Thetis N1MM Spectrum Display support

[gskoubis]

Hi,

I'm a new 7000 DLE MKII owner. I have a SO2R setup that used to be a TS-890 and IC-7300.

I was able to use these with N1MM and have spectrum displays (Panadapter / Waterfall) for each radio with DX cluster spotting and N1MM shortcut keys to go up or down the band to unworked stations, etc.

I can't find a way to connect my 7000 DLE MKII to this N1MM spectrum display.

The N1MM documentation shows the following UDP information.

Is there someone that could comment on how easy / hard it would be to implement this?

Thanks

George / W7GES

---------

Sending Spectrum Data to N1MM+
N1MM+ receives spectrum data from SDR receivers on port 13064. Follow this XML layout:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Spectrum>
<app>WaterfallBandmap</app>
<Name>NlMM SDR1</Name>
<LowScopeFrequency>14000</LowScopeFrequency>
<HighScopeFrequency>14055</HighScopeFrequency>
<ScalingFactor>0.3125</ScalingFactor>
<DataCount>475</DataCount>
<SpectrumData>0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,4,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,19,25,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,4,8,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 1,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,15,0,0,0,0,0,38,50,32,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,0, 0,0,0,1,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0
</SpectrumData>
</Spectrum>
Notes:

Name is the name of your source. It will be shown in the N1MMPlus UI
LowScopeFrequency is lowest frequency represented by the signal levels in SpectrumData
HighScopeFrequency is highest frequency represented by the signal levels in SpectrumData
ScalingFactor is a number that converts your 0-N data in SpectrumData to dB for display in the UI
DataCount is the number of signal levels sent in SpectrumData
SpectrumData is comma separated signal level values. Icom uses a range from 0-160. We can accept integer values from 0-65535.
Spectrum Window help can be found at: Spectrum Window Help
To show this data in N1MM+:

Open a Spectrum Display window (Windows/Spectrum Display).
Right-click and change Spectrum Source to “Source Name”.
Set the source name to the Name you are sending in the message above.
We’ve tried to minimize the development effort from your side by only requiring six pieces of meta data and your level information in the same fashion that you display level data on your UI. Icom provides this data about 3x per second and that seems adequate. We wouldn’t want more than 5x to 10x per second to avoid overloading the users machines, since so many users have older processors.
In addition to the xml data, you would need to allow your users to specify an IP address to send the data to. You will probably want to allow your users to name the source, in the event there is more than one spectrum display on their networks.

If you would like to see what the spectrum UI looks like, I have prepared a 4 minute video at: Spectrum Video

[ramdor]

yeah, no problem If I have time this week I will add it.

Cheers,

Richie.

[gskoubis]

Awesome! Thanks in advance!

[ramdor]

Basics working... for now it just uses the data from RX1 display. The view will be sent to n1mm. I guess there is a need to send rx2 data as well?

I did start down the route of creating an entire new receiver that would send whole sample rate width over to n1mm, but the XML doc got somewhat large So instead, whatever you have displayed on thetis, will show on n1mm.

Also, what does dB reference against in the n1mm display? I normalised all the dbm values, so the lowest reading obtained is 0. Then I sent this out, but what scale factor to apply? They don't have dB with reference to anything, well, except to 0. Why would one scale anything if that was the case?

Richie.

n1mm.jpg (354.29 KiB) Viewed 8236 times

[W7GES]

Hi Richie,

That looks great! In my case I will only be using RX1 as I have a conventional radio I will be using for the other source when I’m running SO2R.

There may be others that would like to use RX2, I know there are some Flex owners that use their rigs that way.

I think having a mirror of the Thetis display on N1MM is intuitive for setup purposes. If there are separate sample rates for the N1MM display and the Thetis display there will be questions why they look different. For my TS-890 and my Icom 7300 the sample rate width matches the selection I make in the radio. I’m guessing this uses less CPU overhead than creating a new receiver as well?

I will post a message to the N1MM forum asking what dB reference is used for. I read the Spectrum Display portion of the N1MM documentation again and didn’t see it mentioned there. The UDP broadcast XML layouts are in a separate area of the documentation and they aren’t cross referenced to each other.

I see that they mention Icom used 0-160 for their Spectrum Data range and N1MM uses an integer value with a range of 0-65535. I’m wondering if the scaling factor is just the ratio between the max values of the data you are sending them vs 65535. Their example showed a scaling factor of .3125 so maybe their scale is 0-20480?

I will let you know when I get an answer.

Thanks Again!

George

[ramdor]

Hi George,

I didn't really do anything clever with those scale numbers, I just made them available in setup. I could change them based on grid min/max but it didn't seem worth it. You can just change them to suit the display really, from 0.01 to 5.0. RX1 and RX2 show as Thetis_1 and Thetis_2 as the spectrum source. You can have up to 8 updates sent per second.

Cheers, Richie.

n1mm.jpg (930.62 KiB) Viewed 8205 times

[W7GES]

Thanks Richie, that looks great.

I really appreciate the time and effort you put into this as well as all the other bug fixes and enhancements.

- George

I also received an answer to what they meant by the Scaling Factor…. Here it is

————-

Based on reading the manual, I would guess that it is much more likely that the scaling factor is the number of dB of signal strength change represented by a one unit change in the spectrum data. The example in the manual has a scaling factor of 0.3125 for data which is said to be in the range of 0-160 (Icom). 160 x 0.3125 = 50, and 50 dB would be a reasonable range of signal strength values to display, so the example makes sense under this interpretation.

If you wanted numbers spanning the full range of 0-65536 to represent a range of signal values that covered, say 60 dB, my guess is that the scaling factor would be 60/65536 or around 0.0009155. That's clearly unnecessarily high precision in the data for a display that will only cover perhaps a few hundred pixels of display height or width. I imagine that the only reason that the range is allowed to be that large is because the data are stored in 16-bit integers.

73,
Rich VE3KI

[W7GES]

Richie,

Thank You!

It's working great here. This is monsoon season in the AZ desert so I had to reconnect my radios, computers and antenna relays to test it out.

I appreciate all the work you've done, hope to meet you in person some day!

image.png (2.53 MiB) Viewed 8062 times

[ramdor]

No probs Glad it is doing what you want.

73 Richie.

[Tom AA4VV]

I am trying to get the N1MM Spectrum Display to work. I am missing something because
I don't seem to be able to get any display in the N1MM Spectrum Display window.

I have read all the information I an find both in the Thetis and N1MM help and am still not getting anything.

Could someone help me get started?

Many Thanks
Tom AA4VV

[ramdor]

I am trying to get the N1MM Spectrum Display to work. I am missing something because
I don't seem to be able to get any display in the N1MM Spectrum Display window.

I have read all the information I an find both in the Thetis and N1MM help and am still not getting anything.

Could someone help me get started?

Many Thanks
Tom AA4VV

Video here : https://youtu.be/3AnoEo_GIsk

Richie.

[Tom AA4VV]

I am trying to get the N1MM Spectrum Display to work. I am missing something because
I don't seem to be able to get any display in the N1MM Spectrum Display window.

I have read all the information I an find both in the Thetis and N1MM help and am still not getting anything.

Could someone help me get started?

Many Thanks
Tom AA4VV

Video here : https://youtu.be/3AnoEo_GIsk

Richie.

Many thanks Richie. I do have it working now.

73 Tom AA4VV