[time-nuts] Lady Heather and Lucent RFTGm-II-XO / RFTGm-II-Rb

[Mark Sims]

If you can build the source code I can send you the latest version.   Linux is 
easy to do.  Not many people seem to be able to handle the Windows build but if 
you are familiar with Visual Studio (particularly command line builds) it is 
easy.   Contact me off list for the code.

I have figured out how to get the antenna current.   It reports two antenna 
voltages which are the readings each side of a 100 ohm series resistor...  
voila... current!   BTW, antenna short circuit current is around 300 mA.


-

> Have you built a special version of LH to work with the RFTGm’s?  If so, is 
> it possible to get a copy?
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Re: [time-nuts] Lady Heather and Lucent RFTGm-II-XO / RFTGm-II-Rb

[Rodger Adams via time-nuts]

Mark,

Have you built a special version of LH to work with the RFTGm’s?  If so, is it 
possible to get a copy?

Thanks,

Rodger


> On May 28, 2017, at 2:15 AM, Mark Sims  wrote:
> 
> I have Lady Heather working fairly well with the RFTGm's.I used a serial 
> port monitor program to capture the traffic in and out of the serial port and 
> used the Lucent control program to set and read various parameters.  By 
> analyzing the captured traffic and comparing the results to what the Lucent 
> program was reporting / sending I worked out the protocol and message formats.
> 
> The one message that I have problems with is the one that reports the EFC DAC 
> voltage and temperature.  The message appears to be reporting the DAC value 
> and temperature as a 16 bit integer.   Scaling that to actual values could be 
> a problem.  The DAC is not that big a deal... I scale it to a 0-100% value... 
> no real need to be concerned with the actual voltage.  The temperature value 
> will require a lot of work.  It has an 8 bit granularity and seldom changes 
> more than one step.
> 
> One annoying thing about the RFTGm's is that they don't report satellite 
> positions (just signal levels)... so no nice antenna survey maps are possible.
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Re: [time-nuts] Lady Heather and Lucent RFTGm-II-XO / RFTGm-II-Rb

[Tom Van Baak]

Mark,

> One annoying thing about the RFTGm's is that they don't report satellite 
> positions (just signal levels)...
> so no nice antenna survey maps are possible.

Well, yes and no. It is true that signal levels can only be *measured*. And 
you've got that. No problem.

Now, realize that satellite positions are only ever *calculated* by a GPS 
receiver, not actually measured. So it's quite easy to generate satellite maps 
with or without a working GPS receiver. I mean, each and every GPS SV 
is-where-it-is-right-now regardless if you exist or not, if you've got a 
receiver or not, if your receiver outputs positions or not. Make sense?

So all you need is:
- a copy of a recent constellation almanac or ephemeris (on the 'net, or from 
quality GPS receivers, especially in binary mode),
- the approximate UTC date/time,
- your approximate location,
- a handful of wonderful orbital mechanics equations, which you can look up in 
any GPS textbook or online tutorial.

If you want to see an example of this, fire up Trimble Planning.exe, which is 
part of the free TBolt s/w suite (along with TBoltMon.exe, etc.). Again, 
remember that the whole point of GPS is that the precise location of each SV 
must be knowable by the CPU; not measured with a telescope or directional 
antenna or something. So it's quite easy to create maps for any and all known 
satellites once you look-up the orbit parameters. There are apps / programs / 
web sites that do this. NASA used to have the wonderful JTrack3D. Instead check 
out http://www.heavens-above.com/ for info.

For extra credit... The joke is that LH has a feature which "hides" the user's 
lat/lon. Privacy? Nope, LH still reports precise UTC date, time, PRN, Az, El, 
and Doppler! So it's not rocket science (well, it is in a way) to solve that 
nice set of precise and overdetermined numbers on the screen to obtain a good 
guess at the redacted position. Oops.

