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[ingoreis]

Interreresting News,thank you.
Maybe you can locate the Sound with an (german Word: Richtmikrofon und trichter).
I do not know many about sound searching but maybe you will find it with a good Microphone and an amplifer.

 

[Djoga'Ro]

Or just ask Ant-Man for help

 

[sebt3]

However, if it's also making a racket (sirring?) when USB is being used - that could be a worse issue to try to work around. How loud is it? Is it a minor must be ear-on unit in a quiet room to hear or is it a wailing screeching makes the dog howl siren?

Pretty much the former. When Ed told me yesterday, I was surprised as I didnt have noticed the issue since I've used USB recdently on my device. To confirm I was having the issue, I needed to go in a quiete room, and put the pyra close to my ear to ear that sound... but maybe a dog wont like it, and it's something to look after even if it's not loud enough to be annoying for me

 

[AndiTheBest]

The videos posted from @Bernd really make sense.
As the noise is only generated when using an USB device, it could be any capacitor(C601-C607) connected to the TPS2505RGW(U602) USB-Boost converter.
If you use an USB device that needs more power, the noise is maybe louder.

I think it should be possible to test my theory by using an external powered USB hub.
If this is the problem, it can easily be solved by using class 1 capacitors instead of class 2 ones (if actualy class 2 are used), like explained in the videos.

 

[Kippykip]

Thanks for the news, it was due for a while already
Great to learn that by increasing the voltage to 1.39v the 4GB unit works now. Yay! That feels like a big step towards the finish line.
One more question,
Has the mobile network been tested yet?

Mobile was tested a long time ago afaik, so the browser can access the internet etc.
But you won't be able to call/SMS without some software programmed for it.
Hopefully someone eventually writes it when the pyra's finished.

 

[Plex]

I actually plan to also play commercial games with Moonlight, streaming from my Windows gaming PC.
The Pyra has L2/R2/L3/R3 and both Wifi (5GHz) and LTE, making it a potentialy very good device for that purpose.

yea sure. also, are the analog sticks clickable for L3 and R3?

 

[elvissteinjr]

Reread the news post carefully: We'll make simplified PCBs for testing on confirming. PCBs that will only have everything for the Wifi reception on them.

I do indeed not remember reading that part for some reason. Nevermind me then!
Let's just hope that it's not some interference from parts that are not part of that somehow. At this point nothing would surprise me. Embedded hardware seems really tricky.

 

[notaz]

It's already a bit better than the pandora... Bandwidth is OK for me. The most annoying part is that it disconnect every 2mn or so.

In my setup it's worse, pandora used to connect while pyra never does. For aTc it works, so it depends on the router and other things, kind of like on pandora. Let's hope it can be fixed...

Pretty much the former. When Ed told me yesterday, I was surprised as I didnt have noticed the issue since I've used USB recdently on my device. To confirm I was having the issue, I needed to go in a quiete room, and put the pyra close to my ear to ear that sound... but maybe a dog wont like it, and it's something to look after even if it's not loud enough to be annoying for me

The whine depends on the load (what device you connect) and probably differs between boards too, as the components differ slightly, so do their resonance parameters and such. I can hear it from anywhere in the room and find it extremely annoying.

 

[sebt3]

In my setup it's worse, pandora used to connect while pyra never does. For aTc it works, so it depends on the router and other things, kind of like on pandora. Let's hope it can be fixed...

I've 2 AP here, the pandora connect to one but not the other one... the pyra the reverse

Have you tried changing the band of your router ?

 

[Kippykip]

yea sure. also, are the analog sticks clickable for L3 and R3?

Yeah they're click-able

 

[GinGordon]

Use a stethoscope to locate the noisy part, or a little electrotet microphone.

 

[WizardStan]

I needed to go in a quiete room, and put the pyra close to my ear to ear that sound.

Reminds me of this old camera I had. It was real fancy, had a built in flash, but it took 30 seconds or so to "warm up". You'd hold a button and press it against your ear, you could tell it was "charged" when the sound ... either stopped or became stable, I forget which. Point is that you needed to listen for the capacitor charging, and by the description that's basically what's happening here, some capacitor is being weird.
[doublepost=1502760044,1502759823][/doublepost]

That's one less to go :
https://www.pyra-handheld.com/pipermail/kernel/2017-August/thread.html

For the curious and non-technical, it needed 1.39v instead of 1.35. Easily fixed with software though no one seems sure as to why there's this slight discrepancy. I'm hoping someone used a probe to verify that it was actually getting 1.35v, and not accidentally bleeding off a little bit somewhere.

 

[levi]

I'm not sure if flash whine is a design feature or not - my flash gun does have a little light that tells you when it's charged, but if you've got it set up across the room and flashing remotely, it's much easier to listen to when the whine stops after each flash. But in terms of things that definitely aren't designed to whine, different units will behave very differently.

My Pandora wifi won't connect to my new router at all, and nor will the wifi nubbin supplied by ED, but I can still use a different usb wifi stick and get online through that. If my Pyra needs similar, at least it should also have 4G for times when I want to check something but can't be bothered to get up and find the one working wifi stick.

