[time-nuts] Lady Heather and the NTGS50AA

EB4APL eb4apl at cembreros.jazztel.es
Mon Jan 20 19:53:56 EST 2014


Hi Nigel,

Yes, I had tried Tboltmon v 2.60 but probably because it was very late 
and a senior moment  I didn't notice the GPSTM tab which precisely have 
the lights function that I was talking about, thank you for the hint.
The capability of turning the lights is not important, it is just 
aesthetics.  I have enclosed my board in a recycled HiFi cabinet, 
mounted the separate panel board at the front and  these monitoring LEDs 
are visible at the front panel.  Then I labeled them and now I have a 
permanent "Comm fault" ON and a "Normal" light OFF.  This is normal 
because the NTGS50AA is not communicating anymore with its intended cell 
tower equipment but it is annoying and I have to explain it to any 
friend who sees it and says "Ignacio, you have an alarm!".
For all practical purposes I use  Lady Heather, it is plenty of useful 
functions and the author kindly added support for these boards when they 
appeared in eBay but unfortunately this version not handle the lights 
that are used only in there.

Regards,
Ignacio EB4APL



On 19/01/2014 10:26, GandalfG8 at aol.com wrote:
> Hi Ignacio
>   
> Your mention of the lights control had me confused for a minute, probably
> not that difficult these days:-), because I do remember seeing that so was
> wondering if the GPSTM tool had worked for me at one time after all.
>   
> However, a search through the various trimble programs reminded me  that
> the Thunderbolt monitor, Tboltmon 2v60, has a GPSTM tab that does just this
> and I've checked the LED control and that works ok here, although I'm not
> sure  why I would ever need it.
>   
> I can't say whether or not the GPSTM tool has other options this lacks but
> it might be worth a try anyway.
>   
> If you haven't already got it you should be able to find Tboltmon online
> but I'm happy to send you a copy if you wish.
>   
> I've also found that the NTGS50AA is as vulnerable as other Trimble kit
> when it comes to swapping about the various Trimble control programs, this one
>   at the moment has decided to default to internal port B and so far refuses
>   to permanently store any instructions to switch back again!!
> Here we go again, anyone seen my hammer?
>   
> To return to the subject line though, Lady H still dives in  without
> hesitation and just gets on with the job, she really is one  very capable Lady:-)
>   
> Regards
>   
> Nigel
> GM8PZR
>   
>   
>   
> In a message dated 19/01/2014 01:12:45 GMT Standard Time,
> eb4apl at cembreros.jazztel.es writes:
>
> Hi  Nigel,
>
> The GPSTM tool (The program identifies itself as GPS Monitor v  1.5, to
> contribute to the entropy) also gives the same errors when  connected to
> my NTGS50AA, caused by bad programming that becomes crazy  when listening
> to a device that sends data at 9600 Bd, but in the rare  occasions when
> it syncs it works quite well and it has specific  Trimble-Nortel
> functions for the NTGS50AA and its cousins, like the  ability to handling
> the front panel lights.
> Using the other GPS  monitor, the GPS Studio or even the Thunderbolt
> monitor is easy as they  seems to recognize the baud rate but they lack
> the special features noted  above.
> I too prefer Lady Heather, it  is another kind (better) of  animal with a
> lot of other useful  things.
>
> Regards,
> Ignacio
>
>
> On 18/01/2014 17:19,  GandalfG8 at aol.com wrote:
>> Hi Ignacio
>>    
>> I'm  not familiar with the GPSTM tool, trying to run it here gen.erates
>>   exception errors, but from what I see when it's trying to boot it's much
>   the
>> same format as Trimble's various other  offerings.
>>    
>> If you run Trimble GPS Monitor though,  version 1.6 was the latest but
> 1.05
>> is fine too, and that  doesn't connect there's likely to be a box  showing
>> "IDLE" in the  bottom right hand corner of the displayed screen for  that.
>> If  you right click that you should get a drop down menu with the top item
>>   "COM Port..."
>> Left clicking that should bring up a small panel   for selecting Com  port
>> and settings with a tick button for  Auto-detect settings.
>> If you select that tick button and hit OK it  should run through all that
>> standard options for baud rate and  protocol etc and should hopefully find
>> whatever it's set to at the  moment.
>>    
>> I've just tried this with an NTGS50AA  that's been running with Lady
> Heather
>>    and it very quickly  connected using TSIP at 9600-8-None-1.
>>    
>> Once  running in GPS monitor it's fairly straightforward to change
> settings
>>   to what you prefer, at least it is for appropriate Trimble GPS modules
> but
>> I haven't tried using it to make changes with the  NTGS50AA.
>>    
>> I have observed though that Lady  Heather can make other  unexpected
> changes
>> at times.
>> I've  been playing with some Trimble Resolution T and Resolution SMT
> modules
>>    recently, along with various different versions of  Trimble GPS
> software as
>>    well as Lady Heather, and was  losing settings, apparently at random,
>> until I realised that Lady H  was changing the format for output data
> such  as
>> position and  altitude etc to alternative formats that GPS Monitor and
> Trimble
>>   Studio, for example wouldn't or couldn't display.
>>    
>>   It's easy enough to put them back, and once done they seem to survive
>>   different versions of Trimble software as well as power cycling etc etc,
>    but
>> when run with Lady H they reset again.
>> Once aware of this  I've just accomodated it and haven't bothered to
>> investigate further,  so it's quite possibly something in a config file
> that  could
>> be  changed, but to be fair to Lady H, Trimbles own software isn't best
>>   behaved at times either.
>>    
>> When running the  NTGS50AA with GPS monitor just now I noticed the
> position
>> data is  greyed out, even though it still displays fine with Lady H, but
> I'm
>>   a  bit more cautious about tempting to configure these with  Trimble's
>> software and  much prefer running them with Lady H  anyway.
>>    
>> Regards
>>    
>>   Nigel
>> GM8PZR
>>    
>>     
>>    
>>    
>> In a message dated  18/01/2014 14:57:03 GMT Standard Time,
>> eb4apl at cembreros.jazztel.es  writes:
>>
>> I have a  NTGS50AA working with the Lady Heather  last version which
>> incorporate  support for this board (Thanks  Mask Sims).
>> When I bought the board I used  the Trimble utility  GPS Monitor (GPSTM
>> Commissioning Tool V1.5) to set it  up and in  the way knowing that it was
>> previously  working in   Guatemala.  This program uses COM1 or 2 with a
>> fixed  configuration of  19200, 7,Odd and 1stop bit. After using LH it
>>   seems that it changed the  parameters to 9600.0.N,1 probably using  an
>> undocumented command and the  board stores this configuration  even if
>> unpowered.  But now I can't  use  the Trimble  program because it refuses
>> to connect, even it  crashes when  trying to connect at 19200 baud.
>> Strangely it worked a  couple of  times when I was trying to command the
>> leds in the panel but I   don't know how it managed to change the baud
> rate.
>> Does anybody know  how to  change the configuration of the board serial
>> port, maybe  an undocumented  command? I have the manual but I don't find
>>   anything neither in the LH  documentation.
>>
>>   Regards,
>> Ignacio
>>
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