Hi All, Just a quick note of praise to Jim, N2ADR, about Quisk. Over the years I’ve used Quisk on Windows and Linux with success but it has never been a quick and easy process. Connecting digital apps was also somewhat challenging. I haven’t used Quisk in a while but with the IQ balance adjustment available for softrock type radios I decided to give it another go on windows. I must say setup was a breeze other than one issue I’ll cover below. Setup and configuration of WSJT-X and Fldigi went smoothly following the directions. IMHO Quisk has become a mature and capable program that I’ll be recommending to folks. The only issue I had was with how you install WSJT-X. Way back many years ago I was told to always install WSJT-X and WSPR to the system path. I don’t remember the reason now but that is how I’ve done it for many years. The issue is, if you have WSJT-X installed to the system path and you try and run Quisk with a softrock type radio, Quisk will not load. Quisk was working until I installed WSJT-X so I uninstalled it and reinstalled using default path and Quisk worked normally again. Thanks again Jim for your many years of developing Quisk into a very capable and easy to use program! -- 73, Stew N8VET

Last Friday (7/12) I was attempting to set up static ip addresses on my HL2 & Laptop-based Quisk. I tried various combinations using the IP related fields: “Hermes Known IP”, “IP Change”, “Eeprom IP usage”, “Eeprom IP Address”. While it appeared that the static address in the HL2 took, Quisk was never able to connect using static addresses. I was successful at getting APIPA to work (269.254.x.x addresses) but never on static. I was routinely able to get quisk to find and control the hl2 using APIPA. Late Friday I shut down the HL2. Early this week I tried again but found I can no longer connect via ethernet to the hl2. I see the link light and some activity light but Quisk never finds the HL2. Also, the frequency of the activity light is much diminished from what I’ve seen before. Also, several fields that I was seeing last Friday no longer appear in the Config | HL2 tab. Specifically “Eeprom IP Usage”, “Eeprom MAC usage”, “Eeprom IP address”, “Eeprom MAC Address” are missing. Hermes code version and board ID have not changed. What could be wrong? Is there a way to reset the HL2 and/or rewrite eeprom? Do I need to rewrite the FPGA (without ethernet since it won’t connect). Do I need to blow away and reinstall quisk (I’m on version 4.2.31; current version is 4.2.35 so I’m pretty up to date).

For the Hermes-Lite2 the inhibit Tx function (CN8) now releases the Spot button. Quisk displays the band plan below the X-axis as colored bars, and there are eighteen possible colors. If you hover the mouse over a bar, Quisk now displays the name of the mode. Recall that there is a dialog box so you can set the band plan to what you want. Jim N2ADR

Hi Jim, Thanks for providing this. I had to stop playing radio and do some more pressing duties starting about a month ago, so I haven't made any progress since then on my radio. I still haven't been able to spend much time, but I wanted to test your new version of Quisk out at least a little. I was able to open it up and find the new RX and TX Phase adjustments. I opened the new adjustment window, and played a little. I wanted to close the window for phase adjustment and found no close box, so I thought maybe I needed to toggle the RX Phase, but it didn't do anything. So I closed Quisk, and upon opening it, I can't get the adjustment window back again. Thanks for working on this for us all. I especially appreciate it! 73, Rob KL7NA

There is a new item "File play level" on the Config/radio/Sound screen to reduce the volume when playing files. Use it to reduce the volume of the CQ message relative to radio sound. Dan, AI2M, provided a patch to compile in MacOS on Apple Silicon. Thanks Dan! I am working on better amplitude and phase adjustments when using SoftRock radios. The new corrections screen has a spreadsheet to display the VFO and tune offset. And there is a feature to automatically measure the corrections when using a signal generator as a source. If you use Quisk with SoftRock or similar radios, please let me know what you think. Jim N2ADR

