Ryde in Gb3EY faulty?

[G3GJA]

I'm hoping that Tim or Dave are looking!

GB3EY has developed a fault on receive. It uses the composite video out option on the Ryde.

I've run the diags on the Ryde with no signal on the input and then switched my Tx on; the diags are here:

Ryde diags.zip

(2.27 KiB) Downloaded 235 times

At line 1400 the Ryde appears to be picking up my signal which is a 333kS/s 9/10FEC. I normally put a -42dBm signal in with 24dB MER.

Although picking up my signal the repeater does not switch to talk-through mode. That could be a problem with the Ryde not outputting the locked signal or the repeaters logic not acting on the locked signal.

Can someone quickly go over the diags and see if the Ryde is working as it should as I don't know what to expect? If so I can then look at the locked signal that's fed to the logic.

TIA

Clive

[G8GKQ]

Clive

Have you run a recent software update on the Ryde? Or did it just change behaviour of its own accord?

It appears to be receiving OK, just not displaying in VLC and so not triggering the talk-through.

Dave

[G3GJA]

Hi Dave

There's been no software update as it was running on the February 2022 release, although I have updated late last night since your note to say that the build is now fixed, just in case a refresh of the software could help. I'll try it this afternoon.

The fault has shown occasionally on start-up but it seems that the cold weather has made it worse, but that could be a coincidence. A reboot of the Ryde usually fixes it.

If the fault shows today, can you tell me what to look for if I run the top command in the console?

Your reply implies that VLC needs to be running to toggle the lock output on the GPIO. Is that the case?

I'm trying to fault find remotely as I really don't want to go up to the site until it warms up a bit. You can see why; it's -5C up there!

EYRG Cave Wold.jpg (514.8 KiB) Viewed 6558 times

Clive

[G8GKQ]

Hi Clive

I've just had another look at the code, and the Ryde needs to be locked for the GPIO to indicate a valid signal. I was mistaken about VLC. Looking at the diagnostics that you sent, it was locking, so my gut feeling is that it might be a hardware fault. Especially if it seems to be brought on by the cold weather. Sorry!

You can remotely monitor the GPIO state by running the command

Code: Select all

gpio read 7

This will return 1 for locked and 0 for unlocked.

I think that the HD picture freezes are a separate fault/limitation. We use software video decoding in Ryde because hardware video decoding does not like (or even display) SR Systems-encoded video (such as the QO-100 beacon). When Ryde was designed and tested there were very few full HD transmissions, and so the CPU limitation of Full HD video decoding and downscaling to 576x768 (for Comp Vid) was not apparent. I think that we are running up against the limitations of the Raspberry Pi hardware capabilities with some input signals.

The best command to look at what is going on is "htop", then press F5. This will give you a tree view of the processes and their sub-processes, and also show the usage of each of the 4 CPU cores. So you can see how much resource VLC is using. I use this all the time in testing.

Dave, G8GKQ

[G3GJA]

Hi Dave

I should have kept quiet about this issue when replying to the hardware decode thread; although it was OK all day yesterday, when EY came on at 3pm today the Ryde is not responding.

The command gpio read 7 returns a 0 with a valid signal on the input. I've cobbled together another Ryde that is monitoring the same signal and that is working and returning a 1 to the command.

Looking at the threads running on both using htop, shows that the overall CPU usage is much lower on the repeater. Presumably, there will be some difference because the repeater is using AV out and the lash-up is using HDMI.

Clive G3GJA

[G8GKQ]

Hi Clive

Not sure about the CPU usage issues.

As for the GPIO line, there are 2 possibilities. Either the software isn't setting it high, or it is shorted to ground. The command reads the actual pin state, not the commanded state.

Are you able to look at the output video from the repeater Ryde by manually switching to it? Then we would know if it is displaying a valid signal but not setting the GPIO high.

Dave

[G3GJA]

Hi Dave

I couldn't get it to work yesterday despite powering down and rebooting. Today it's working fine after being left in sub-zero temperatures overnight.

No point in going to the site unless the fault is showing. Aaaagh!! Just as I write this it is starting to go off intermittently.

Is it possible to look at the data stream coming in on the USB? Perhaps it will go off and stay off if i leave it running for a bit.

Clive

[G3GJA]

CPU usage for the python3 -m rydeplayer thread tree is dropping from around 60% to 35 % when the receiver stops working. Can't see that being a short on the GPIO line.

Clive

[G3GJA]

Hi Dave

I went to the site yesterday and cobbled a Minitioune into the Ryde, replacing the original. Hopefully it will narrow down the issue to either the tuner or the Pi.

So far, there's been no sign of the fault, so possibly a tuner fault. Not sticking my neck out any further as I've already been caught by this one.

What I did notice was that with a consistent input signal, the output pictures from the repeater switched between the rolling text screens shown during idle and the relayed video without triggering the splash screen at the bottom announcing the encoder type, callsign and PIDs.

Wait and see time.

Clive

[Philippe]

Hello
I built Ryde
For me the gpio read 7 command sends 0 normal or not? what should be done to get a return to 1?
On my side I have the sound but no image??
Can someone tell me what's going on?
The Knucker works well in DVB-T I receive the images on the portsdown!
Thank you for your answers
73 Philippe F5AOD