Author Topic: NanoVNA Custom Software (Read 496702 times)

joeqsmith · « **Reply #750 on:** November 27, 2020, 04:51:53 pm »

I ran a few more tests trying to sort out why my software can get only the V2+ to hang. First, I would never expect firmware to get into a state where it would require a power cycle to recover. I have no desire to have to unplug my appliances or countless other embedded devices. But it seems like there is something that I am doing that causes it, at least with this PC.

If you have a V2+ (not the +4), and know a bit about Labview, I have attached a simple program that sets the Nano to sweep from 1-900MHz, 800 points, 1 sample per point. It then just reads data from it until you press Stop. It may need to run for several hours as I've seen the V2+ run anywhere from 15 minutes to 5 hours before it locks up. Once it locks up, there is nothing I can do to recover outside of power cycling the Nano.

I have also built the program as an EXE. These are created with 2011 so if you wanted to run the EXE you would need the 2011 runtime. If you use something other than COM4, just stop the app, select the port and run it. You should see roughly 3.8 seconds per frame.

joeqsmith · « **Reply #751 on:** November 27, 2020, 09:22:52 pm »

I had ran it one last time for over three hours with my software and the V2+ did not hang.

It makes no sense that their software wouldn't cause the problem but maybe it has something to do with them plotting the data real time and it just slows it down enough.

I changed that test code to try to force the fault. You can play around with more data, and throttle it. The Nano will stop sending data but it seems I can always get it to recover. Maybe it has to sit in this mode for a long time before it hangs.

Back to testing with their software. Note the 98MHz glitch I saw with my software. Totally random.

joeqsmith · « **Reply #752 on:** November 28, 2020, 03:23:32 am »

I think I may have stumbled onto a way to recover from the lockup. If you run that last program, bump the elements to 2, it should lock. Most likely it will recover just by starting and stopping the Labview software. When I see the V2+ lock, resetting Labview has no effect. I have have had this program cause it to lock this way as well by doing what I describe.

I mentioned earlier that the port appears to still be open. Requesting a read from the FIFO with the number of elements set to zero will recover from a soft lockup. Seems very easy to replicate.

Imagine telling someone driving down the highway that they need to pull off to the side of the road and disconnect their battery terminal to reset the ECM fault.

I've added this simple change to the main program and will let it run overnight. With any luck it may be a work around.

joeqsmith · « **Reply #753 on:** November 28, 2020, 05:23:11 am »

That was a bust. The V2+ still locked up as before and the 0 element trick didn't help. The last thing I thought to try was removing the Cypress drivers and going back to the original Microsoft driver. This is version 10.0.18362.1.

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The MS driver made no difference. Another possible clue, when looking at the sweep time plot, it never misses a beat. Also, looking at the data over these long runs, it appears stable. There are no signs of a problem until the V2+ locks up.

joeqsmith · « **Reply #754 on:** November 30, 2020, 04:52:10 am »

Trying a 25 point sweep overnight to see if the V2+ will lock. It's always hung with larger sets but I just want to make sure. I basically let the Nano throttle the speed, so Labview is asking for data as fast as what the Nano can supply it. I've tried slowing down the requests before but it didn't seem to make a difference. The +4 continues to be a rock star and has never locked and it can stream the data about 2X faster.

Video clip showing it running.

joeqsmith · « **Reply #755 on:** November 30, 2020, 02:04:09 pm »

After 4.6 hours, it also locked up with the smaller data sets and required the V2+ be power cycled.

At least we now know it has nothing to do with the number of data points. Interesting is that I have been using the V2+ for the last few days and didn't have a single lockup. The difference is I was making short tests. Maybe 10 minutes long at the most.

joeqsmith · « **Reply #756 on:** December 03, 2020, 12:48:38 pm »

After a full day of extended testing on the V2+4, it didn't lockup like the V2+. I think the longest I have seen the V2+ run was maybe 6 hours.

Looking in the area of 80 to 140MHz on the V2+4, there are two spurs rather than the one seen with the V2+. The frequency is a little off between the two VNAs. More interesting is the V2+ spur would show up at random times, the spurs seen with the V2+4 are always present. As with the V2+, it doesn't appear to be a local source.

*****
The V2+4 has now been running for almost 35 hours non stop. My software treats both VNAs the same.

Looks like a few people downloaded the test program but with no responses, I assume no one else was able to replicate the lockup. It could be that I received a bad unit. This came right from the main supplier which I understood was the only way to make sure you were getting a quality product. I'll take it apart and see if there looks like any problems with their soldering.

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The soldering seems fine so while it was apart, I connected only the control board to the PC (no LCD). It's been running about 4 hours now. I'll let it run overnight and see if this tells us anything.

joeqsmith · « **Reply #757 on:** December 04, 2020, 02:07:26 pm »

Running it without the display made no difference.

One difference is that I am still running the V2+4 with a battery installed. So I installed this LG battery from an old cell phone. A bit of Kapton tape and some memory foam to hold things in place. Doubt this would have anything to do with it locking up but if the designers decide to try and correct it, may as well provide as much data as possible.

joeqsmith · « **Reply #758 on:** December 04, 2020, 10:40:36 pm »

Not surprising, adding the battery pack had no effect on my V2+ lockup problem.

joeqsmith · « **Reply #759 on:** December 05, 2020, 10:11:37 pm »

Made some progress on a manual. I know it's a total shit show but feel free to suggest additions, changes and what not.

https://github.com/joeqsmith

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New draft, needs a lot of work..

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Added TDR section plus a few others.