/tvb

- Original Message - 
From: "Mark Sims" <hol...@hotmail.com>
To: <time-nuts@febo.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 27, 2017 11:15 PM
Subject: [time-nuts] Lady Heather and Lucent RFTGm-II-XO / RFTGm-II-Rb


>I have Lady Heather working fairly well with the RFTGm's.I used a serial 
>port monitor program to capture the traffic in and out of the serial port and 
>used the Lucent control program to set and read various parameters.  By 
>analyzing the captured traffic and comparing the results to what the Lucent 
>program was reporting / sending I worked out the protocol and message formats.
> 
> The one message that I have problems with is the one that reports the EFC DAC 
> voltage and temperature.  The message appears to be reporting the DAC value 
> and temperature as a 16 bit integer.   Scaling that to actual values could be 
> a problem.  The DAC is not that big a deal... I scale it to a 0-100% value... 
> no real need to be concerned with the actual voltage.  The temperature value 
> will require a lot of work.  It has an 8 bit granularity and seldom changes 
> more than one step.
> 
> One annoying thing about the RFTGm's is that they don't report satellite 
> positions (just signal levels)... so no nice antenna survey maps are possible.


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[time-nuts] Lady Heather and Lucent RFTGm-II-XO / RFTGm-II-Rb

[Mark Sims]

I have Lady Heather working fairly well with the RFTGm's.I used a serial 
port monitor program to capture the traffic in and out of the serial port and 
used the Lucent control program to set and read various parameters.  By 
analyzing the captured traffic and comparing the results to what the Lucent 
program was reporting / sending I worked out the protocol and message formats.

The one message that I have problems with is the one that reports the EFC DAC 
voltage and temperature.  The message appears to be reporting the DAC value and 
temperature as a 16 bit integer.   Scaling that to actual values could be a 
problem.  The DAC is not that big a deal... I scale it to a 0-100% value... no 
real need to be concerned with the actual voltage.  The temperature value will 
require a lot of work.  It has an 8 bit granularity and seldom changes more 
than one step.

One annoying thing about the RFTGm's is that they don't report satellite 
positions (just signal levels)... so no nice antenna survey maps are possible.
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Re: [time-nuts] Lady Heather and Lucent RFTGm-II-XO / RFTGm-II-Rb

[Bill Hawkins]

Been there and done that. Used a PicoScope in serial decoding mode to
get the bytes by clipping a probe to one of the serial lines. Got the
manual for the Motorola receiver from a web search, found the messages
detailed therein. Did this several years ago and those memories have
been overwritten. Still have the files, though. Only found Motorola
messages, nothing generated by Lucent code. Lucent uses the Motorola
messages to control the state of the units.

Still have the RFTG assembly with power supply, if there's any interest.
Seemed to me the group didn't think it was a fine instrument, but it is
well built. Have moved to an old folks home and found other projects to
keep me occupied. Make me an offer that might motivate me to pack and
ship it, with the data I collected.

Bill Hawkins


-Original Message-
From: time-nuts [mailto:time-nuts-boun...@febo.com] On Behalf Of Mark
Sims
Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2017 5:53 PM

I have my RFTG connected and have the Lucent software talking to it.  I
also have a (crappy) serial port monitor program (Microsoft portmon)
running and sniffing the traffic.   It appears that the control requests
and responses are in what amounts to TSIP format.   No idea yet what the
contents of those messages are... or how much of it can be figured
out...

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[time-nuts] Lady Heather and Lucent RFTGm-II-XO / RFTGm-II-Rb

[Mark Sims]

I have my RFTG connected and have the Lucent software talking to it.  I also 
have a (crappy) serial port monitor program (Microsoft portmon) running and 
sniffing the traffic.   It appears that the control requests and responses are 
in what amounts to TSIP format.   No idea yet what the contents of those 
messages are... or how much of it can be figured out...
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Re: [time-nuts] Lady Heather and Lucent RFTGm-II-XO / RFTGm-II-Rb

[Rodger Adams via time-nuts]

