Signal Hound BB60C

[Ivan7enych]

Here is amplitude drift and dynamic range in Scalar analisys mode.

1. Screen with -3dB atten, without calibration, 10MHz - 4GHz span

2. Calibrated at +30c, in cold state, with Store Thru

3. Disconnected input, ~100dB (+3dB for attenuator) dynamic range.

4. Warmed up to +36c, amplitude drifted by 1dB, warning about it is visible.

5. Dynamic range with "High Range" option off. Much less range, but 2times faster update.

[joeqsmith]

I read your posts on their site.   Sorry not getting back sooner.  I have been in manic mode for last few days getting my motor cycle simulator under Windows 10.  Done for the most part and am surprised how well the new PC can handle it.  All of the low level interface to the PCI bus was coded in C and now I am doing it all in Labview.  I'm impressed.  Next I need to look at the GPIB controller.   

I connect TG44 10MHz output to BB60c reference input, and I expect to see exactly the same frequency, but it’s not.

After further discussion here, we are going to add the ability to specify whether you are using the TG 10MHz reference output, so it will disable this frequency correction. We think allowing the user to manually specify this is the best way forward. It will likely be a new checkbox in the TG control panel. Look for this in the next release.

Assuming they made this change, could you repeat the drift test with the two tied together?   

I have been running the BB60C and still trying to hunt down a problem where it will hang.   I am not liking how the software would crash with my laptop.  Even if there were buffer overflows, underruns, bad cable.... I would expect the software to handle it.  With the new PC I still see some strange problem where the Spike software looses connection with the BB60C.   This is VERY rare.   Looking in the device manager, I can see the BB60C and all seems fine with it.  Green LED is active.  I can restart Spike and it will not find it. Windows does not see the device disconnect/reconnect.    There are two ways to recover.  I can power cycle the BB60C.  This should never happen in any case IMO.   The other is to restart the driver in device manager. 

The company has offered to provide a new cable as they suspect this is where the problem is.  I am able to bend the cable and such and it will not cause the problem.  I doubt this is the problem.   

By VERY rare, I can run it for 8 hours and may not see it happen.   At first I thought it had something to do with the audio decode but this does not seem to be the case.   I suspect it is some sort of overflow problem.  Have you ever seen this sort of problem with yours?




 

[Ivan7enych]

Assuming they made this change, could you repeat the drift test with the two tied together?   

Here is 4GHz signal from tracking gen.

1. 10MHz reference from TG44 is not connected to BB60c, ~100Hz offset
2. 10MHz reference is connected, BB60c uses external reference, frequency calibration is turned off - zero offset
3. 10MHz reference is connected, BB60c uses external reference, but frequency calibration is still on - offset is 1.5KHz

The company has offered to provide a new cable as they suspect this is where the problem is.  I am able to bend the cable and such and it will not cause the problem.  I doubt this is the problem.   

Does your BB60c have enough voltage? My unit shows me 4.6V and I had no issues on 2 computers.

[Ivan7enych]

Catched some avia communications with BB60c + antenna at 129.8MHz, AM modulation.

Center frequency of one signal has some offset, may be due to doppler effect of a flying plane?

[joeqsmith]

Assuming they made this change, could you repeat the drift test with the two tied together?   

Here is 4GHz signal from tracking gen.

1. 10MHz reference from TG44 is not connected to BB60c, ~100Hz offset
2. 10MHz reference is connected, BB60c uses external reference, frequency calibration is turned off - zero offset
3. 10MHz reference is connected, BB60c uses external reference, but frequency calibration is still on - offset is 1.5KHz

The company has offered to provide a new cable as they suspect this is where the problem is.  I am able to bend the cable and such and it will not cause the problem.  I doubt this is the problem.   

Does your BB60c have enough voltage? My unit shows me 4.6V and I had no issues on 2 computers.

No drift as I would expect.   Now what happens if you run #2 and repeat the amplitude drift?

Mine shows 4.8V and is using version 7.   

[joeqsmith]

It's been a month, time for a little update.   I now suspect the computer I bought has one port that causes problems with the BB60C.   It's a Dell 5810 and it has several USB 3 ports.   There is one port that is on the back of the PC that is soldered to the MB that when the SH is connected to it, it will very rarely hang.  I still thing that the firmware in the SH needs some help just in how it behaves when it hangs.   Having to pull the cable or power cycle  to recover is something I would expect from a high school science project but not from a professional group.   I hope over time they will continue to improve it. 

