Folks
Production FCDs thus far have all been shipped with firmware release 18b. This has been through months of proving both before and after production release.
This firmware has been in existence since October 2010, and there have been four firmware releases since then, all of which are designed to be backwards compatible.
This means that should you decide to install the latest, 18f, firmware, it should not break anything you were doing already on an earlier version of firmware, and if it does, let me know!
The newer firmware updates have been made available to provide a much more comprehensive API for third party deveopers, so you will quite likely find that there will be prerequisites from host software for certain firmware versions.
Installing new firmware should only take a minute or so, and as well as updated firmware there’s also a guide in the downlaod section.
Howard
Howard,
Of course now you have so much spare time on your hands – do you think we might try to get to the bottom of why RSSI is currently returning zero?
Mike
With a bit of luck I’ll get chance this weekend. Just spent the entire day from 06:15 until 17:30 respinning the PCB with the HPF rework and a couple of minor mods. Just to squeeze half a dozen parts on! (In fact I got rid of two as well). Laying out PCBs is not my favourite job.
Howard
Hi Howard,
When do you think you will have the new PCB layout in production? Thanks.
Hello Mike
No firm date yet, I need to make a few first. I hope to have them ready for the next production run though.
Howard
Hi Howard
I’ve been seeing mention of an RSSI output that is not working. Does this mean that there should be a digitised RSSI signal available through the USB/PIC i/f, or is there a hardware mod. needed? This would obviously be a great bonus for those of us that want to use the FCD for radio-astronomy applications and related.
Tony
Hi Tony
There is an IF RSSI supplied by the tuner. It is designed to be used for LNA AGC. But be aware this is the RSSI of the tuner’s entire IF bandwidth of several MHz, not just the 96kHz of the FCD.
Anyway, I have provided an API for it but it doesn’t seem to work as intended. I had a look a week or so ago but there was nothing obvious, so I need to open the firmware up again to fix it. It is most probably the way I am assuming/expecting the tuner chip to work, and should not be a hardware mod.
Howard