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I saw ADC1 overload only today. Running Thetis 2.8.11 (10/20/209) /P1 with my Anan 7000 DLE MKII. Haven't changed any parameter settings for weeks and I am seeing the "ADC1 overload" in yellow color while monitoring 20 meters, not transmitting at all. I did use the SPLIT feature to work S9OK on 20 m SSB for a while. Only after using the SPLIT feature did I start seeing this overload message.

Update just now:
I am also seeing a small red square pop up every now and then in the top left hand corner of the display, at about 4 o'clock, from where the "RX2" button is.

Puzzled!

Juha
NI2M

JJ4SDR wrote:I saw ADC1 overload only today. Running Thetis 2.8.11 (10/20/209) /P1 with my Anan 7000 DLE MKII. Haven't changed any parameter settings for weeks and I am seeing the "ADC1 overload" in yellow color while monitoring 20 meters, not transmitting at all. I did use the SPLIT feature to work S9OK on 20 m SSB for a while. Only after using the SPLIT feature did I start seeing this overload message.

Update just now:
I am also seeing a small red square pop up every now and then in the top left hand corner of the display, at about 4 o'clock, from where the "RX2" button is.

Puzzled!

Juha
NI2M

Another update:
The "ADC overload" in yellow also shows up in red now.
The "red square" seems to have gone after I reduced the Display FPS rate to 50 from 60. I am not understanding why this happened though as my PC is a 10th gen i7, 32 GB RAM, 512 GM NVMe SSD so it can't be the PC. CPU load is around 5 %.

Hi all,

I have ADC1 overload since I updated to protocoll 2 v2.1.18 and Thetis 21k7. Never had this before. As I did the updates the same time I cannot tell when it stared. But I did not have it with 2.0.2b and 21k6. Trx is is a ANAN 7000 DLE MKII.

73,
András

HB9LFQ wrote:Hi all,

I have ADC1 overload since I updated to protocoll 2 v2.1.18 and Thetis 21k7. Never had this before. As I did the updates the same time I cannot tell when it stared. But I did not have it with 2.0.2b and 21k6. Trx is is a ANAN 7000 DLE MKII.

73,
András

Thanks for your comments Andras!

I hope others could jump in as well as I don’t like seeing that “overload” message pop up all the time. I reset the data base as well and then imported the data base but to no avail.

73 de Juha
NI2M

Just curious, do you have Dither enabled?

Hi Gary,

Neither "Dither" or "Random" is enabled.

Thanks!

Juha

Take a read here viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2736

You always want dither and random turned on. Those are the defaults for a fresh Thetis installation. Here's more information on why this is so:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2736&p=5026

w-u-2-o wrote:You always want dither and random turned on. Those are the defaults for a fresh Thetis installation.

FYI Scott, I did a complete fresh install the other day for the fun of it. Dither and Random were off by default when I did my install.

Hi all,

yes dither and random are turned on as with the older Thetis/Firmware.

Grüsse,
//András

NC3Z wrote:

w-u-2-o wrote:You always want dither and random turned on. Those are the defaults for a fresh Thetis installation.

FYI Scott, I did a complete fresh install the other day for the fun of it. Dither and Random were off by default when I did my install.

Hmmmmm...well that's going to have to wait for the next "production" release to fix that, because there's no way for Richie to that in a patch.

Hmmm... I did a fresh install month ago and never touched this settings, but both are ON.

73 Ernst

Hmmmmm...

Moral of the story is to double check they are enabled!

NC3Z wrote:Take a read here viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2736

Thanks Gary (and Scott)! Will do some reading.

I enabled both "Dither" and "Random" today. We'll see.

Juha
NI2M

This brings a question to mind. What are all the defaults supposed to be after an install. On my install both were off.

Dave
k4em

At this point we are not sure, Dave! Got reports of them both ways.

On a fresh install Dither and Random are off afaik. They are not checked in the form design and as far as I can see they are not provided with a different initialisation state from a fresh DB. They do get forced at start up based on the check box state that has been previously saved from setup OK/Apply.

If it was decided you want these turned on from a fresh install, that is a 20 second change.

R.

IMHO they should be defaulted to on, Richie.

From Sherwood's opinion, on SDR radios ADC dither and random ON make difference only on a lab measure and it is better to leave them normally OFF on the field (better sensitivity).

I2NOY wrote:From Sherwood's opinion, on SDR radios ADC dither and random ON make difference only on a lab measure and it is better to leave them normally OFF on the field (better sensitivity).

The chart in Scott's link suggests otherwise..



Mark

I2NOY wrote:From Sherwood's opinion, on SDR radios ADC dither and random ON make difference only on a lab measure and it is better to leave them normally OFF on the field (better sensitivity).

Yes, just as Mark writes, take a look at the link both Gary and I posted almost simultaneously (but he did beat me by a few minutes )

First and foremost, the Orion MK II SDR board in the 7000 and 8000 series hardware was specifically designed to avoid any degradation in noise floor or sensitivity with dither and random activated. Indeed, if you look at the famous (infamous to some!) Sherwood receiver test data tabulation, you'll see no difference in sensitivity on the 7000 Rob tested. So this is a non-issue on most of our radios, and degradation is very small, maybe 2dB on the older ANAN designs.

