Test Findings

I have made some very interesting observations while running the ALC tests. As I stated in the last post, I set up an indicator that would blink Red when the ALC exceeded the stored setting in DDUtil.

SURPRISE, the indicator never turns Red. Thinking there had to be a mistake I tracked the actual ALC voltage readings and sure enough the ALC voltage never exceeded the stored setting. Well, isn't this interesting. This just goes to show that once you set the Flex drive that it never exceeds that level. I even tried yelling into the mike and every other trick I could think of to make it over drive and it wouldn't.

Conclusion:

• Given the fact that there is no longer any compelling reason to monitor the ALC and
  
• Such monitoring is very expensive in CPU usage and
  
• Even if ALC excursions exceeded the setting, it takes a 1/2 second or more to react to such actions which is a little late to be of any practical benefit and
• There is a lot of software overhead required in DDUtil to support this feature.
  

I have decided not to pursue the ALC experiment any further. I have always been dubious of this being a practical solution to ALC control. I think the Auto Drive feature in DDUtil is the answer for controlling amplifier power output and no other device/cost is required. For those interested in the Auto Drive feature see DDUtil version 1.7.2

However, not to say a different type of connected device wouldn't be of practical use. I can see a Micro Processor Unit to monitor the ALC voltage and other functions. The ALC monitoring would be mainly for catastrophic events like the antenna being open or shorted. Adding a MCU would greatly increase the complexity and cost of a project like this to the point of being pointless. I do plan to play around with an ARM 9 MCU as a connected device (TCP/IP) some time later this year.

What's Next
As far as the FlexWire Adapter, the BCD ports has proven to be a real success and so far reliable. However, without the ALC feature I'm unsure there would be enough interest to make it feasible to continue with the project. This will have to be determined later after I poll the group.

There probably won't be much more activity on this blog unless something creates a need.

Thanks for the interest.