Some more nanoVNA genealogy info. -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Re: [nanovna-users] Any plans to publish the NanoVNA board files Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2019 22:00:56 -0800 From: Gabriel Tenma White <OwOwOwOwO123@outlook.com> Reply-To: nanovna-users@groups.io To: nanovna-users@groups.io There is no official NanoVNA distributor because NanoVNA itself is a fragmented operation, with at least 3 different players that do not talk to each other, each with their own design. There are countless open source SI5351 based VNA designs on the internet, so the PCB layout is where most of the "magic" is. Currently the 3 players are hugen, flyoob, and bepissneks (parent of OwOComm), and each has designed their PCB layout from scratch, plus the cloners which all seem to copy the hugen layout. Edy555 does not currently manufacture or market NanoVNAs from what I know. No one has published their PCB layout so far (not even edy555). NanoVNA V2 might be the first one to have publicized PCB layout designs. The other thing to be aware of is that NanoVNA is much bigger in the Chinese market (compare hugen taobao sales to ebay/aliexpress sales combined), so so far hugen doesn't really care about "foreign" markets and so has not much presence on the English part of the internet. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#6808): https://groups.io/g/nanovna-users/message/6808 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/51382131/153337 -=-=- Learn about the NanoVNA in the following forum areas: Documentation & Update Files: https://groups.io/g/nanovna-users/files Knowledge-based Wiki: https://groups.io/g/nanovna-users/wiki -=-=- Group Owner: nanovna-users+owner@groups.io Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/nanovna-users/leave/6024957/547799214/xyzzy [jra@febo.com] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Hi John, I think the nano-VNA may deserve the moniker "poster child" as an instance of one dark side to "open source". It has become virtually impossible to tell what one is getting based on available pre-purchase information posted by a seller. So, I'm sitting here wondering exactly what I've got, where it came from, and what its specs and features really are. About all I know is that it was sold to me by Amazon under the Aursinc brand, and seems to have lots of shielding on the ECB. I did have an interesting notion yesterday wee hours, that the thing may have some usefulness as a utility sig gen. I had already noted that the thing was fairly close on frequency (well within 1PPM and fairly stable) within just a few minutes of turn-on. Viewing the CW spectrum on a RTSA suggests that the majority of the power is confined to a BW of about 1 Hz (excluding long term drift). So now I tried listening to the output on my best available working SSB receiver, at a frequency of about 578 MHz. To my ear, it sounded very clean and free of obvious drift over about the minute over which I listened. My next trick was to discover the frequency step size of the nano's synthesizer around the same frequency regime. Rather than do endless fiddling with the nano's somewhat flaky KB, I just set it up for a CF of 578 MHz and a span of 1 kHz, which ideally should have resulted in a step size of 10 Hz (synthesizer permitting). I first listened on the SSB reciever, and noted that I could easily hear the steps and that there were clearly a lot fewer than 100 of them. So I hooked it back up to the RTSA set to a 2 kHz span, turned on trace averaging, and sat back for a couple minutes before stopping acquisitions. I explored the trace with the RTSA's marker and found 10 peaks spanning 912.50 Hz, with almost uniform (but visibly imperfect) spacing. The marker step resolution was 3.125 Hz with the prevailing RTSA span setting of 2kHz, but the marker readout precision was only 0.01 Hz. The individual step values seen ranged from 84.38 Hz up to 115.62 Hz, a range of 31.24 Hz, about 10X the RTSA's marker step size. Therefore I cannot attribute much of the nano's apparent step size range to the marker resolution limit. So, I have to attribute the nano's nonuniform step size to something else, probably an oddball step size in its own synthesizer, with its FW having to find the nearest available frequency to each desired measurement frequency. I will be adding these observations to my ever-growing "blog" of observations on the nano-VNA, and will soon be sending an updated version to Jim Bacher. The version in the just- released "Anomalous Propagation" is already getting rather out of date. Fun stuff, these nano-VNAs, eh? Dana On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 9:23 AM John Ackermann N8UR via mvus-list < mvus-list@lists.febo.com> wrote: > Some more nanoVNA genealogy info. > > > -------- Forwarded Message -------- > Subject: Re: [nanovna-users] Any plans to publish the NanoVNA board files > Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2019 22:00:56 -0800 > From: Gabriel Tenma White <OwOwOwOwO123@outlook.com> > Reply-To: nanovna-users@groups.io > To: nanovna-users@groups.io > > There is no official NanoVNA distributor because NanoVNA itself is a > fragmented operation, with at least 3 different players that do not talk > to each other, each with their own design. There are countless open > source SI5351 based VNA designs on the internet, so the PCB layout is > where most of the "magic" is. Currently the 3 players are hugen, flyoob, > and bepissneks (parent of OwOComm), and each has designed their PCB > layout from scratch, plus the cloners which all seem to copy the hugen > layout. Edy555 does not currently manufacture or market NanoVNAs from > what I know. No one has published their PCB layout so far (not even > edy555). NanoVNA V2 might be the first one to have publicized PCB layout > designs. > > The other thing to be aware of is that NanoVNA is much bigger in the > Chinese market (compare hugen taobao sales to ebay/aliexpress sales > combined), so so far hugen doesn't really care about "foreign" markets > and so has not much presence on the English part of the internet. > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- > Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. > > View/Reply Online (#6808): https://groups.io/g/nanovna-users/message/6808 > Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/51382131/153337 > -=-=- > Learn about the NanoVNA in the following forum areas: Documentation & > Update Files: https://groups.io/g/nanovna-users/files Knowledge-based > Wiki: https://groups.io/g/nanovna-users/wiki -=-=- > Group Owner: nanovna-users+owner@groups.io > Unsubscribe: > https://groups.io/g/nanovna-users/leave/6024957/547799214/xyzzy > [jra@febo.com] > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- > > > > _______________________________________________ > mvus-list mailing list > mvus-list@lists.febo.com > http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/mvus-list_lists.febo.com >