Flex Lockup on 1.10.16

Norm - W7CK

As much as I love my 6700, I have to agree with Rick.  My intention was to operate remotely.  The only way I've been able to do this is with the addition of special TCP switches to power cycle the rig which no longer works because when the rig freezes up, I can no longer cycle via the connector on the back of the rig.  Since I run my entire station on solar, I now I have to buy yet another device (TCP/DC power switch) which should enable me to turn off the DC power to the 6700 and then turn it back on.

This has been such a problem, I no longer use my 6700 remotely.  I use my old IC-7100 which has never failed me via remote operation.  It doesn't have a scope, but all of the functions of the radio work flawlessly during remote operation.

While Flex has said it is a Software company, I believe they need to focus their attention to some of the problems and shortcomings that are expected to work flawlessly from any modern transceiver.    

Things I'd like to see focused on:

• Switching between HF and 2m often messes up all of the panadapters.  Workaround has been suggested but it is a bit of a kludge.
  
• FM Squelch is terrible. Constantly squawking for no apparent reason.
• No RF gain on FM
  
• All mode squelch has never been implemented.  This makes using more than a couple panadapters at one time pretty much useless.
  
• GUI needs work.  Some areas are hard to read due to color, waterfall size/location isn't saved very well in profiles.  When trying to adjust, it sometimes jumps around and is hard to set
• Noise mitigation causes a lot of distortion (I don't have much noise so don't need to use it but others do).
• Having to have an external device to turn on/off the rig is usually for emergency shut down. I have to have 2 of these devices.  One for the connector on the back of the rig, a second one for the 12v power going to the rig when the built in relay fails to work due to rig locking up.  Now I have a bunch of wires and external boxes all over the place just to ensure the rig can be cycled.
  
• DAX often messes up and I have to shut it down and recycle it and or the rig.  I've had numerous times when on digital modes, I've lost DAX control and it takes a few minutes to get it all recycled and working again.  This is better than it was in the past, but it still seems to be an issue.
• VOX seems to occasionally stop working
• What happend to Wave forms

While I LOVE my 6700, I feel 4 years is a bit long waiting for some of the basic functions provided by most modern rigs.  It seems a bit long for some of the other functions and features talked about when the 6700 was first introduced.  If I new it was going to be this long to see some of these features, I may have wanted to purchase a much less costly rig and then just upgraded as the features became available.  I have been crying for an operational all mode Squelch for years. 

Still a great fan but just a bit frustrated.

Rick W7YP

BTW, while I've had several crashes, NONE have left the radio emitting a sound of any kind, let alone a constant tone.  Most reports I've read have seen the tone as an additional symptom.

Interesting....

Rick, W7YP

Rick W7YP

Norm, I agree with every point you made in your last post.  I consider myself fortunate that I waited until January of this year to take delivery of a 6700 as I spared myself four years of frustration that you've unfortunately had to patiently endure.  I LOVE my 6700 and can see that it should easily be the king of transceivers for years to come, if only they'd put more work into the software.

I've now added a Mountain West Radio RigRunner 4005i DC power monitoring and control unit to my setup.  It does reliably enable to me to remotely turn on/off DC power to up to 5 different devices.  With it, I can now reliably power-cycle the radio and then re-import my configuration.  I don't know if the latter step will always work or if it will work for everyone.

I can't help but wonder if Flex has ever asked for the configuration files of those reporting this problem so that they can try to reproduce it in their lab.  They never asked for mine or even for much detail about my setup.  That should be the first step in any serious effort to debug a difficult and seemingly random problem.  Failing that, they should swap out one or more radios with users who see the problem quite frequently.  If this radio was a car, there'd be lemon laws that would force a replacement or a refund.

Please don't misunderstand me or my tone.  I've been a Flex customer since the early days of the SDR-1000.  I love all three radios (a Flex-5000 is the other radio) and want to see FlexRadio Systems grow and prosper.  They have caused a revolution in amateur radio that the Big 3 are finally starting to respond to (e.g., Icom IC-7300 and soon-coming IC-7610).  But, PLEASE, devote whatever resources are necessary to fix this problem.  We deserve better in return for our loyalty.

Rick, W7YP

W4TMW

FWIW---just checked and I am using NTP. If there is a way to check the log you need, I don't see how, so if you'll instruct me, I'll do it.

NM1W

Rick - There are at least 3 flavors of crash:
crash needing the long power cycle
crash with tone needing the long power cycle
crash while xmitting

I've hit all 3, but have only had the crash while xmitting happen two or three times..