I don't like having to pull the power on the hub to turn the thing off.  Again, this just seems stupid to not have a way to put the thing into a least some sort of very low power mode, if not just to turn the thing off. 

I am still up in the air on the whole headless thing.  It saves room but the PC and monitor is not near the bench where I normally work.  It's not been a problem to run it from the hub with the long USB cables.   But having to turn the PC on, wait for it to boot, run the program.... Its a bit of a pain.  I wonder how long USB 3 will be supported and the thing gets tossed in the trash when Windows 15 comes out, or they just don't support it.   Time will tell.   

Overall I still like it for my home hobby sort of work.  Been having some fun with the digital side of life. 

[joeqsmith]

Nope, not the port.  It hung again yesterday. Something in the USB stack on the BB60C I suspect in how it hangs.   

Attempting to do use it to decode some very low 2FSK data rates in the 915MHz.  Seems this may be a problem.  The best I seem to be able to do is oversample the data but then there is no way to decimate it in the digital domain.  So rather than say "010"  you would have "00001111000" for a 4X over sample.  Then it really limits the amount of data it can collect. 

Wishing now it had more complex triggers as well. For pulsed RF work, they have what they call a video trigger where you set the power level you want to trigger.  But you can't seem to search for a pattern after this. 

Depending what SH comes back with for the slow data rates, I may attempt to decode the raw data in LabVIEW.   Anyone else run into this?  Is  there a work around?

[joeqsmith]

I posted my suggestions about adding a more complex trigger.  Maybe with some luck we can get that in there.   When I asked about the slow BAUD rates using 2FSK, it sounds like this is a software limit.  Dumping the raw IQ data and looking at it with LabVIEW, it seems to all be there.  Oversampling like I was doing was one of their suggestions for using the demodulation as well.   I tried to collect a full packet by oversampling the data and using their copy to clip board.     It does seem to work but     Nice thing is that it looks like you can get the raw digital data this way rather than doing your own demodulation.   

What's funny is you can crank it up with a much more complex modulation than binary, sending a lot more data and it does pretty good.  But slow binary data, it falls apart.   

More I play with it, the more I like it.

[Bobaganoosh]

Does anyone here have experience with Aaronia products? I'm awfully tempted to spend a bit more vs the BB60C and have a poke around inside, but the relative lack of reviews makes me nervous.

I was wondering this same question, which led me to this forum as others have been wondering too. I just thought I'd share my experience here, hoping that the next person who looks will be able to start off where I left off. I thought the features they were touting over the BB60C would warrant the price difference and I found one for sale at a distributor for ~$4200 (less than the $5700 quote they gave me) so it was looking pretty doable.

I can't find any semblance of a review from people online (not posted to their website) that indicates people like their equipment or have had good luck. Apparently, the old V2 and V3 units were "kids toys" or "garbage" according to various sources I've found and those people generally indicated that the V4 specs looked considerably better and the software has improved drastically, but they are now afraid to purchase the new SA's. I couldn't find anybody who had actually purchased or tested a V5 8060 USB RTSA...I found one discussion on a WISP forum where one guy tried to convince everyone else that Aaronia doesn't lie on their specifications, while everyone else there tried to indicate that they must be lying because what they were claiming is not possible. I honestly don't know who was correct.

What I do know is this:
Aaroniausa.com indicates that they partner with Kalman Creations LLC as the only authorized US distributor.

The website says they no longer do demo units ("too many models available now"), they offer a 30 day return policy (for your money back, minus a 15% restocking fee, plus shipping, plus any repairs required (scratches, etc.)) and a 10 year warranty, but the warranty is only good if you buy it directly from them...there goes that $4200 quote I received...

So I emailed them for information and a quote and asked Kaltman if they do demos (before reading the cancelled demo policy on the website). He said yes, but I had to have an exec. at my company fill out this form (attached) that seems like a pretty ridiculous request. If there's so much as a scratch, we'll be billed to repair or replace the entire unit, if it's late, they'll charge us 10% the total price per month it's late. if it's not working when you receive it, but don't inform them within 4 days of receiving it that it is not working, you bought it.

I have demo'd oscilloscopes and analyzers much more expensive without signing anything.