I have 4 x Hermes-Lite2 on my network. They have different MAC and IP addresses. I sometimes have to restart the Quisk radio (for example when the audio stops arriving at the WSJTX instance). When I do so it usually picks a different HL2 to connect to than the one I was using. To reconnect to the correct HL2 I have to open SparkSDR, connect it to any other HL2s which are not in use, then restart the Quisk radio using the On button. Is there a way to direct Quisk to connect to a specific HL2 and to prefer that HL2 when Quisk is restarted? 73, Neil G4BRK

Hi Jim, I use an HL2 for VHF+ contesting with a Midi controller to give me a button to call CQ from a wav file. This all works very well, but I tend to run with the AF gain near max to avoid RX overload from locals and in this case the sidetone volume of the CQ message is very loud in the headphones and I haven't found a way to reduce it. Would it be possible to have the sidetone slider operational with its own setting when in SSB (separate to the CW sidetone level) to control this? Thanks/73, Neil G4BRK

I just installed a new PC with Windows 11, to be able to use Quisk on it together with a Hermes Lite 2. I installed Python 3.11.9 from Python.org and I followed the instructions, how to install Quisk for Windows on https://james.ahlstrom.name/quisk/docs.html, i.e. I installed all packages with pip. When I start Quisk with "py -m quisk" or "python -m quisk" (just quisk does not work) it will crash with these messages: Traceback (most recent call last): File "<frozen runpy>", line 189, in _run_module_as_main File "<frozen runpy>", line 148, in _get_module_details File "<frozen runpy>", line 112, in _get_module_details File "C:\Users\pi\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python311\Lib\site-packages\quisk\__init__.py", line 2, in <module> from .quisk import main File "C:\Users\pi\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python311\Lib\site-packages\quisk\quisk.py", line 29, in <module> import wx, wx.html, wx.lib.stattext, wx.lib.colourdb, wx.grid File "C:\Users\pi\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python311\Lib\site-packages\wx\__init__.py", line 17, in <module> from wx.core import * File "C:\Users\pi\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python311\Lib\site-packages\wx\core.py", line 12, in <module> from ._core import * ImportError: DLL load failed while importing _core: Das angegebene Modul wurde nicht gefunden. I vaguely remember, that I had the same problem on another Windows PC and finally found out, that another package needs to be installed by pip. Unfortunately I do not remember, which package needed to be installed in addition to the documentation. Any hints, which package to be installed in addition? -- 73, Joerg - DB2OO

Hi group, I am trying to extend the following widget: https://github.com/haklein/hrctl/blob/main/hermes_widgets.py What I am trying to achieve is to automatically change the selected band on the Hardrock-50 via an API call. At the moment I have added a button for each band (not in the code linked above) and when I click on it a request is sent to the server component which then sends the serial command to the HR50. Now I want to automate this. To do this, I need to continuously read the selected band (or frequency if band is not possible), but I can only do this at startup by adding band = app.lastBand print(band) to the function Widgets_0x06(self, app, hardware, conf, frame, gbs, vertBox) The function "UpdateText(self)" is called all the time so I tried to read out the lastBand value from there as a test but I failed since I cannot reach it from inside this function. Can you please help me here? Thanks and 73 Michael, DK1MI