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Added Interpolation

joeqsmith · « **Reply #760 on:** December 12, 2020, 12:42:18 am »

I have gone ahead and wrote some test software to support the offset loss.

joeqsmith · « **Reply #761 on:** January 18, 2021, 08:50:50 pm »

Working on my review of the new 4GHz NanoVNA V2 Plus 4.

Grandchuck · « **Reply #762 on:** January 18, 2021, 09:43:10 pm »

Oh, how often that has happened to me!

joeqsmith · « **Reply #763 on:** January 20, 2021, 04:02:28 am »

If I needed a set of cables, at $60 I would most likely just purchase a second V2+. I could then check if the lockup problem is unique to mine. Plus I don't mind supporting their efforts.

joeqsmith · « **Reply #764 on:** January 20, 2021, 01:20:02 pm »

For the review, I plan to focus on the V2+4 due to the problems with the V2+. I'll run the same circuits used with the original Nano plus a few others. I then plan to run a few experiments with it.

If you have any suggestions on what you would like to see, feel free to ask.

joeqsmith · « **Reply #765 on:** January 22, 2021, 02:54:55 am »

Updates to the manual reflect the revision of software used for my upcoming review.

https://github.com/joeqsmith/NanoVNA_V2Plus

joeqsmith · « **Reply #766 on:** January 23, 2021, 04:08:41 am »

Review of the new NanoVNA V2 Plus 4

KE5FX · « **Reply #767 on:** January 23, 2021, 08:20:13 am »

Looks like a great contribution, Joe -- especially nice to see the automated crystal measurement functionality. Shame about the artifacts you were seeing in narrow spans. I wonder if slowing down the sweep would help with those?

How exactly is the software installed? Looks like there are 18 files with .zip.xx suffixes...?

Belgarath · « **Reply #768 on:** January 23, 2021, 05:33:01 pm »

Hi Joe,

Thanks very much for the exhaustive review, nice to hear about real world measurements.

I just downloaded and installed your software. I will play with it in the next days.

I use a V2+4, I bought a couple weeks ago to play with. About the narrow band measurement, I was having problems for the past week trying to draw a crystal filter using the vna_qt software.

Using the NanoVNAv2+4 in stand alone mode brought some light when used with the averaging (cf. attached pictures). Indeed measurements have been made with fresh SOLT calibration. The filter is a Yaesu 455k 500Hz.

Could this behaviour be caused by clock jittering within the nano ? If so, the various software might benefit to implement the averaging parameter.

Best Regards, 73's

François / F4HTX

update 1 : Added the same measurement with joeqsmith software (450 to 460kHz / 1024pts)

joeqsmith · « **Reply #769 on:** January 30, 2021, 04:09:43 pm »

Someone had pointed out that VISA was missing from the installer. I have rebuilt the installer to include it. No changes were made to the NanoVNA software.

joeqsmith · « **Reply #770 on:** February 07, 2021, 06:01:10 pm »

A few people have asked me about the software missing. It was moved to released.

KE5FX · « **Reply #771 on:** February 07, 2021, 06:43:42 pm »

Quote from: joeqsmith on February 07, 2021, 06:01:10 pm

A few people have asked me about the software missing. It was moved to released.

Gotta say, I still have no idea what to do with 21 .zip files. How about a standardized installation procedure?

joeqsmith · « **Reply #772 on:** February 08, 2021, 04:23:21 am »

It's just a spanned zip file to get around Github's file size limitation.

https://sourceforge.net/p/sevenzip/discussion/45798/thread/9cefe2c2/

Adiy · « **Reply #773 on:** February 26, 2021, 02:02:53 pm »

The program seems to be a great tool for NanoVNA

and I am able to run V2+ with the LabVIEW code without any hardware issue as of now.
I want to perform S11 sweeps continuously and store the files therefore I want to know the following:
1. How can I change the frequency sweep?
2. How can I can get the real and imaginary parts of the data? I use the USB sniffer software (device monitoring studio) to monitor the port (COM 3 in my case) but still unable to decrypt from the long strings of data (up and down)
3. In the program there are some hex numbers passed to the serial port like 2300 4042 0F00 0000 0000, what is the reason of this arrangement? is there any command list documentation available?

A reply would be really appreciated.

Best Regards
Adiy

joeqsmith · « **Reply #774 on:** February 26, 2021, 05:56:26 pm »

Quote from: Adiy on February 26, 2021, 02:02:53 pm

The program seems to be a great tool for NanoVNA and I am able to run V2+ with the LabVIEW code without any hardware issue as of now.
I want to perform S11 sweeps continuously and store the files therefore I want to know the following:
1. How can I change the frequency sweep?
2. How can I can get the real and imaginary parts of the data? I use the USB sniffer software (device monitoring studio) to monitor the port (COM 3 in my case) but still unable to decrypt from the long strings of data (up and down)
3. In the program there are some hex numbers passed to the serial port like 2300 4042 0F00 0000 0000, what is the reason of this arrangement? is there any command list documentation available?

A reply would be really appreciated.

Best Regards
Adiy

I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear about problems with that software. It's really an engineering tool that I put together to evaluate the Nano.

It sounds like you haven't actually taken the time to read the manual or even watch the video as both certainly cover your first question. I suggest you start there.

I don't understand what you are asking with your second question. Combined with your third question, it sounds like you would like to write your own software. The best thing to do may be do download the open source code and start there. There are also several groups for the various versions of the Nano that you may want to consider joining. If that's your end goal, I would not waste your time with the manual or video as I don't go into any details about the protocol or any of the math behind it.

Yes, the designer's of the V2+ made a command document available that everyone may freely download from their site.


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Author Topic: NanoVNA Custom Software (Read 496702 times)

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