> Hey Mark,
>  
> Thanks for the reply.  
>  
> It was relatively straightforward getting the Lucent RFTG software to work.  
> No special cable or PCMCIA card was needed.  Here’s what I’ve learned in the 
> few days that I’ve had my modules. 
>  
> First, the RFTG software runs under Windows XP with no problem.  I gave up on 
> trying with Windows 10 and compatibility modes.  I downloaded virtualbox 
> (free) which lets me run a Windows XP virtual machine on Windows 10.  (you’ll 
> still need to have an XP install disk)   I gave the VM just enough memory and 
> disk space for it to run RFTG so it runs without wasting a lot of resources 
> on the host, Windows 10 pc.
>  
> For the physical interface I use standard, cheap RS-232 to USB serial 
> adapters.  Virtualbox allows you to select which USB devices get passed 
> through from the host to the XP VM so I simply pass the serial port usb 
> device through to the VM and run the USB serial port drivers in the XP VM.  
>  
> Now that I have a working XP PC with a serial port the rest is easy.  The 
> RS-232 port can be connected to the RS-422/485 port with a simple 3 wire 
> connection, as follows.  On the RS-232 interface, connect pins 2,3 and 5 to 
> pins 9,8, and 7 (in that order) of the RS-422 port on the RFTGm-II-XO module. 
>  This is the port on the far right end of the XO module that is labeled 
> RS-422/1 PPS.  As soon as I made this connection, I was able to see serial 
> data flowing from the module at 9600N81 using a terminal program.  After 
> running RFTG.exe and selecting the right serial port, RFTG came to life 
> showing the GPS status, etc.   By moving the RS-232 interface over to the 
> RS-422 port on the Rb module, (same pin configuration) you can monitor the 
> status of the Rb module instead. 
>  
> The RFTG software is designed to use 2 serial ports, 1 for the XO and 1 for 
> the Rb.  I think this is where the Lucent proprietary “Y” cable comes into 
> play.  Although I haven’t proven this yet, I believe that the 2 RS-422 
> connections (1 from the XO and 1 from the Rb) are simply combined in the 
> module on the upper left side of the frame. (above the Rb module, connectors 
> labeled J7 through J11)  I’m guessing that the Lucent “Y” cable plugs into 
> J7, J8 or J9 and splits the “combined” RS-422 signals back into 2 separate 
> RS-422 ports.  I have some USB to RS-422 ports (although I could just use 
> RS-232 ports)  and some DB-15 connectors on order.  As soon as I prove this 
> to be the case, I’ll post the cable schematic here.  Once I have this working 
> it will allow for monitoring and control of both the XO and the Rb 
> simultaneously using RFTG.exe. (right now, I can only look at either one at a 
> time)
>  
> If I can help you in any way with getting this set up for Lady Heather please 
> let me know.  I’m not a programmer, but will be glad to capture data, test, 
> or assist in any way I can.
>  
> Thanks,
>  
> Rodger


> On May 23, 2017, at 1:43 PM, Mark Sims  wrote:
> 
> I also got one in.   Unfortunately it talks some proprietary, undocumented 
> command set.   I was hoping to be able to sniff what the Lucent code is doing 
> and eventually add support to Lady Heather.
> 
> How did you connect up to the device to use the Lucent code?  The 
> documentation talks about using some PCMCIA RS-485 card and seems to use a 
> "Y" cable that has a toggle switch that switches between the two boxes... 
> that cable is undocumented.
> 
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[time-nuts] Lady Heather and Lucent RFTGm-II-XO / RFTGm-II-Rb

[Mark Sims]

I also got one in.   Unfortunately it talks some proprietary, undocumented 
command set.   I was hoping to be able to sniff what the Lucent code is doing 
and eventually add support to Lady Heather.

How did you connect up to the device to use the Lucent code?  The documentation 
talks about using some PCMCIA RS-485 card and seems to use a "Y" cable that has 
a toggle switch that switches between the two boxes... that cable is 
undocumented.

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[time-nuts] Lady Heather and Lucent RFTGm-II-XO / RFTGm-II-Rb

[Rodger Adams via time-nuts]

Hi,

Newbie time-nut here.  Just acquired a Lucent RFTGm-II-XO / RFTGm-II-Rb 
GPSDO/rubidium oscillator and have it working and communicating with the very 
old RFTG diagnostic software.  

Does Lady Heather work with this GPSDO?  I see from the LH documentation that 
it works with the Lucent KS24361 REF0/Z3811A.  I’ve tried various command line 
switches, etc. but so far, no luck.

Any guidance will be appreciated.

Thanks,

Rodger, WB4HIR

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