Further, I have seen various posts online about their customer service being, to put it politely, lacking. The guys at dlsreports.com were particularly stern when warning against using products from these guys.

Long story short, I have now been entirely scared away from even getting a demo unit, let alone purchasing one. I have talked to and heard from many people about how great the BB60A, B and C are and what great experiences they have. I was thinking I'd get a little bit more from a more expensive unit, but I'm no longer convinced. I think there's a BB60C in my future.

[KE5FX]

I have no affiliation with either company, but I'd say go with Signal Hound if you need a spectrum analyzer, or Aaronia if you are in the market for an "electrosmog meter."

A company that's reluctant to lend demo units to credible prospective customers is a company that may have something to hide.  A company that sells woo to the tinfoil hat crowd has nothing worth hiding in the first place.

[bson]

Aaronia if you are in the market for an "electrosmog meter."

Wow, what?!  "Electrosmog"?  

[joeqsmith]

The website says they no longer do demo units ("too many models available now"), they offer a 30 day return policy (for your money back, minus a 15% restocking fee, plus shipping, plus any repairs required (scratches, etc.)) and a 10 year warranty, but the warranty is only good if you buy it directly from them...there goes that $4200 quote I received...

So I emailed them for information and a quote and asked Kaltman if they do demos (before reading the cancelled demo policy on the website). He said yes, but I had to have an exec. at my company fill out this form (attached) that seems like a pretty ridiculous request. If there's so much as a scratch, we'll be billed to repair or replace the entire unit, if it's late, they'll charge us 10% the total price per month it's late. if it's not working when you receive it, but don't inform them within 4 days of receiving it that it is not working, you bought it.

I have demo'd oscilloscopes and analyzers much more expensive without signing anything.

Long story short, I have now been entirely scared away from even getting a demo unit, let alone purchasing one. I have talked to and heard from many people about how great the BB60A, B and C are and what great experiences they have. I was thinking I'd get a little bit more from a more expensive unit, but I'm no longer convinced. I think there's a BB60C in my future.

If it's like the Signal Hound, I assume it was targeted towards hobbyist and why they don't offer demo units.  I can believe you would have a much easier time working for a large company and getting a trial on an $80,000 scope for a month than a hobbyist trying to get a demo on a low end analyzer.  They may not get a lot of requests from real companies and want to make sure they are legit.   Signal Hound was basically the same deal.  Buy it and return it with a restock fee.  There was some sort of time limit for the return but I was upfront about what I was doing with the unit and they told me that they would not hold me to the allotted time.   

Down side IMO of the BB60C,

Uses USB
No way to power down the unit except unplug it
Custom supplied cable is short and requires two ports
You are at the mercy of their development group to enhance their software which needs some work
Runs fairly hot and will drift with the temp but GPS to the rescue
Not a fan of the SMA on it but so far it's not been a problem
The requirements for the PC forced me to tack on the cost of a new PC as my old i7 laptop would not run it reliably.  Crashes and lockups are pretty rare with the new PC but they do still happen. 

Plus side,
It's affordable for the hobbyist wanting to play with a real time SA
Spec's are decent for the price
Hardware seems reliable
They offer a way to develop third party tools
You can save the raw IQ data for post processing
It takes up very little space 

If they offered to let me return it today for a full refund, including shipping,  no questions asked, I would say forget it. What I can do with it far outweigh the few problems I see with it. 

[joeqsmith]

Taking the plunge into the BB60C's API.  Anyone else on here writing custom software for it?   

So far, most of it seems fairly straight forward.

[KE5FX]

Taking the plunge into the BB60C's API.  Anyone else on here writing custom software for it?   

So far, most of it seems fairly straight forward.

I added support for their original SA44 model to SSM a couple of years ago.  Not sure if the API is backward-compatible, but if it is, SSM might work on the BB60C.

At the time their software was very clunky and didn't have its own spectrogram recording option.  But Spike is a lot nicer, and there's probably no upside in running SSM.

[rs20]

Taking the plunge into the BB60C's API.  Anyone else on here writing custom software for it?   

Yeah, I wrote some software that takes in IQ samples and from that displays the phase of a given input tone (obviously this requires the tone to come from a TG locked to the same reference*, or else the little frequency drift would produce garbage.)

Got it nicely displaying the phase shift caused by time-of-flight difference by moving antennae towards and away from each other, and fixed antenna bouncing signals off a moving reflector pot lid. It goes without saying that this is probably not the most impressive thing a BB60C has ever done!

