Remote Usage of BB60c

Hello
I want to use BB60c remotely. the “spike” runs on the PC1, and the “BB60c” is connected to the PC2. PC1 and PC2 are connected through the TCP/IP network.
Please guide me.
Best regards.

Unfortunately this is not possible. Spike must run on the PC in which the BB60C is connected. You can use remote desktop like applications to control Spike from a different PC.

One alternative is to look into our SM200C spectrum analyzer. It uses a 10GbE fiber link from PC to device. It would be possible to run a long fiber cable between the PC running Spike and the spectrum analyzer. It would preferably need to be fiber/SFP+ end-to-end.

FWIW, I have been using a USB 3 fiber extender (an Icron unit) to connect a BB60C that is on the roof right at my antenna, about 100-foot cable run away, to my computer in the lab a couple of stories below. This saves me about 7 dB of LMR-600 cable loss at 3.5 GHz, compared to locating the BB60C in the lab.

The USB 3 extender has worked very well for several years, although starting about two years ago, an update to the Signal Hound USB drivers or Spike or both caused it to become less reliable. The BB60C would disconnect every few minutes. I rolled back my drivers and Spike version and it works 100% again now. The only drawback is that now I’m “stuck” with a Spike version that is a couple years old, for this particular installation.

For deployments that are in other locations (i.e., many miles away), I connect a BB60C to a co-sited laptop, and I remote into the laptop using Splashtop. This is reliable, although the frame rate achieved on any remote application I’ve tried is not good enough to keep up with the refresh rate needed to see every single sweep in Spike. But I record the data coming from the BB60C and upload it to the cloud so I can play it back locally for full performance.

Very interesting Andrew, thanks for sharing. Do you know what old version of Spike you are running on this installation? Alternatively, do you know roughly what version you start having the stability issues with? It would be interesting to review the change log and code to see what changes might have affected this.

The older version I’m running now shows 3.4.2. If it’s helpful, the “About” screen also shows BB API Version 4.2.0, SAAPI Version 3.1.4, SM API Version 2.0.2, product ID 4300-1101. This is pretty much a random version that I still had the install package sitting around my disk drive, so whatever happened was after this version. The connectivity issue started roughly a year ago. So not very exact, but that would give you a rough range. It occurred to me at the time that it would be useful if it was possible to download previous versions of drivers and Spike. Is that a thing?

An important fact is that I’m still running Windows 7 on this particular installation. So perhaps if I had a laptop running Windows 11 it wouldn’t be an issue. When I find some time I can give that a try, but I usually don’t like to mess with things that are stable.

I have a similar wish for remoting a SA. In my case it’s a BB60D rather than BB60C and a generally adequately potent if far from bleeding edge Windoze 10 laptop (Dell Latitude 5520 with a 3 GHz, 11th gen i7 processor, 32G RAM, fast SSD). Latest Spike (3.9.0). I have been looking for a ~20 foot range USB 3 extender that works with the BB60D with no luck so far. Spike just does not recognize the BB60D. (Some extenders work with my BB60_C_, but it’s erratic, and for the particular test I am doing I need the BB60D better noise floor).

I know Signalhound can’t test every combination of laptop and extender :), but a “seems to be good when Signalhound tries it” recommendation would be helpful.

For a 20 foot range, I would recommend a USB 3.0 “active” cable. A passive cable should not exceed 6ft. We have not personally tested these, but they have all come from customers who have had success with them, and I have recommended them to many other customers (who have not reported issues).

– FIRENEX-ULS-05
– SIIG USB 3.0 active cable 20 meters
– Cable Matters 10m active cables
– Corning 20m USB to optical cables.

For other customers who might see this post, these active cables should work for any of our USB 3.0 devices. For much longer distances, the Icron USB-Fiber extender is a popular choice with our customers.

I have used this cable – https://www.delock.com/produkt/83415/merkmale.html – in several projects, followed usually by an industrial USB3 powered hub and controlling two BB60s in parallel, mostly IQ streaming.

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