The LO error may be more predictable too, and you might be able to predict it and then only have to measure the correction over the IF frequency range. Rob -- KL7NA From: n2adr-sdr@groups.io <n2adr-sdr@groups.io> on behalf of Rob Frohne (KL7NA) via groups.io <rob.frohne@...> Sent: Saturday, June 1, 2024 6:07 AM To: n2adr-sdr@groups.io <n2adr-sdr@groups.io> Subject: Re: [n2adr-sdr] Quisk GUI Questions CAUTION: This email originated from outside the Walla Walla University email system. Hi Jim, One thing that might be interesting to play with would be to see how much of your radio's image problem is due to the I and Q LO not being right and the IF not being right. If the LO is good, you only have to calibrate it over the 48 KHz of your IF instead of the whole RF frequency range. 73, Rob -- KL7NA From: n2adr-sdr@groups.io <n2adr-sdr@groups.io> on behalf of Rob Frohne (KL7NA) via groups.io <rob.frohne@...> Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2024 8:58 PM To: n2adr-sdr@groups.io <n2adr-sdr@groups.io> Subject: Re: [n2adr-sdr] Quisk GUI Questions CAUTION: This email originated from outside the Walla Walla University email system. Thanks so much to Nick for the very helpful pictures and link to the documentation. I think your photos should be added to the documentation. I found the conf files and thought the comment lines were just explanation for what was hardcoded in Quisk, but I could not find where it was hard coded in. This is very nice just being able to edit a data file. I haven't figured out how to get the value of the variables I can set now in my hardware file, but sooner or later I will figure it out. 🙂 Thanks for the very helpful tips. I'm finally figuring out how to do what I wanted and it is far easier than I thought it would be. 73, Rob KL7NA From: n2adr-sdr@groups.io <n2adr-sdr@groups.io> on behalf of jimahlstrom via groups.io <jahlstr@...> Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2024 9:31 AM To: n2adr-sdr@groups.io <n2adr-sdr@groups.io> Subject: Re: [n2adr-sdr] Quisk GUI Questions CAUTION: This email originated from outside the Walla Walla University email system. Hello Rob, Here is another directory sdrtrxpkg/ that includes the file quisk_hardware.py and incorporates the hardware file that you sent. I can not test this because I lack some of your imports. Put the sdrtrxpkg/ directory in the same directory as quisk.py. Your radio should show up on the list of available radios. Please test. It would be good to include your sdrtrxpkg directory in your github so I can look at it. I am looking at how to do the I/Q balance adjustment. Jim N2ADR

Hi All, I am having problems with images in my near-zero IF (SoftRock) type receiver. I am still pursuing the hardware problem that is causing the imbalance and consequential poor image rejection, but after thinking about it, I decided the software solution might be better overall, because then you would not have to be so careful that your ADC, an all the I and Q components matched perfectly and it would enable a cheaper SDR receiver. So, I have been looking at Quisk and its implementation of this rebalancing. As I think about it, I don't see a mechanism for how the I-Q balance would be a function of the RF frequency, only the IF frequency. If this is the case, you would have a whole lot less calibration to do to get good image rejection. This paper https://www.wirelessinnovation.org/assets/Proceedings/2002/2002-hw3-01-gu.pdf from 2002 seems to indicate that as well. I am a little leery to just conclude that though, because the implementation in Quisk seems to indicate experimental evidence that the RF frequency matters too. Can any of you shed light on this? TNX & 73, Rob KL7NA

I added the get_level Hamlib command "l STRENGTH". It returns the S-meter reading. I finally found some Hamlib documentation, often not an easy task. The return value of STRENGTH is in dB with zero dB equal to S9. There are 6 dB per S-unit. So a STRENGTH of 4 is 4dB over S9, and -6, -12, -18 is S8, S7, S6. I also added the corresponding FlexRadio command ZZSM. Jim N2ADR

Hi Jim, et. al., While playing around with the SDR-TRX, I found the scope view very useful. Thanks for including it. There does appear to be a bug when you first start Quisk, and switch to the scope from the graph that there is no trace the first time, but if you switch back to the graph and then back to the scope it works with a trace nicely. I suspect most folks don't use the scope much, so this bug isn't noticeable to most, but it was puzzling me until I found the workaround. 73, Rob KL7NA

Quisk simulate a netrig model 2 but "l" or \get_level" command is implemented only for AGC and AF with ALC status and audio level. Can be also s-meter value be returned (I suppose with "l STRENGTH") Regards Franco Spinelli IW2DHW

I found and fixed a bug in the microphone filters that can result in a buffer overrun. You should update Quisk. Some Linux digital programs can not use the usual Quisk Pulse loopback device and must use an Alsa loopback. I added more documentation for Alsa loopbacks, added more information on the Sound screen and I changed the default Alsa sample size to 16 bit. Quisk now responds to the Hermes Lite2 Tx inhibit input by displaying a message and extinguishing the "Tx" light. There is a new item "Hermes Lite2 protocol" on the Hardware screen to control this behavior. Jim N2ADR