[hfsig] WsprryPi sends tone only for a few seconds

[Simon Quellen Field]

> Have you tried running PiCW without the WSPR board connected?
> HA7DCD
​> ​
Zoltan

It did not occur to me until you suggested it.
I attached a wire to GPIO04 (GPIO_GCLK) Pin 7, and ran PiCW.

I got the same results -- the first few characters were sent, then nothing.

I then broke up my test message, so I could call PiCW with one latter at a
time, with a sleep 1 between calls.
Many of the letters got through, but perhaps a quarter of them were silent.

These test seem to rule out problems with the card itself, and seem also to
rule out problems with the PiCW program.

Suspecting the NTP corrections might be short-circuiting some code, I tried
PiCW with the -n option, which is supposed to
turn off NTP self-calibration. The program returned an error message,
saying that there was no -n option.

   root at wsprpi:/home/pi/PiCW# PiCW -n -w 20 -f 14097000
   Detected Raspberry Pi version 2/3
   PiCW: invalid option -- 'n'
   root at wsprpi:/home/pi/PiCW#

I found the problem in the code (the call to getopt_long did not have an
'n' in the character string) and fixed that bug,
but using the -n option did not fix my original problem.
    root at wsprpi:/home/pi/PiCW# PiCW -n -w 20 -f 14097000 "AB6NY TESTING MY
NEW RASPERRY PI CW TRANSMITTER ON       14.097 MHZ"
    Detected Raspberry Pi version 2/3
    PiCW parsed command line options:
      TX frequency: 14.097000 MHz
      WPM: 20
    Message to be sent:
    "AB6NY TESTING MY NEW RASPERRY PI CW TRANSMITTER ON 14.097 MHZ"
     AB6NY TESTING MY NEW RASPERRY PI CW TRANSMITTER ON 14.097 MHZ


Then I tried "dit mode" where the -d option is supposed to send an endless
string of dits.
    PiCW -d -w 20 -f 14097000
I was encouraged when I heard a good 20 seconds or so of dits, but then it
went silent again.

Then I tried the test-tone option.
    root at wsprpi:/home/pi/PiCW# PiCW -t -f 14097000
    Detected Raspberry Pi version 2/3
    PiCW parsed command line options:
      TX frequency: 14.097000 MHz
      NTP will be used to periodically calibrate the transmission frequency
    Will transmit continuous tone on requested frequency. CTRL-C to exit.
     Exiting with error; caught signal: 2
    Exiting with error; caught signal: 11
    ^Croot at wsprpi:/home/pi/PiCW#

Whether I use the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ or the new Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
v1.2, I get similar
results. The timing of the length of the transmissions seem to be random.
One time the -t option
emitted a tone for over 10 seconds. The very next time I tried it the tone
lasted only 4 seconds. The
third time I got no tone at all. The fourth time the tone lasted 7 seconds.

All of these last tests were done without the card in place, just with a 3
foot wire antenna on pin 7.

Has anyone tested PiCW or WsprryPi on the latest Raspian NOOBS?

I've tried it with WiFi turned off -- same result.

Could the Pi be trying to use the clock for sounds at random times?
I am not hearing any sounds, but I don't know how to ensure that they don't
happen.




-----
Get a free science project every week! "http://scitoys.com/newsletter.html"
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.tapr.org/pipermail/hfsig_lists.tapr.org/attachments/20180417/98f56d2c/attachment.html>