.

    I also re-enabled the "reactions" feature (i.e. adding "helpful", "awesome" to posts like we used to have).

    G8JNJYogicatbarneyuk
  • Band Bars Overlapping

    Yes, the overlapping bars are not the problem (as long as the color blending doesn't look too bad). It's just the text collision (overlapping) as you zoom in.

    N1NKM
  • Band Bars Overlapping

    I tried a couple of times to fix the problem: The text from overlapping band bars can collide as you zoom in certain situations. Overlapping bars is not really a problem. It's just the text conflict. I couldn't come up with a good algorithm to fit it.

    N1NKM
  • Uncommanded 26 dB attenuation, SMA connector tightening

    There is a software bug (v1.665 and earlier) that has been observed by a number of people now. The attenuator becomes set to about 26 dB of attenuation even though the slider on the user RF tab and admin page config tab all say zero. Worse, the problem persists across restarts.

    I have reviewed the code and can't see an obvious issue. So the next release, v1.666, has a bunch of debugging added to log the problem so I can fix it. You can clear this problem by simply changing to attenuator to a non-zero value and then back to zero on the user RF tab slider (changing the admin slider won't fix the problem). If your Kiwi is public you might want to consider making the RF attenuator adjustable by "everyone" for this reason. Setting on the admin page, config tab. My apologies for this very annoying bug.

    +++

    About SMA connector torque: Many of you will know more about this than me. But I'll tell you what I know.

    You have to be careful with SMA connectors. Because the fittings are brass they have to be torqued tight enough to make a good ground connection on the outer threads. But you don't want to use a wrench that supplies too much torque because that will deform the soft brass and then the connector will be ruined.

    So if you think signal levels from your antenna are down try finger tightening the threads a little bit more. But don't use a tool unless you're extremely careful. You can use the self-test function of the signal generator extension with the SMA-to-SMA cable that was supplied with the Kiwi to verify the Kiwi's RF front end is working properly. Procedure described here: http://kiwisdr.com/quickstart/#id-self-test

    Hewlett-Packard used to ship a special SMA/SMB connector torquing tool as part of the service kits for their test equipment just for this reason. But it was very expensive if purchased separately. Hundreds of dollars! Anyone remember that?

    f1jek