Some really gross, not-at-all commented code is here.

I did this on a Linux box, and encountered an issue in that the TG code didn't work at all. Managed to decode most of the protocol, while the Signal Hound folks simultaneously kindly 'hinted' the protocol to me in a funny way, which I enjoyed:

I don’t know how long it will take us to get to TG-linux compatibility, but if one were to snoop the USB bus, one would see setting internal reference out sends: ‘R’, 0x02, 0xC0. One might recognize 0xC0 as serial line internet protocol from way back.
Then one might set amplitude to maximum and observe ‘A’, 0x00, 0xC0.
One might finish by snooping to see that outputting 10 Hz sends ‘F’, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0xC0. One might then try 2560 Hz and see ‘F’, 0x00, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0xC0.
One could then decide whether to wait for Signal Hound to implement Linux TG compatibility, or to forge on ahead.

The code link I gave earlier contains a basic (fixed freq CW only) standalone linux "driver" for the TG, based on the hints above.

I anticipate that the Windows drivers would work just fine on its own!

* And I actually had the TG output a 10 MHz ref, and got the BB60C to lock to that. Oddly, trying the reverse arrangement did not achieve a phase lock as far as the IQ stream was concerned.

[joeqsmith]

The range finder is really slick. Did you ever do a write up on it?

I just started to look at the API yesterday and so far the only real problem I ran across was with the bbGetDeviceType always returning a 0.  I've tried eleven other functions so far and they seem fine. 

[joeqsmith]

My BB60C in action. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1UtLpSZ2W0&feature=youtu.be

[3db]

My BB60C in action. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1UtLpSZ2W0&feature=youtu.be

Interesting video Joe.
Thanks for taking the time and effort to produce it .

3DB 

[bson]

Great video!
 

[joeqsmith]

Thanks! 

I may put together nice looking, more generic program for it.  First thing I want to do is get a new PCIe 3.1 USB board and see if that tames it.

[joeqsmith]

I bought a GIGABYTE GC-USB3.1 and it's been running with the extension cable and hub, not to mention I have a TV tuner on the hub that has been running non-stop as well.  It's too early to tell if it's improved. 

The one thing I noticed as soon as I installed the board and drivers is that Microsoft's USBVIEW program will no longer run.  It starts and closes.  Strange, will check into that later.


UPDATE

Downloaded the latest SDK for Windows 10 and the USBVIEW is running again.

[joeqsmith]

15 days and a lot of hours on the SH using this new card and not a single hiccup so far.   It's been long enough to say the card has made a difference.   

[joeqsmith]

I had switched  over to a different PCIe USB 3.0 card last weekend and have been using the SH daily.  Still not so much as a single problem.  It's really looking like the Dell's USB ports are just not up to snuff.   They work fine with the 2.0 peripherals.   

I have started to look at the LabVIEW communications library.  There are some things I don't like in general. Debug is off for example.  Nothing major. 

First picture showing the SH sniffing the CEM meter which was attached to the function generator.  I went through all of the decoding for that meter and there does not appear to be a way to detect when it is in AC+DC mode.  Other than that, looks like they support everything.

Second showing the raw IQ data.  You can see the 2FSK and below is using the comm lib to FM demodulate the signal.   I was doing this with my own code but this is pretty nice.  Certainly fast enough.   The spectral and eye diagrams are also in this library along with a lot of other features.   

[D3f1ant]

Does any body have a recommendation for a shipping/purchasing company in the USA that can export one of these? Shipitto will do it but their commission is a bit high (ends up around 12% Trying to avoid the rediculous markup the Au dealer puts on it.

[rs20]

I don't have any immediately helpful advice as I was fortuitously on holiday in the USA when I picked mine up. But I will point out that even with a US address to deliver the device to, they wouldn't accept a credit card with an AU billing address, so I had the wire the money instead (old school)! So just be prepared for that minor bother.

Also, be aware of import duty. I was fully prepared to pay it when I entered Australia with the thing in my bag, but the guy asked if I was ever going to sell it and when I said "no", he waived the duty. Not sure if that's actually correct, but the mail people don't tend to be so lenient.

I'll edit this post soon, I have a friend who had a US remailer that is far  cheaper than that and reliable as far as past experience is concerned.