All items should have a common and equal ground. Sharing it.
Without it you can have unexpected current flows.
With it, you can more easily pinpoint where the flows are coming from.
Note though, that there is a difference between FRAME ground and a digital ground.
Normally, frame ground is equal to power negative. But not a rule.
That was the first tell tale sign you have an electrical issue when you could not connect the grounds together.
Without authority, I think it is a problem of your sound fob. They are not all the same as we would wish and they seem to keep making them cheaper with time.
I would order f few from some other vendor who might be unlikely to draw from the same batch or have an older stockpile.
I recently built my first ASL node with ASL3 on a Dell thin-client PC using two HTs and a R1-2023 (Thank you to David Gleason, @NR9V, for https://www.allscan.info/docs/diy-node.php). When I first got things running, the transmit HT would mostly stay keyed - only dropping occasionally during the boot up process and when it should have been changing states.
I kept searching for a hardware problem thinking I must have wired something up wrong. Ultimately, I found that in my usbradio.conf file the invertptt was set to yes in the node-main stanza and there was no invertptt setting in the stanza for my node. I added invertptt=no to my nodeās stanza and it solved the problem.
The only reason my HT was even keying up for transmitting was I had VOX enabled on the HT. After fixing the invertptt setting and turning the HTās VOX off things were working correctly.
I connected the ground wires of the fob and the handset. Readings as asked for by @N8EI are given below;
3.285V between PTT and GND before any radio transmit
1.45V between PTT and GND during expected PTT (i.e. ASL show keyed)
1.8V to 2V between PTT and GND after expected PTT (i.e. ASL shows clear, UV82 still transmitting)
As TOT kicks in it returns to 3.28V
@Mike I am thinking so too. It could be that there has been some minor component change. I have ordered from a few more from a different vendor but it will take a week or so to arrive.
The reason I couldnāt connect the grounds together was my lack and oversight of electrical knowledge. I completely overlooked that gnd has to be linked. The reason I removed it was that in the very first instances I thought it was the issue and since I was getting same results with or without it, I didnāt reattach it. I will test connecting it inside the body of the PC and post my results.
I will also try to add a 0.01uF ceramic capacitor between C and E on the transistor as suggested by AP2CJ in Upgraded THE CONDOR CONNECTION - Echolink Node AP2CJ-R (between pins 7 and 5) as well as the additional 10k resistor if it helps.
Hi! Thank you @bdwalker1 for bringing it to my attention. I just checked my file and it was set to no. I am thinking of resetting my HT settings. I have already confirmed VOX is off. Letās hope for the best!
Update: Adding 0.01uf ceramic capacitor (labelled 103) between C and E legs of fob, as suggested by iceman AP2CJ, resolved the issue. PTT gets released as expected.
Thank you @Mike and @N8EI for teaching me so much! Looking forward to making more nodes like this.
