Re: Power coming out of AX5043
Hi all,
The power setting commands were never ported over from Golf. As Bob said it is currently hard coded to a minimum level for testing in the shack.
We will want this to be commandable in the future, at least to a couple of levels as Burns said.
73 Chris
On Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 09:18 Burns Fisher (AMSAT) via pacsat-dev < [email protected]> wrote:
A couple thoughts (and these are based on memory, not looking at code since I am not in my shack)
First, Jim, remember that any changes that I made are all on the git branch that starts WB1FJ... And that branch will not work on the launchpad. This branch came off "MAIN" so anything in any other branches is not included in WB1FJ...
Second, I did not explicitly mess with anything relating to power in my last round of changes, although most of the calls into the AX5043 code I had to change to include an argument to say which chip to use. For something transmit-only, though I'm not sure.
And finally, the way power works on Golf (and I probably did not change this when I originally ported it to Launchpad, although someone else may have): There is a high power and a low power. The values for high and low are either constants or in MRAM. But the commands are essentially to set it to high or low power. On Golf, there is a high/low pair for both normal mode and safe mode, but there are no such modes on Pacsat of course. Since that must have been ripped out at some point--probably that original port, or by Chris later--I'm not sure just how the power works at this point.
Sorry, I'd look at more of this, but I have a busy weekend prepping for and teaching a ham radio class.
73,
Burns Fisher, WB1FJ *AMSAT(R) Engineering -- Flight Software*
On Sat, Feb 17, 2024 at 12:20 AM Jim McCullers via pacsat-dev < [email protected]> wrote:
I did some housekeeping last weekend on the files and it appears I went one step to far and don't have the latest version of the software. I'll pull it down tomorrow. The version I have sets the 0x0020 which is very low. Max power is 0x0fff.
Remember the range is not linear.
Congrats
Jim
One more point… Max power 16 dB would with 5V and we are using 3.3v on the AX5043.
On Feb 16, 2024, at 9:25 PM, Bob Stricklin via pacsat-dev <
[email protected]> wrote:
I did test a board today and found it was transmitting every 30
seconds with a power level of about -28 dBm.
I spent some time looking at the code and found where the power level
is set to ox0d in a config file and get AX reports this value.
I see in the data sheet for AX5043 where power should range from -10 dB
to 16 dB and uses a 12 bit value to set the level. Possibly we are just adjusting upper 8 bits.
We will also be losing power in the differential to single ended
converter and shaping circuit. I will probe on this a little more tomorrow but likely just leave it alone and move on for now to be sure and ship boards Monday.
I also see the 30 second interval in the code and some other comments
about setting power but does not seem like this is being used.
I could not get a continuous tone and I did not spend time setting up a
tight loop to transmit.
I did change the call sign in the configuration to mine.
Bob
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Chris Thompson