FlexControl Intermittent

Mike Krzystyniak

Greetings to the Group,

During the CQWW_CW contest I was trying to use my FlexControl with SmartSDR and my Flex6700 in a competition. I noticed early on that my FlexControl was acting intermittently. Using it as a RIT, it would work for a short period and stop. Sometimes if it was not used for some time it would act if it was asleep. I found that pressing the center knob would wake it up about 80% of the time. The remaining 20% of the time I had to wait 10-15 seconds before it would wake up.

Another observation is that if I had the Flex Control settings via the SSDR window open, the window would sometime flicker between color and grayed out. My guess there is that for some reason it is loosing the USB link or ?? I have not confirmed correlation of the flickering with the intermittency.

My FlexControl is an early unit, one of the first available post beta testing. Any thoughts or suggestions on what is going on here? Thanks

73 Mike K9MK

Erika - KØDD

Try plugging it into a different USB port. There might be an intermittant cable or rf getting into the line. Try ferrites. Mine just steps a step off frequency every once in a while. It has been ignored and I didn't bump it. Going ****-nap is computer determining garbage data coming in I suspect. Good luck. Might try a different one if all else fails can't be without the knob.

Erika DD

VE7ATJ_Don

I wonder if there might be a setting somewhere that MS Windows (? - I'm assuming that's the PC's O/S) puts the USB port 'to sleep' if it hasn't been used in a set amount of time (power saver feature). I seem to remember reading about that somewhere on another bulletin board. Especially true of laptops.

Mike Krzystyniak

Update: No change here.

• I tried moving the control to another USB before and it made no difference. But maybe I goobered that up so I will do that one again.
• As this is a RX issue, ferrites probably will not make a difference.
• If I can find another FlexControl locally I will certainly give that a try.
• On the power management side, I did go in and turn off power management for all the COM and USB ports. But I will double check this too.

Thanks and 73's Mike K9MK

WA5YOM

I have similar problem...every now and then....it just doesn't work,,,,I will turn the knob and nothing happens,,,all power management is off.....different port..no difference...

Rickenrocker

did anyone come up with a fix for this. mine is lot 1811and the flex control screen goes grey and then blue. I have tried different usb ports on the computer no change.

Mike Krzystyniak

After the note from Tim (?), I have had my FlexControl on ComPort 199 for several years now. Although it is not 100% solid, it is much more reliable 99.9% of the time. Although the sleeping is gone, it still tends to stutter during tuning the bands, like hunting stations in a contest.