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Forum Index : Electronics : 6GHz Frequency Counter - Silicon Chip
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panky Guru  Joined: 02/10/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1116 |
Hi Folks, Anyone here built the Silicon Chip 6GHz Frequency Counter or know of a web site/forum (other than Silicon Chip itself) where any issues etc. were discussed? Doug. ... almost all of the Maximites, the MicromMites, the MM Extremes, the ArmMites, the PicoMite and loving it! |
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Chopperp Guru Joined: 03/01/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1114 |
Hi Doug Just wondering if have had any luck with getting any other info on the counter? I haven't the need for one myself so I can't really help. Brian ChopperP |
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| panky Guru Joined: 02/10/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1116 |
No luck so far Brian - I have the E100 all done and working (have built a couple previously so, easy as) and have most of the frequency counter components done - just waiting for a couple of hard to get bits. The part I would be interested in is anyone going through the software. Not that I am a programmer but the structure of the program (IMHO) is a real mess with negligible comments so it is a nightmare to try and understand. They use a complex CFunction to work directly with the Timers on the PIC32MX470 but have also stuffed a lot of other functions into it (that could have easily done in MMBasic) which just adds to the confusion. Lastly, because the CFunction plays with the timers at chip level which screws up MMBasic. If you Control C out of the program or try to use the editor, the whole things locks up and needs a power down reset to recover - not nice. I have started thinking about using an ArmMite H7 platform with the ArmMite version of MMBasic to interface to the Frequency Counter module as this platform, based on the STM32H743 chip, has a high speed counter input, inbuilt GPS string handling and should be fast enough to obviate the need for CFunctions. I will need to make a backpack to interface the Nucleo H7 module to an LCD and also to emulate the E100 GPIO pinout for interconnection to the Frequency Counter module. Will soldier on - it will keep me out of trouble for a bit - not much else going on  Doug. ... almost all of the Maximites, the MicromMites, the MM Extremes, the ArmMites, the PicoMite and loving it! |
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| Chopperp Guru Joined: 03/01/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1114 |
OK, thanks for that Doug. You obviously thought of posting this on the microcontroller forum? keep at it Brian ChopperP |
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| walshpj64 Newbie  Joined: 21/10/2025 Location: AustraliaPosts: 6 |
Hi Doug, I have built one and even though it works as described i have found a couple of problems. 1. The sensitivity of the BNC input at low frequencies especially below 100KHz to be very poor. It even starts dropping off from about 1MHz. the lower you go you end up driving the input up to 2-3V sine wave to get any accurate reading. There is no problem with a square wave. Thinking it may be noise from the supply upsetting the TL3016I IC6 as there is some switching noise present which is raising the noise floor of the input. 2. The mmbasic code had some divide by 0 errors which caused the program to hang with the GPS attached after 15 minutes. The program is a bit of a minefield and being not very good with mmbasic I fed it through ChatGPT. To its credit it did find all the problems eventually with a bit of prompting. So now at least it runs constantly with the GPS. This has improved the accuracy greatly but not quite as i hopped. I have one of the Tamed GPS oscillators with a 10MHz output and using it as the GPS source via the NMEA serial and 1PPS I can plug that into the counter. It eventually after an hour it settles down adjusting the TCXO too much and reads around 10KHz high. The revised code still does a small glitch every 15min or so which surprisingly gets the counter within about 1-2Khz but it slowly drifts out, maybe temperature related, so I will have to look into that. Anyway i will keep plodding away. If anything its a good learning experience. As far as finding any other info available, i have had no luck other than your post. See a couple of pics for interest. and the revised code Cheers peter.   FreqCounter6GHz_Fixed_GPS_Hangs.bas.zip Edited 2025-12-23 12:59 by walshpj64 |
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