Rick W7YP

I've yet to see the crash while transmitting; in fact, all of my crashes have occurred while the radio is simply in receive mode in the middle of the night, when everyone and everything else has gone to bed for the evening.  As a result, demands on the network and on my PC are at a minimum.  A couple of my crashes would not respond even to the long push on the on/off button.  I had to disconnect DC power to regain control over the radio.  Most of my crashes required the long push and today's crash is the first that responded to the short push, albeit after about a minute delay.

In every case, one or more of the panadapters had lost at least one slice receiver and radio behavior was odd.  Clearly something got scrambled within the radio.   A re-importation of my saved configuration files restored normal operation until the next crash.

This is clearly a software problem, as it appeared beginning with the 10.16 release.  Others who've gone back a release report that the problem has gone away.  I have a Down East Microwave 2m LDPA which I use with my 6700 and that requires support beginning in the 10.16 release; otherwise, I have to give up my 2m use of the radio.

My gut and 30 years of experience suggest to me that we're chasing ghosts looking at what's plugged into the USB ports, whether an NTP service of some kind is being used, whether a gigabit switch is not fast enough, the ambient air temp is too high, etc.  If the search for the root cause remains focused on peripheral areas such as this, we'll likely never get to the bottom of this.

Rick, W7YP

David Orman

Hi Tom, my post a few above has directions and a screenshot showing you how to check the log. Please let me know if this works for you! I'm not a Windows guy by any means, but I'll try to help out.

Tom Warren

David, ah, ok.....I should be able to do that. I'll see what I can find out and reply after the weekend. Thanks and 73 W4TMW

Tom Warren

Paul, after reading this: "I still have an issue where the USB ports on the Flex sometimes will loose sync with the peripherals. ", I have been having this problem on and off for a couple of months now, where one of my programs using SmartCAT will lose sync requiring me to "Remove" that CAT setting and "Add" ing it back into SmartCAT again. Now, for some reason, SmartCAT has lost all of my Comport additions except the first 2 of the 3 default settings. Also, SmartCAT will not let me add any new settings...the Com box is greyed out. Since it hasn't hindered my use of the radio, I've been slow to try and resolve it. But now that the crash issue landed on my rig I feel that my situation needs to be added to the pile to help resolve this. W4TMW

David Livingston

If the locking up issue has not been resolved in V2.**** has any code been included in this release to track down this issue...?????

David Livingston

If the locking up issue has not been resolved in V2.**** has any code been included in this release to track down this issue...?????

Tim - W4TME

This should address your CAT issue

https://helpdesk.flexradio.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000504463-Removing-In-Use-Com-Ports-for-Availabl...

James Skala

I would like to suggest a Internal SFTP or SSH server dedicated for logging facilities.  It should run separate and independent from main core code so it can capture when a crash occurs. Then a  client that could be ran on client machine to retrieves logs.

James Skala

For future releases..  maybe V2

I would like to suggest a Internal SFTP or SSH server dedicated for logging facilities.  It should run separate and independent from main core code so it can capture when a crash occurs. Then a  client that could be ran on client machine to retrieves logs.

Tom Warren

Tim, Thanks a million....I haven't seen that before and hope it does the trick.
Wishing you a great holiday. 73, Tom

Rick W7YP

Yesterday I experienced my first freeze during transmit.  While the short push of the on/off switch did initiate a shutdown roughly a minute later, I had to reset to factory defaults, then reload my profiles, in order to recover normal operation.  Just reloading my profiles didn't do the trick this time.  Then, after running only a few hours more with WSJT-X, it crashed again, with the same process required to recover normal operation.  I'm having an especially difficult time believing that in all this time they haven't been able to reproduce it.  I've reproduced problems in embedded systems which occurred far less frequently.  They may well need to add logging capabilities to the firmware to successfully debug this; however, it's definitely past time to do so.  

NM1W

"Loss of connection to the radio" on the 6700 this am; had made some cw qsos earlier; rig had been on about 2.5 hours;
Running 1.10.16, win10 1607 14393.1198
i7-6850, 32GB, nvme ssd (samsung 960 pro)
FRstack, dxlab suite; skcc logger, ddutil; ntp (no time changes shown in event log)
8 pans, 8 slices
radio had been reset to factory defaults a week ago and I didnt restore any of my profiles.
A short button press, followed by waiting about a minute and the rig powered off;

There were no network hiccups observed when this happened; windows logs show nothing happening in this time frame..

