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drawing smith charts

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  drawing smith charts Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2021-10-23 11:00 +0200
    Re: drawing smith charts didier gaumet <didier.gaumet@gmail.com> - 2021-10-23 12:00 +0200
      Re: drawing smith charts Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2021-10-23 18:10 +0200
    Re: drawing smith charts "Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@einval.com> - 2021-10-23 12:10 +0200
      Re: drawing smith charts Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2021-10-23 19:00 +0200

#241614 — drawing smith charts

Greetings;

One of the things I occasionally do is service my local AM radio station 
when its off the air. This includes trying to keep the VSWR under 
control.

I have a redpitaya Vector Network Analyser that I use to tune the tower, 
and it gives me the tuning state in the form of a smith chart. But while 
it claims to run with a linux system as the display, it doesn't, so I 
had to buy a cheap all-in-one with win 10 home edition on it. Works 
great but is a pita to setup and get started. The windows driver is also 
about 50x the size of the linux driver that doesn't work. 

What can I install to a buster machine that might make this graphical 
display work?  We had, a decade back, a something or other "plot" that 
might have been able to draw a smith chart but I haven't seen it in the 
repos recently. It also was a square plotter, whereas the smith chart is 
circular at its maximum error limits.

Can anyone suggest a linux substitute?

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

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#241616

Le samedi 23 octobre 2021 à 04:58 -0400, Gene Heskett a écrit :
> Greetings;
> 
> One of the things I occasionally do is service my local AM radio
> station 
> when its off the air. This includes trying to keep the VSWR under 
> control.
> 
> I have a redpitaya Vector Network Analyser that I use to tune the
> tower, 
> and it gives me the tuning state in the form of a smith chart. But
> while 
> it claims to run with a linux system as the display, it doesn't, so I
> had to buy a cheap all-in-one with win 10 home edition on it. Works 
> great but is a pita to setup and get started. The windows driver is
> also 
> about 50x the size of the linux driver that doesn't work. 
> 
> What can I install to a buster machine that might make this graphical
> display work?  We had, a decade back, a something or other "plot"
> that 
> might have been able to draw a smith chart but I haven't seen it in
> the 
> repos recently. It also was a square plotter, whereas the smith chart
> is 
> circular at its maximum error limits.
> 
> Can anyone suggest a linux substitute?
> 
> Cheers, Gene Heskett.

Hello,

I do not know nothing about radio setup, your hardware and this brand,
so I am afraid I can not help you much.

But the manufacturer claims it works under Linux and provides
instructions to get it running:
https://redpitaya.readthedocs.io/en/latest/appsFeatures/applications/vna/appVNA.html#linux-users-only
Albeit there is an error in the link to download the "control program"
which points to the Windows client instead of the Linux one.
The correct link
is:https://downloads.redpitaya.com/downloads/Clients/vna/vna-linux-tool.zip

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#241619

On Saturday 23 October 2021 05:58:12 didier gaumet wrote:

> Le samedi 23 octobre 2021 à 04:58 -0400, Gene Heskett a écrit :
> > Greetings;
> >
> > One of the things I occasionally do is service my local AM radio
> > station
> > when its off the air. This includes trying to keep the VSWR under
> > control.
> >
> > I have a redpitaya Vector Network Analyser that I use to tune the
> > tower,
> > and it gives me the tuning state in the form of a smith chart. But
> > while
> > it claims to run with a linux system as the display, it doesn't, so
> > I had to buy a cheap all-in-one with win 10 home edition on it.
> > Works great but is a pita to setup and get started. The windows
> > driver is also
> > about 50x the size of the linux driver that doesn't work.
> >
> > What can I install to a buster machine that might make this
> > graphical display work?  We had, a decade back, a something or other
> > "plot" that
> > might have been able to draw a smith chart but I haven't seen it in
> > the
> > repos recently. It also was a square plotter, whereas the smith
> > chart is
> > circular at its maximum error limits.
> >
> > Can anyone suggest a linux substitute?
> >
> > Cheers, Gene Heskett.
>
> Hello,
>
> I do not know nothing about radio setup, your hardware and this brand,
> so I am afraid I can not help you much.
>
> But the manufacturer claims it works under Linux and provides
> instructions to get it running:
> https://redpitaya.readthedocs.io/en/latest/appsFeatures/applications/v
>na/appVNA.html#linux-users-only Albeit there is an error in the link to
> download the "control program" which points to the Windows client
> instead of the Linux one.
> The correct link
> is:https://downloads.redpitaya.com/downloads/Clients/vna/vna-linux-too
>l.zip

Thank you very very much Didier. In my conversations with the maker in cz 
land I was never able to acquire that link from them. Every link they 
gave me pointed at the winblows version. Now to see if I can make it run 
on a pi4b. Or something similar that looks like a lappy but with a 
screen big enough to read.

