ANAN-7000DLE MKII Black Edition and KPA1500

StephenAE2S
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ANAN-7000DLE MKII Black Edition and KPA1500

Postby StephenAE2S » Tue Apr 27, 2021 12:53 pm

Hey everyone,
Has anyone integrated an Apache Labs ANAN-7000DLE MKII Black Edition and a KPA1500??

The PTT is a no brainer.... I'm more interested if you were able to get the band following feature to work between the two....

I'd love to hear how you were able to do it!!

Thanks!!
Steve - AE2S
w9mdb
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Re: ANAN-7000DLE MKII Black Edition and KPA1500

Postby w9mdb » Tue Apr 27, 2021 1:04 pm

Mike W9MDB
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Re: ANAN-7000DLE MKII Black Edition and KPA1500

Postby w-u-2-o » Tue Apr 27, 2021 1:26 pm

This is also a no brainer, at least once you realize that your "radio" is the combination of both your PC and the hardware that you buy from Apache, and that all CAT connections come from the PC, not the Apache hardware. Indeed, most of the "radio" is in the software, not the hardware.

1. Provision a TTL serial port on your PC. These days that usually means buying a USB to TTL serial adapter, like this example.

2. If necessary, add a proper 3.5mm TRS connector to the adapter as shown for the Kenwood serial port configuration on Pages 48-49 of your KPA1500 manual.

3. Set radio type to Serial as shown on Page 32. The default Serial Speed XCVR baud rate should work fine.

4. Go into Setup > CAT Control, choose any of the four CAT instances available to you under the main CAT tab or CAT+ tab (they are all equivalent), and assign it to the COM port and baud rate your provisioned for your KPA1500.

That should be sufficient to get simple band following working.

In addition to this CAT connection, you can achieve full remote control of the amp on your PC by putting the KPA1500 on the LAN and using the remote control software provided by Elecraft and described on Page 35 of the manual.

You do not need DDUtil unless you wish to use certain DDUtil specific features. If that's the case, then you still need to do steps 1-3 above. Step 4 is changed to have PowerSDR or Thetis communicate with DDUtil via a virtual serial cable, then DDUtil connects to the hardware serial port to your KPA1500.
K9RX
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Re: ANAN-7000DLE MKII Black Edition and KPA1500

Postby K9RX » Wed Apr 28, 2021 12:36 pm

Here's the issue .... there is no instantiation of a user available serial port through the KPA1500 USB line! REALLY bad design forethought in my humble opinion. Instead I used the CI-V port and designed/added some level translating transistors to make a proper RS232 serial compatible port - run that through a Keyspan USA-19HS and voila. Works a treat!

Gary
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w9mdb
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Re: ANAN-7000DLE MKII Black Edition and KPA1500

Postby w9mdb » Wed Apr 28, 2021 12:45 pm

No serial port? You just have to wire the port correctly, turn on SERIAL mode, and you'll get TTL level RS232
Capture.PNG
Capture.PNG (75.1 KiB) Viewed 5083 times

https://elecraft.com/pages/kpa1500-kpa5 ... e-software
Mike W9MDB
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Re: ANAN-7000DLE MKII Black Edition and KPA1500

Postby w-u-2-o » Wed Apr 28, 2021 1:16 pm

K9RX wrote:Here's the issue .... there is no instantiation of a user available serial port through the KPA1500 USB line! REALLY bad design forethought in my humble opinion. Instead I used the CI-V port and designed/added some level translating transistors to make a proper RS232 serial compatible port - run that through a Keyspan USA-19HS and voila. Works a treat!

Gary
K9RX

Gary--that's a good catch! I have a KPA500, not a 1500, and the KPA500 has a proper, honest-to-goodness serial port on it, with normal RS-232 signal levels. So is it correct to say, with the XCVR SERIAL 3.5mm TRS port in SERIAL mode, NOT CI-V mode, it still presents TTL levels? If so, that's just lazy engineering on the part of Elecraft, especially for an amp that costs as much as this one.