On reboot and restart of ssdr I had 8 pans and a scrambled set of slices. There were 6 out of 8 slices, randomly distributed; also the antenna settings were mucked up; some slices were on ant1/ant2, some ant2/ant2;  at time of "anomaly" 5 slices were on ant1/ant1, and 3 were ant2/ant2

can we get a build to enable syslog so we can get the logs off the rig? Figuring that might at least help...

Rick W7YP

Fired up the 6700 about 8 AM this morning.  Made a trip into town about 1.5 hours later, leaving the radio running.  When I returned 3 hours later, i found it had crashed.  Shut it down with the short push on the on/off button.  When I powered it back up, for the FIRST TIME ever after crashing it had all panadapters and slice receivers.  It ran for several hours before crashing again.  

This time I had to restore to factory defaults, then reload my profiles.  It ran for about 15 minutes before crashing again.  This time it briefly emitted a tone with the SmartSDR panadapters all frozen, followed by SmartSDR reporting it had lost the connection almost right after the tone disappeared.

Restored to factory defaults and again reloaded my profiles.  Will see how long it runs this time.

I have never before paid as much for a transceiver nor been as disappointed with my purchase at the same time.  I'm supposed to give a presentation on this radio to my club in a couple of months.  At this rate, I really don't think Flex Radio Systems wants me giving the presentation that is the only honest presentation I could give; but, given the level of support on this issue, maybe they simply don't give a ****.

Larry _ NY8T

I have been running 1.10.15 beta until this issue is solved it is stable.

NM1W

Problem is there are the crashes and also the dax corruptions. The DAX corruption has been there for several  releases (maybe many), so if you like to do digital modes the corruption is a regular and ongoing pita...

Rick W7YP

It's also very annoying that I can't sell my 6700, at least in good conscience, without taking a bath doing so.

Rick W7YP

Larry (W8LLL), I also have the Down East Microwave 2m power amp (LDPA) with preamplifier which is made for the 6700 and uses one of its USB ports so that SmartSDR can transparently control its operation.  If I back-rev from 1.10, I can't use it, as that's the first version of SmartSDR to support it.  I normally monitor our 4 primary VHF repeaters with the 6700 and wouldn't be able to do so while having enough TX power to reply to traffic, as the LDPA is automatically switched on and inline by SmartSDR and gives me no manual capability for doing so myself.

Larry _ NY8T

Dax corruptions under windows 10? I use windows 7, no dax issues.

Larry _ NY8T

I get it, My thoughts were for your up coming presentation revert back to a stable version.

NM1W

I had them under win7; did a clean win7 install still got them. I run 4 wsjtx sessions; 

Rick W7YP

Did you try 1.10.16 and also experience radio freezes, then fall back to 1.10.15 and the problem went away?

Frederic HB9CQK

From my experience version 1.10.15 is worse than 1.10.16 regarding lockups. 1.9.13 had no lockups for me. I am still running 1.10.16 because I had no lockups recently (a few days only), but I was not very active.
73, Frédéric

Andy M5ZAP

Hi,

1 - Could we please have an update from flex reference the radio lock-up issue.

2 - Flex state it is a small number of users has anybody who uses there radio a reasonable amount (2 to 3 hrs a day plus) on version 1.10.16 NOT  had a radio lockup?

EA4GLI

I have not had a lock up on my 6700 with 1.10.16, I have left the radio on for periods of 3 and 4 days. I have also turned the radio on and off several times the same day. I don´t have a define ON/OFF scheme.

I hardly ever remove 12v power to the radio.... but I have at least twice in the last 30 days.
I am using a 70cm transverter, 2m amp, all the antenna inputs (ant 1, ant 2, RXA and RXB). Running a loop with 2 different filters in Loop A, I have the GPSDO option and feed the 10Mhz reference into the 70cm tranverter. I also use 4 USB devices (LDPA Amp, Expert Amp which uses 2 USBs and the ThumbDV). 

I sometimes use the Maestro through WiFi.
The 6700 is connected to a Gigabit switch.

My PC is a self-built Win 7 64 Bit (with all the Windows updates), SSD drive, 16GB RAM, GTX 680 4GB video card feeding a 40 inch 4k monitor. Both PC and Flex are connected to the same managed gigabit switch and both are connected to the network that provides internet in the QTH.

Of course, now that I posted here my radio will lock up........

NM1W

Andy,
re: small number of users with this issue - I counted about 50 different people saying that had lockups in this thread..