I have not seen where Rob mentioned his preference for having dither and random turned off. As far as I know there's no option for this on Flex radios. Perhaps his comments stem from the degradation seen in the ICOM direct sampling radios (7300, 7610) when the IP+ function is activated. IP+ is a fancy marketing term for dither and random in those radios.

Nevertheless, as the link Gary, Mark and I are all referencing discusses, for all but the quietest environments the difference in sensitivity is going to be unnoticeable. Looking at the degradation on the Icom radios that Rob measured, unless you are truly (and we know Icom S meters are anything but "true") seeing an S3 or lower noise floor, you'll never notice the loss of sensitivity.

At any rate, it is a user controllable setting. If you are on an uncrowded, unnoisy band and you are looking for that 2dB on your 200D, or the 6dB on your 7300, by all means turn those settings off. If you are in a busy FT8 band, or in a contest, you might want it on! And if you are using Orion MKII based hardware, there's no need to do anything but leave it on.

Well, you convinced me to try to put ON these functions.

For the sake of clarification, is worth recall also Phil's (VK6PH) words on the subject,

QUOTE
The need to apply dither or not is one that is new to all of us as we transition from conventional, mixer based, analogue radios to Direct Digital Conversion techniques.

With an analogue radio we understood that we needed to prevent large numbers of strong signals for reaching the mixers. With DDC, as long as the sum of the signals does not overload the ADC, then the ADC can actually perform better than in the absence of such signals.

In theory enabling dither should not increase the noise floor. In practice it can and there are a number of factors, including PCB layout, that causes this. We have learnt some of these techniques over the years and the latest Orion MkII board represents the best we have been able to achieve.

For lab testing, where you are using one or more signal generators, then applying dither does have a positive effect. In real life, with antenna noise at least 10dB above the no antenna noise and other signals on or adjacent to where you are operating then you are not going to see any improvements.

I actually did a demonstration to one of our well know reviewers where in the lab the 6m IMD3 at low signal levels was rather poor. By adding my HF antenna and summing in all the signals from MW to 10m the IMD3 was world class.

If you are fortunate enough to live in a quiet location and very little antenna noise then dither can have a positive effect, for most of us it will never be required.
UNQUOTE

Given the above, the presentl OFF default of both dither & random noise seems appropriate to me.

As a side note, having tested the K4D, which had both default ON (partially changed on following firmware updates), given the introduced noise degradation, on 10m with very low band base noise, the S meter,without any pre-amp, was showing 3 bar graphs, by selecting Pre1, these dropped to 2 and finally with Pre2 to none, I thought it was pretty peculiar, the same did not apply on the other lower bands, on which band base nose was higher.
Final thought was that bringing ADC input level, by adding pre amps, to a proper workable level (those 10dB mentioned by phil), would have done the job, contrary to our radios, K4 does not have pre-amp always ON, its MDS reference to 500Hz is only -121dBm, not enough on at least 6-10 and 12 meters, on which band noise is typically lower.

73, Clay

I4LEC wrote:For the sake of clarification, is worth recall also Phil's (VK6PH) words on the subject,

QUOTE
In real life, with antenna noise at least 10dB above the no antenna noise and other signals on or adjacent to where you are operating then you are not going to see any improvements.

I actually did a demonstration to one of our well know reviewers where in the lab the 6m IMD3 at low signal levels was rather poor. By adding my HF antenna and summing in all the signals from MW to 10m the IMD3 was world class.

If you are fortunate enough to live in a quiet location and very little antenna noise then dither can have a positive effect, for most of us it will never be required.
UNQUOTE

Given the above, the presentl OFF default of both dither & random noise seems appropriate to me.

Phil is not saying anything I haven't also said. However, because there is no detriment under any conditions in our radios for leaving it on, and because there is a possible benefit under certain conditions for having it on, again, as I wrote in my initial posting on the topic (linked above) "it's better to have it and not need it then need it and not have it". Therefore I disagree with the idea that having it off should be the default.

I also just started to see the ADC1 Overload intermittently appear this week.
I have searched and red all of the topics on this subject but still don't understand what I can control to prevent this.
Cheers Andrew

Did you change anything, Andrew, or did it just start happening for no reason?

No changes Scott just started happening, not very frequent but then again I could be missing some.

The only time I've ever seen ADC overload here has been when testing Protocol 2 firmware that didn't work properly with my hardware.

I have had the 7000 about 14 months and overall has been stable for me compared to others experience. I have had Thetis freeze on 3 occasions, I do see SEQ errors at times but not often.
Other than recent upgrade to Win11 and finally making the Cat connection between the PC and Amplifier I haven't made any changes to settings since the first few weeks.

Is there a way to log the ADC overload instances to see how frequent they are?

I will also use my notebook today to see if same is happening with it.

Andrew