However, it's still an easy do, @StephenAE2S. Just provision a USB to TTL Serial adapter instead of a normal serial port. There are lots and lots of them for sale, cheap. Here's an example.

I'll correct my post above.
w9mdb
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Re: ANAN-7000DLE MKII Black Edition and KPA1500

Postby w9mdb » Wed Apr 28, 2021 1:24 pm

TTL Level RS232 works just fine...voltages are plus and minus for 1 and 0 with a 3V threshold.

https://www.electronics-notes.com/artic ... levels.php

Mike W9MDB
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Re: ANAN-7000DLE MKII Black Edition and KPA1500

Postby K9RX » Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:43 am

the definition of RS232 is a minimum voltage of 5V (nominal ±9V) ....TTL level is not RS232. It might work - I suspect it wouldn't, but the margins would be woefully small and data errors due to this could cause false band changes and potentially - for a very expensive "fix" - not so pleasant outcomes.

Unfortunately BOTH a level change and an inversion had to be done to make this work properly. If I recall on both TX and RX. I've had it wired up for about 18 months now without a single issue.

The shame of it is - literally for a couple three $ Elecraft could have built this functionality in.

Gary
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Re: ANAN-7000DLE MKII Black Edition and KPA1500

Postby w9mdb » Thu Apr 29, 2021 1:41 pm

You got a reference for that? Every reference I see is 3V threshold.
I've used TTL level RS232 before without any problems with 23V DTE.
Here's another
https://www.electronics-notes.com/artic ... levels.php

TIA-232F also shows that
https://www.electronicdesign.com/techno ... 232f-specs

If you go back to V.10 and RS423 it was 4V
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-423

RS232 from 1960 shows 3V
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-232#Voltage_levels
Mike W9MDB
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Re: ANAN-7000DLE MKII Black Edition and KPA1500

Postby K9RX » Fri Apr 30, 2021 1:16 pm

Mike, I stand corrected.... I've been using RS232 for decades ... and it has always been minimum 5V .... but apparently not! It depends on where you get that reference. I can see references to +/- 5V still.... but you've enlightened me.

thanks!

Gary
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Re: ANAN-7000DLE MKII Black Edition and KPA1500

Postby K9RX » Fri Apr 30, 2021 1:22 pm

Note: If I'm not mistaken (and now I'm treading lightly) - and I'm not about to take apart what I built up (and which is nicely in a small metal box) the signals are indeed TTL ... that means nominal 5V high, 0V low. THAT is not RS232. And because they are TTL you will need to invert these (RS232 drivers invert the signals).

You can indeed get ready made TTL level to USB adapters out there saving the step I went through ... I had the transistors and rely on the Keyspan/Tripplite USA19-HS as the most reliable converter out there so I just made it up myself.

Gary
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Re: ANAN-7000DLE MKII Black Edition and KPA1500

Postby K9RX » Fri Apr 30, 2021 1:46 pm

Actually looking further - indeed the RXD input is defined as max min of ±3V .... however the TXD output is defined as max min of ±5V. This is to ensure there is a margin on the input .... and one would be prudent to design around min of 5V. However this conversation does correlate with the fact that the RS232 definition was loose at best ... and iterated over time.

One point I was trying to make however was that there is no such thing as TTL RS232. TTL defines logic levels of 5/0 ... RS232 requires (TXD) mark and space of -5/+5. Note in the snippet you had from Elecraft they did not say TTL RS232... they just said TTL levels.


Gary

[just as an aside: the name of my company, which was started in 1985 when I developed the worlds first and only amateur level EME Tracking controller called LunarTrack ... is RXDesign .... the RXD being a twist on serial coms RXD + of course design :)]
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w-u-2-o
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Re: ANAN-7000DLE MKII Black Edition and KPA1500

Postby w-u-2-o » Fri Apr 30, 2021 2:48 pm

@StephenAE2S

Have we thoroughly confused you? ;)

Check in, please, let us know if you are good to go. You should have no problems if you follow the directions provided in my first response.

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