zoom and frequency issue with external radio and tracking

[M0NJA]

Hi Max I was just about to babble on and type I have found it only does this in ssb, behaves fine in Am, FM cw etc.........then see your latest reply found the option Auto centre......... removed the tick and abracadabra it magically works as intended we can close this topic as Solved Fixed and sorted for good, thanks very much.
73 Jason

[Max]

Hi Max I was just about to babble on and type I have found it only does this in ssb, behaves fine in Am, FM cw etc.........then see your latest reply found the option Auto centre......... removed the tick and abracadabra it magically works as intended we can close this topic as Solved Fixed and sorted for good, thanks very much.
73 Jason

Thank goodness for that! So that's one issue cracked. Can you please confirm that this also solves the issue with the zoom level resetting or is it still doing that? Actually maybe I misunderstood that one. Looking back at Phil, IZ1FKS original post I was getting the impression he meant the actual amount of zoom was being reset, but looking at his video I think it is not. Just his description slightly confused me.

The reason Auto-Centre is so powerful is that when Zoom is touched it re-centres not only the waterfall but in SDRC the centre of the overall span of the waterfall (so I mean even the part outside the main window i.e. the bandwidth of the actual SDR) is totally tied to the centre frequency of the SDR hardware. You can see this at the bottom of the display in the grayed out bar. The centre frequency of this grayed out bar is ALWAYS the LO of the SDR. So if there is even a tiny offset in the alignment of the two frequencies you will see SDRC effectively remove that offset whenever you touch the zoom.

The only question is why they are misaligned? If it only happens in SSB mode, then I would guess that the previous jump was exactly the amount of the offset required in the LSB/USB offset boxes of the External radio panel. Out of interest, can you please send a picture of your IF offsets in this panel? My guess is that you have no offsets for CW/AM/FM, only for LSB and USB?

Anyway, hopefully Rich and Phil may also read this post and try the auto-centre fix for themselves.

73

Max

[m0rdw]

Hi Max

I too can can confirm that by unchecking auto centre resolves this issue .... awesome!

I can also confirm that what you thought is correct. That the auto centre does indeed cause the frequency to be shifted by the amount of offset in the USB and LSB offsets in the external radio menu. This basically overwrites these offsets and causes everything to become misaligned by the offset amount. That is the exact issue. It's why it doesn't occur on AM CW or FM modes, only SSB due to the plus and minus offset.

Auto centre does still cause the zoom to reset to its default level, so if you are zoomed into a signal of interest, touching the VFO makes it zoom back out which is an annoyance.

It seems that the auto centre function is the root of all evil when it comes to using the software as a panadapter, and unchecking it is a godsend of a workaround.

Thanks
Rich

[Max]

Hi Max

I too can can confirm that by unchecking auto centre resolves this issue .... awesome!

I can also confirm that what you thought is correct. That the auto centre does indeed cause the frequency to be shifted by the amount of offset in the USB and LSB offsets in the external radio menu. This basically overwrites these offsets and causes everything to become misaligned by the offset amount. That is the exact issue. It's why it doesn't occur on AM CW or FM modes, only SSB due to the plus and minus offset.

Auto centre does still cause the zoom to reset to its default level, so if you are zoomed into a signal of interest, touching the VFO makes it zoom back out which is an annoyance.

It seems that the auto centre function is the root of all evil when it comes to using the software as a panadapter, and unchecking it is a godsend of a workaround.

Thanks
Rich

Hi Rich. Many thanks for confirming. I've been thinking about this for a bit and I think maybe the change in frequency is due to (possibly) the logic of how the additional offsets are handled in the External Radio panel. In theory having an offset in there I don't think should cause the frequency shift you see, even with Auto centre enabled.

Anyway, very pleased we have finally found the cause of the issue and will mention it to Simon on the Test Team just in case he's not following this thread. Thanks again for input from both yourself and Jason. As a short-term fix I will see if Simon wants to add to the External Radio web page to add a note to disable auto-zoom when if using additional offsets.

73

Max

[M0NJA]

Hi Max I noticed it moved about 1.625 k off and my offsets if I remember are around the 1502 if correct, so not sure how they equate to 1.625k off but it's made it usable now,
73 Jason

[jdow]

What is the bandwidth you are using, both low side and high side? (e.g. 240 Hz to 3400 Hz) It probably won't matter whether USB or LSB except for the direction of the move.

{^_^}

[M0NJA]

I use wide ssb 0-4000 at least, only removing auto centre correctly adjusts, before it would immediately jump 1.6k ish

[Max]

I use wide ssb 0-4000 at least, only removing auto centre correctly adjusts, before it would immediately jump 1.6k ish

Hi Jason. It would be interesting if you could please post a screenshot of your External Radio setup panel, showing the IF and offset settings. Sorry if you have mentioned it before, but without me trawling back through the other posts, what is your external radio?

I've updated Simon with this on the Test Team and he says he should be able to take a look at it when he next comes back to SDRC to fix a few other minor issues.

Can you also please just clarify in what circumstances the zoom level resets? Say for example you zoom in on SDRC, does the zoom level reset when you next tune from the external radio end i.e. with the tuning knob? Or am I getting hold of the wrong end of the stick and it never resets to a different span? To what width/span does it reset? If it does occur, is that also solved by turning off auto centre? Exact description of how and when would be very helpful for Simon I'm sure.

73

Max

[iz1fks]

Hello Everybody,
sorry for my late answer, I can say that auto centre function doesn't change anything on my side. Each time the rig's tuning knob is moved the zoom setting is lost and there is no reason for that in my opinon. However this is just one of multiple issues with external radio IF setting. I agree that problems are related to the use of IF tap, but this is a software supported function. I think that users like SDRconsole and they would like to use this function as well in order to be able to use their older rig with an high performance panadapter, while at the moment it's useless and we need to move to HDSDR where the same setup works without any issue.
External radio setting with QO-100 has no issue in controlling the rig, I did some test with my icom 475 even if I'm still not operative on the sat and it work as required.
In my previous post there are details and video of my setup and all information are still valid, since the issues are the same: tracking settings in external radio option windows are wrong since don't work as expected, and spectrum is very laggy only when frequency track is active but it doesn't appear like this using Qo-100 and IC-475, so it's definively a software issue with IF offset setting.

About zoom function I can say that using a receiver pane it works as expected, so it a problem related only to the main spectrum waterfall

73 de Phil,iz1fks