 

[elwing]

I'm not sure if flash whine is a design feature or not - my flash gun does have a little light that tells you when it's charged, but if you've got it set up across the room and flashing remotely, it's much easier to listen to when the whine stops after each flash.

Flash works with higher voltage levels, using a condensator to store the energy, the way the charge circuit work, you pretty much get some automatic whining... Getting completely rid of it is certainly really hard. It is certainly not easy to get rid of noise in a device like the pyra, but at the energy level of your flashing unit, almost any component can start making noise...

 

[fusion_power]

This "coil whining" seems to be an modern disease in electronic devices. Even big companies fail to eliminate it, I know from diverse GFX cards that have serious coul whining issues, even high price Laptops suffer from it like the actualy great Dell XPS series. I wonder why this became such an big problem and seems to be hard to fix.

 

[ImmaculateChimp]

Yeah they're click-able

You know, I'm still not entirely certain if the Pyra's analog discs will work properly for PlayStation-style "L3" & "R3" use. Mechanically, even if they technically click in any position off of center (I'm not certain if they do or not), that doesn't necessarily mean they can send an "L3" & "R3" signal in any position off of center, let alone click and send an "L3" & "R3" signal while the analog discs are in motion which is super important for PlayStation-style "L3" & "R3" use.

 

[Binky]

What about RF noise? I've recently noticed my pandora interferes with FM radio (somewhere around 100MHz) when placed within 50cm or so of the receiver’s antenna. I'm pretty sure it's related to the display, as the sound changes when the picture changes. I've also noticed similar noise when charging - but then I'm using a USB charger, which could well be the culprit.

Not a major worry or anything, but might be worth testing?

(For the security nut, I' think someone demonstrated that it's roughly possible to reconstruct the display image from the RF leakage. ish...)

 

[comradekingu]

okay this will sound mad, but it has worked for me....

take a pencil and chop the ends of so both are flat

press one end against the bone just above your ear, press the other end against coils and even capacitors until the sound feels loudest...

Could try a stethoscope. High pitch whine will not conduct well through skin or bone.

 

[Zwerg01]

Not a major worry or anything, but might be worth testing?

Not a major issue? You will not geht CE or FCC-label and cannot sell the pyra in europe or usa.

 

[hns]

Get yourself an "Automotive Mechanic Stethoscope"

You lay down the end of the rod on parts without applying pressure to find where the noise comes from.

It's designed for finding higher frequency noise like rattling bearings.

you can tape or tie-wrap a smaller needle or pin to the stock tip if you need to.

Also, check capacitors. they are often the culprit.

We already tried a medical stethoscope but you hear: nothing. Trying to couple the noise mechanically with a "rod" is indeed an interesting idea. And can probably be simulated with a q-tip and the medical stethoscope...

What we also had tried a while ago is to use a tiny detached 4mm electret mic from the GTA04 (which makes it possible to listen to people speaking in 10m distance). But it was still not sensitive enough to clearly identify the source.

Yes, it could be the capacitors (electrostatic speaker). We have ceramic capacitors (to avoid tantalum and ageing) but they may make this noise...

It could even be the PCB: if wires with high current are too close to each other - and we have only 100µm isolation on the prototypes and pulse currents of several amperes - the electrical and magnetically fields could squeeze and stretch the PCB material.

Why is the noise USB related? There is a DC/DC converter for making 5V USB-Host voltage from the battery voltage. And this DC/DC has a converter frequency in audible range. How much energy is shifted around depends on the power consumption of the connected USB device. And an active memory stick draws more than an inactive. So USB operations change the power demand and pattern of current pulses. And some component (inductor, capacitor) in the power supply chain converts these current pulses into acoustic waves...

Regarding Wifi+Antennae: we want/have to change the ceramic chips antennas and have to find out first which one (out of 3 candidates) is the best one. It was difficult to even find some which are small enough, easy to buy, cheap to buy and are not too critical how they are mounted (goal: reproducible mass production). But now we have selected 3 models waiting for being measured and tested.

Why does this require a PCB layout modification? The prototypes up to now (Mainboard V5.1.3) have no dual-band antennas. When we switched from a WiLink6 module to the WL1837MOD a while ago we overlooked that it can and should handle two dual-band antennas for MIMO diversity (improving WiFi significantly, especially for small devices). But the current PCBs are designed for one 2.4 GHz and one 5 GHz antenna only. Placing a dual-band antenna there is not possible because a drop-in replacement with same dimensions simply does not exist.

And one more thing did turn out during evaluation: Chinese manufacturers exactly do what you tell them without asking. Because we had a bug in the layer setup data of the EAGLE board file, they simply produced as specified there. We didn't notice that bug with a local quick turnaround manufacturer because they ignore what the EAGLE board file specifies and they used their standard-PCB stack. So the early prototypes where antenna matching was calculated and basically tested were different from those which went to prototype production.