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>
