Monday, June 12, 2017

ColibriNANO - It's Here. Sort of.

Yes, it's here. Only very, very first impressions so far. I haven't even connected it to an antenna (because I don't have one at my apartment).

It's small. It's hot. And I mean literally hot! So hot it's actually a tad unpleasant. I don't know if it's a bad sign or not.

Despite many attempts on two different PCs with two different type USB ports, I never got ExpertSDR (their native software) to run. The Nano was always disconnected. Drivers manually installed, still no cigar. Some inconsistencies in the manual did not help. I'm not excluding user error, but come on - this should be plug and play!

No problems with HDSDR though. It plays, records and plays back well. So good work on the ExtIO dll - at least so far. One problem though is that the gain is set 60 or so dB too high (I'll measure later on with my signal generator), but that error is easy to calibrate thanks to HDSDR's versatility.

SDR# is a different story again. It does open, but the window is never visible, only the miniature window visible when you hover the mouse pointer on the task bar.

So what to say. Unfinished? Will it fry? Or is it a keeper? Time will tell.

Update: It turned out that on the early sets, the serial numbers weren't programmed into the device's EEPROM. With that sorted out, ExpertSDR began to talk to the Nano. Now, there are other issues.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yes, time tells us the answer.!!