WSPR Without Tears
Troubleshooting - It Doesn't Work ...
Well, we'd hoped that you wouldn't ever have to get to this page, but …
We've tried very hard to make sure that everything is correct, however sometimes stuff happens ;-) The
good news is it's all fixable. Follow the steps in the order given. We're assuming that something isn't
working right at this point, so let's find out what it is.
1. Check that the pcb is plugged into the Pi correctly.
2. Check that you've got the Pi Ethernet cable plugged into the Pi and that the other end of the
Ethernet cable is going to your router (not your laptop).
3. Check that the red LED on the
Pi
turns on when power is applied.
4. Verify that the software is working by bringing up the web page (type the IP address into the
address line of your browser on your PC/Mac/Linux box: 192.168.aaa.bbb). If the web page
displays then the software is probably working okay. The Pi should have power for this test.
You may have to run the WSPR_Locater program to find the IP address of the Pi and then enter
the IP address into the address bar of the browser.
If the web page doesn't display or WSPR_Locater can't find the Pi then press and hold the
shutdown button for 2 sec and unplug the power supply. Wait for 30 sec and plug in the power
supply. Wait for the LED's to stop blinking and try to access the web page again. If this fails to
work there may be a problem with the software load on the SD card.
5. Press the pushbutton on the WWoT and hold for two seconds. Wait until the LED's on the Pi
stop flashing and unplug the power to the Pi.
6. Unplug the power supply and remove the WWoT from the Pi. Look at the board. Is anything
odd looking or out of place? Look at both sides of the board.
7. Okay, it's time to reassemble the circuit board to the Pi header, get our your voltmeter and turn
on the power. The voltmeter ground lead should be connected to the ground test (
Gnd
) point
next to the push button.
We've listed voltages in the schematic (above) as
transmit/idle
, so for example, the voltage on the
power supply rail (top wire in the schematic) is shown as (4.51/4.67). This means that we measured
4.51 volts between the power supply rail and ground (
Gnd
) while the unit was transmitting, and 4.69
volts when is was not transmitting (idle).
Keep in mind that we're using a cheap DVM, you're probably using a cheap DVM, and component
tolerances could be all over the place. This means that if your readings are within, say 10%-20% of
ours that they're probably okay.
TAPR (c) 2018-2019 “WSPR Without Tears” 14 Of 20 Version 2.1
05/20/2019
