Hi Neels,
On Tue, Sep 11, 2018 at 12:07:23AM +0200, Neels Hofmeyr wrote:
On Mon, Sep 10, 2018 at 03:36:43PM +0200, Keith wrote:
but I am getting great value at the moment from the LimeSDR-mini and osmo-trx-lms running on x86!!
Interesting how every other dev is reporting completely different results on lime. For some it seems to give pure satisfaction, while others seem to be but puzzled by the sheer uselessness of it?
I think it may be related to a) the exact LimeSuite version you're using.
b) like any SDR, the stability/calibration of the clock you use. For the mini, this typically means using an external GPS-DO, which means you need to do a hardware re-work of moving one resistor, as well as using LimeSuite with patch/commit 9977771c4af14731b5c2b32868b98e29ce7a3ce5 Operating any BTS without a very good clock reference (GPS-DO, calibrated OCXO) is like playing lottery. You may get lucky some times, with some phones, but in most cases it will fail one way or another, in very subtle ways.
At sysmocom, it seems we have bricked all three LimeSDR-mini we have by doing the usual gateware update using "LimeSuite master" last week or so. And no error at all was reported during the update. The devices simply are completely useless afterwards.
I also still have that lime mini we got on the OsmoDevCon, still unused. Might give it a spin then?
I also bricked my personal LimeSDR-mini by duing a LimeUtil --update to install the "latest" gateware (from June 2018!) like the three above-mentioned at sysmocom.
So whatever you do, I would recommend to be extremely careful with updating the firmware aka gateware.