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Hi Jan,
At the end of the Spike installer it states that you will need to install the additional USB drivers found here
https://signalhound.com/sigdownloads/Spike/CDM%20v2.12.00%20WHQL%20Certified.exeHave you already installed this? If you have not, you will need to run the installer as administrator.
I apologize for the inconvenience, hopefully we can get this resolved quickly.
Regards,
A.J.Hi NopMicro,
When you say FM demod you are referring to demodulating and playing the resulting audio waveform? The Spike software has an audio player in the utilities file menu. We are also compatible with an SDR application called HDSDR which has much more extensive audio playing capabilities. You can find the files and setup guide for HDSDR compatibility at this link.
https://signalhound.com/sigdownloads/Other/HDSDR-SignalHound.zipRegards,
A.J.Hi Tishers,
Good timing, I am looking at QAM64 today. QAM256 will likely follow if I can get QAM64. I’ll take a look at your other suggestions as well. Out of curiosity, which view where you imagining a horizontal line displayed on? The spectrum plot?
Regards,
A.J.Hi Paul,
Thanks for calling in. You have my contact info if you have any questions in the future.
Regards,
A.J.Hello rtcjss,
I personally have never used CVI but I have seen these types of issues before. You are seeing this because our API is not 100% C compatible. It is going to complain about missing typedefs on the enums and structs and maybe a few other things. I think if you addressed this, the CVI compiler would be able to parse our header file without errors. This is just a guess though. Without CVI, I cannot test this.
Regards,
A.J.Hi Steve,
As of today, we have released a new version of Spike which will allow you to adjust the reference oscillator in your SA44, unfortunately it will not work with your TG.
Grab the new version of Spike at http://www.signalhound.com/Spike and check out the “Timebase Adjustment” under the utilities menu. You will input a CW into the RF input of the SA44, specify its power level and frequency and you can make one click adjustments. This should get your SA calibrated. It is a software calibration and can be reversed anytime by clearing it through the same utility.
Hope this helps, let me know if you have further questions.
Regards,
A.J.Hello facotl,
Is the LED on the device solid green? Have you tried a different usb port? When the device is plugged in, check under the device manager->Universal Serial Bus Controllers tab and you should see “USB Serial Converter A” and B. If they are there, right click -> Properties. Under the advanced tab, ensure the “Load VCP” checkbox is not selected.
Also, is this the first computer you have tried? If it is possible to try on another computer, it would help rule out certain issues, like a bad cable/hardware.
Let’s start with this, I look forward to your response.
Regards,
A.J.Hi Everyone,
Today we are releasing version 3.1.0 of the Spike software. With this comes EMC pre-compliance measurements and features for the BB60A/C users, frequency difference meter utility, temporary time base adjustment utility, ability to hide control panels, and we moved the API files out of the installer into their own separate download. Check out the change log on http://www.signalhound.com/Spike for more details.
Also keep an eye out for the next update where we will be attempting to resolve many of the text scaling issues for high DPI displays.Regards,
A.J.Hi bbowar,
I apologize, I am currently out of town and cannot verify, but I believe changing the values 486111.111 to 80.0e6 will correct the equation for the BB60C.
Regards,
A.J.Hi bbowar,
We distribute a linux build of the BB60 API on the BB60 downloads page. Usually it is a few versions behind the main distribution.
You will find it near the top of the list on this page
https://signalhound.com/support/downloads/bb60c-bb60a-downloads/Regards,
A.J.Hi Andy,
Actually what we do is,
For each column where the sweep size is substantially larger than the max image width (1024), we divide by an integer(n) number, and plot an ‘n’ points on that column.Regards,
A.J.Hi Nikita,
This is a very interesting idea, thank you for the suggestion.
Regards,
A.J.Hi Jacob, this a limitation of the Spike software that will need to be resolved. Currently there is no way to specify the output format. I apologize for the inconvenience. You may need to export as dBm and perform the conversion manually. I will make a note to investigate this issue and see if there is a quick fix for this.
Regards,
A.J.Hi Nikita,
Yes, the noise floor is tied to reference level. This is because we optimize attenuation and gain of the receiver based on the reference level. This makes it easy to configure the receiver for your expected input signal. If you wish you can control the gain and attenuation manually by enabling it from the setting file menu. This way, you have consistent measurements across reference level.
Regards,
A.J.Hi Andy,
The frame scale represents the total height of the real-time frame in dB. For example, with a frame scale of 100, a frame column will represent amplitudes between the reference level and the (reference level – 100).
Regards,
A.J.Hi Hank,
The peak values are the measured min/max frequency deviation values. I hope this answers your question.
Regards,
A.J.Hi Sam,
The bbr files can be loaded back into Spike. If you press the play button on the sweep recording toolbar and select the bbr file, the software will sequentially play back the sweeps recorded in the file. You also have access to all sweep measurements when playing the file back through Spike.
You can also parse the file programmatically. I am attaching a file which shows how one would parse the bbr file in C. I would imagine it would be very easy to adapt this to Python. The format is very basic.
Let me know if you have further questions.
Regards,
A.J.Hi Mervin,
For the SA and VSG devices, the symbol rate limitations on QAM16 are going to be between 16kS/s and 150kS/s. The VSG is capable of generating QAM64 and QAM256 patterns but the SA is not able to demodulate them currently. You can configure a QAM signal with up to 512 symbols. I have attached an image of this setup.
If you have further questions, let me know.
Regards,
A.J.Hello Han,
As a preliminary check, have you installed the USB driver from the http://www.signalhound.com/Spike page? When you install it, it will require you to run as administrator (Right click -> Run as Administrator)
You have the necessary y-cable for power? You should connect both PC side connections first before the SA124 side. You should see a green solid LED if the device is properly powered.
Typically connecting a device to the PC for the first time will cause the PC to “load” the driver. You should see some activity in the task bar noting this. It should notify you when done. This can take anywhere from 10 seconds to 1 minute. If you try to launch Spike before this completes, you will get the Device not found error message.
Most customers experience issues with our products on Apple computers, whether in a virtual machine or natively through bootcamp. I would try getting it to run successfully on the PCs first before the Macs.
Sometimes, anti-virus software conflicts with our devices and needs to be disabled/reduced.
I look forward to your response.
Regards,
A.J.Hi bmusicus,
I have seen this problem before with a few other customers and have been unable to track this issue down. I have spent several hours searching for a solution to this, and most searches lead me to believe there is some issue with the PC system configuration. I will link the google results for a reasonable search term for this, and you can find this problem across the board for a large number of applications.
The ntdll library which you noted, is the Microsoft Win32 library responsible for the file dialog (among other things).
For other customers with this issue, they have been able to get around it by installing the 32bit version of the software instead of the 64bit version, or vice-versa. Give that a shot, and see if this allows you to save files. http://www.signalhound.com/Spike for the latest software.
If you try some of the troubleshooting tips found online for this issue, and find something that works, we would love to hear about it.
I apologize for the inconvenience. Let me know if installing the other version of Spike resolves your issue.
Regards,
A.J.