Attempting to run it on a pi4b running raspbian buster, which is normally 
running a cnc'd 11x54 lathe, with a preempt-rt kernel, it takes about 30 
seconds to get to line 32 and a failure.
line 32 tells it:

from mpldatacursor import datacursor

but it can't find mpldatacursor. found some mpl suspects, installing them 
on that pi now. Then runniing sudo updatedb, then try python3 ./vna.py 
again. And it still bails out, same error:(paste)

pi@rpi4:/media/pi/workspace/vna-linux-tool $ python3 ./vna.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./vna.py", line 32, in <module>
    from mpldatacursor import datacursor
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'mpldatacursor'

And according to synaptic, there isn't such a critter. Any suggestions?

I'll ask on the python list. Maybe someone there knows.

Thank you Didier. that link is much appreciated.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

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#241617

On Sat, Oct 23, 2021 at 04:58:30AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> Greetings;
> 
> One of the things I occasionally do is service my local AM radio station 
> when its off the air. This includes trying to keep the VSWR under 
> control.
> 
> I have a redpitaya Vector Network Analyser that I use to tune the tower, 
> and it gives me the tuning state in the form of a smith chart. But while 
> it claims to run with a linux system as the display, it doesn't, so I 
> had to buy a cheap all-in-one with win 10 home edition on it. Works 
> great but is a pita to setup and get started. The windows driver is also 
> about 50x the size of the linux driver that doesn't work. 
> 
> What can I install to a buster machine that might make this graphical 
> display work?  We had, a decade back, a something or other "plot" that 
> might have been able to draw a smith chart but I haven't seen it in the 
> repos recently. It also was a square plotter, whereas the smith chart is 
> circular at its maximum error limits.

Python3-scikit-rf looks promising to plot the data.

Debian electronics / Debian ham teams might have some good ideas

apt-cache search Smith threw this up

There's also various gnuplot / octave plots that might work.

Hope this helps

All best, as ever,

Andy Cater
> 
> Can anyone suggest a linux substitute?
> 
> Cheers, Gene Heskett.
> -- 
> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
>  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> -Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
> If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
>  - Louis D. Brandeis
> Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
> 

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#241620

On Saturday 23 October 2021 06:06:12 Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 23, 2021 at 04:58:30AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > Greetings;
> >
> > One of the things I occasionally do is service my local AM radio
> > station when its off the air. This includes trying to keep the VSWR
> > under control.
> >
> > I have a redpitaya Vector Network Analyser that I use to tune the
> > tower, and it gives me the tuning state in the form of a smith
> > chart. But while it claims to run with a linux system as the
> > display, it doesn't, so I had to buy a cheap all-in-one with win 10
> > home edition on it. Works great but is a pita to setup and get
> > started. The windows driver is also about 50x the size of the linux
> > driver that doesn't work.
> >
> > What can I install to a buster machine that might make this
> > graphical display work?  We had, a decade back, a something or other
> > "plot" that might have been able to draw a smith chart but I haven't
> > seen it in the repos recently. It also was a square plotter, whereas
> > the smith chart is circular at its maximum error limits.
>
> Python3-scikit-rf looks promising to plot the data.
>
> Debian electronics / Debian ham teams might have some good ideas
>
> apt-cache search Smith threw this up
>
> There's also various gnuplot / octave plots that might work.
>
> Hope this helps
>
> All best, as ever,
>
> Andy Cater
>
Progress report Andy. The code kit I got from a link Didier posted failed 
to find a resource it needed, but I in my dotage finally remembered I 
had previously installed pip3 on that rpi4b, which found the missing 
code and installed it, and it now runs but without connecting to the VNA 
because its in a briefcase in the truck. Now I need to obtain another 
rpi4b and put raspbian buster on it, and a full cups install so I can 
print the smith charts right in the antenna shack that the FCC likes to 
see.

So progress is being made. Gotta spend a few sheckles yet, but the first 
job will pay for that.  Since the resources to do it with linux have now 
been rounded up, probably my best bet is to put a 60Gb kingston SSD that 
isn't doing anything else in the winblows all-in-one, in place of the 
winblows spinning rust install, and put buster on it.

Progress, for some definition of the word. That guy Murphy, that wrote 
all those laws, is alive and plotting against me of course. Thats been 
an 87 year battle he has lost every time, but he's a stubborn SOB.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

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