Maestro anomalies

Rick Hadley - W0FG

Got my Maestro about 5 PM last night and have been trying out as many things as I can.  I've discovered a couple of anomalies...I hesitate to call them problems, unless they repeat themselves.  One incident last night was a bit strange.  I'd been jumping around band to band, and when I brought up 10SSB, the waterfall was too bright so I touched "Display" to get to the settings and nothing happened.  I had to reboot the Maestro to get it back.  Another strange happening was this.  I was operating from the living room over WiFi on 30m CW.  I called a station and started a QSO when suddenly the rig went into a straight key-down condition and I had to hit a few things to get it to stop.  Once it did, it would no longer transmit CW...sidetone was there, but no RF output.  SSB on a different band seemed to be OK.  I wound up having to go to the main shack and discovered even with SSDR running, instead of the Maestro, I had no CW transmit.  Had to reboot the 6500 and then everything came back to normal.  One other CW anomaly...the sidetone level is way too high.  I have to back it down to 2 or 3 to avoid being blasted out of my chair.

The next item is more of a question than a problem.  It appears that there is no way to select a 2nd IQ stream for the 2nd panadaptor.  I was hoping to be able to run two instances of CW Skimmer while using the Maestro, now that I have some free screen space, but DAX on the shack computer doesn't recognize the existence of a 2nd pan on the Maestro.  Am I missing something, or is that just the way it works?

Rick, W0FG

Mack

Rick,

Several of the Alpha team, including me, have seen the problem with not being able to sometimes select the display button. This is a bug the team is working to isolate how to replicate. The fix for now is to reboot the Maestro.

We've not seen the CW issue but I'll test more here. 

There is no provision to select a second DAX IQ channel with the second panadapter on the Maestro.

Enjoy the new toy, I rarely boot SmartSDR on my PC any longer. The Maestro is great!

Vy 73,

Mack
W4AX
Alpha Team

Mike va3mw

Rick Are you on 2Ghz wifi or 5ghz Wifi? We have found that 2Ghz wifi does not handle streaming very well in some cases, me included. I did a big writeup on it about 2 weeks back showing all my test data. You can search for the details. The <DISPLAY bug is known and reported. I seem to find it the most, but then i change the FPS values alot since I do nothing but remote operating. Mike va3mw Alpha Team

Rick Hadley - W0FG

Thanks, Mack & Mike.  I'm running 5ghz to the Maestro, generally with full green bars, with an occasional fall-off to 1-3 bars for just a few seconds.  Too bad about the lack of a 2nd IQ stream, as that will limit it's usefulness here in the main shack in contest-type activity where I need data coming from both pans.  Here's a suggestion.  Until we get the capability to have both GUIs in simultaneous use, could there be a patch that lets SSDR assert control when started, even if the Maestro is powered up.  That way I could be running remote and if something hot pops up, just run down to the shack and start SSDR without powering down the Maestro.

Mike va3mw

Rick, the fastest way to take the Maestro offline is to go into Menu/Network then touch the Wifi button. That will disconnect it from the network. See if that makes things quicker. Or, press the Wifi quality icon on the top. Next time you seem to have a network congestion issue, have a look and see if you are dropping any packets. Again that is on the Network screen. Glad to see you've made the move to 5Ghz. 73

Rick Hadley - W0FG

Going to the Network menu works, but I get no response when I tap the WiFi quality icon.  Somewhat related...I have a battery installed but am normally running on AC power.  Every once in a while the battery icon blinks.  What's that saying?