MacBe RX014 User Manual
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MacBe RX014 User Manual

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RX014
User Manual
© NL 2017

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Summary of Contents for MacBe RX014

  • Page 1 RX014 User Manual © NL 2017...

  • Page 2: Table Of Contents

    RX014-User Manual Page: 2 CONTENTS Contents ..............................2 Preface ..............................4 Document Purpose and Scope ......................... 5 Programmers information ........................5 Installation ............................. 5 Abbreviations ............................6 1. Main window ............................8 1.1. RECEIVER Control ........................9 1.2. Indicators ..........................10 Detector window ...........................

  • Page 3: List Of Figures

    RX014-User Manual Page: 3 LIST OF FIGURES RX014 GUI on Startup. Figure 1....................... 8 Display when the RX014 is tuned to a station that is transmitting RDS data. Figure 2........8 The Detector Window Figure 3....................... 12 The Scanner Window Figure 4.

  • Page 4: Preface

    This manual refers to firmware and GUI versions 1.9 and later. The latest GUI can always be downloaded from the site (www.RX014.com) and should you require a firmware update, just drop me an e-mail and I’ll send you a special program with instructions to update your unit.

  • Page 5: Document Purpose And Scope

    RX014 to your existing antenna system using one of the supplied adapters. On the memory stick is a setup file which should be run to install the RX014 GUI on your hard drive. An icon named RX014 will be created. Click on that icon to start the RX014 GUI.

  • Page 6: Abbreviations

    RX014-User Manual Page: 6 ABBREVIATIONS Abbreviation Meaning Graphical User Interface ( = the Control Program) Cyclic Redundancy Check NMEA National Marine Electronics Association RSSI Received Signal Strength Indication Ultra Sonic Noise Wide band AM or Multi-path Intermediate Frequency Emergency Alert System...
  • Page 7 RX014-User Manual Page: 7 Location Table Number TISA Traveler Information Services Association FIPS Federal Information Processing Standard 27 October 2017 Version: 1.03...

  • Page 8: Main Window

    Page: 8 1. MAIN WINDOW When you click the RX014 icon on your desktop, the main window of the Control Program will appear and will look like in the figure below, when no antenna is connected or station is received: RX014 GUI on Startup.

  • Page 9: Receiver Control

    RX014 headphone output without affecting the volume level setting. This completes the tour of the general control of the RX014. I expect the RX014 often will be used in a vehicle, so mouse control is not always easy. Therefore, several functions may also be controlled via the keyboard.

  • Page 10: Indicators

    FM radio display. When the RX014 is tuned to a station which broadcasts RDS and RDS2 data, the indicator bar will change to: showing in this case that all 4 streams (0..3) are receiving data.
  • Page 11 In each line of text, two parts of the text can be tagged as shown below Naturally, the RX014 R(B)DS decoder incorporates this RT+ technology. The latest improvement is the use of enhanced Radio Text or eRT. In eRT characters are coded using the UTF-8 coding scheme, which allows the presentation of text in all languages as shown below.

  • Page 12: Detector Window

    0..42 dB in steps of 6 dB. Search Criteria are shown on the right side of the window. The values there cause the RX014 to stop at a station during a search. RSSI must be higher than the set value, USN and WAM should both be below the set level and the offset should be within the set window.

  • Page 13: Scanner Window

    The Scanner Window Figure 4. After pressing the scan button a graph is generated in about 10 seconds. The RX014 will step through the band in 100 kHz steps and take an RSSI sample at each step, resulting in an image similar to the one at left.

  • Page 14: Figure 6. Alternative Frequency Display With Rds After Scan

    Figure 6. The PS is validated before being shown in the table. The RX014 decoder wants to receive 2 identical PS readings before providing it to the GUI. While waiting, every received character is shown but at the end the entry could be blank again---this often happens with stations which are using the PS as advertising or information medium.
  • Page 15 RX014-User Manual Page: 15 Below is the result of the copy action: You will notice that the scan button caption changes to “ABORT” when the RDS features are being checked. As may be expected, the evaluation can be stopped at any time while reading RDS data by clicking “ABORT”.

  • Page 16: Figure 7. Fast Scan And Scan Display

    RX014-User Manual Page: 16 When the “Valid only” button is highlighted, the RX014 will only check stations that fully match the search criteria on RSSI, USN, WAM and Offset. When not highlighted only RSSI and Offset are evaluated before reading RDS data. This button will be enabled after checking the “Check RDS after scan” option.

  • Page 17: Figure 9. Live Update Scan With Alternative Frequency Display

    RX014-User Manual Page: 17 Live Update Scan with Alternative Frequency Display Figure 9. The “Show AFs” function has also been activated in this picture to show the actual usefulness when you drive around in an area where AF switches occur frequently. While...

  • Page 18: Rf + Af Window

    The RDS quality graph is updated at each new arriving RDS group every 87.6 ms. In contrast, the other graphs are updated at the RX014 “usual” interval of about 200 ms. The graphs are less interesting for stationary reception. The figure below shows the detector values at some search and step events.

  • Page 19: Rds Window

    PC and you want to determine the RX014 the current GUI is controlling, just click the Locate button and the RX014 connected to the current GUI will flash its red LED a couple of times times. The RX014 continuously checks for new RDS data using a 40 ms timer. When a new valid group is available, it is send to the host for further processing.
  • Page 20 RX014-User Manual Page: 20 done inside the RX014, such as PI code and raw PS retrieval. Also an AF list is assembled (if present) which is used for the AF update mechanism (if enabled). Using the same 40 ms timer as the RDS reader, the status update runs at a slower pace of about 200 ms.
  • Page 21 AFs while driving in an area where one can expect regular AF switches. When this checkbox is activated (it is off by default), the RX014 runs the AF update mechanism fully autonomously. The AF updates will occur at irregular intervals as regular disturbances of the audio might get audible to the user.
  • Page 22 “Remote control” is a very powerful option of the RX014 control program. You can connect to a PC anywhere on the globe and take control of the RX014 which is connected to that PC or you can connect to the DS016, which is a docking station for the RX014, meaning no PC is required at the location of the RX014.
  • Page 23 In this configuration setting you “tell” the modem/router it must send all received packets which are addressed to this port number must be sent to the PC which hosts the RX014. Make sure you use a port number which is not blocked by your provider! A similar approach should be taken when you want to connect to a remote RX014 which is plugged into the DS016 docking station.
  • Page 24 ODA’s will be used on these carriers. More information on RDS2 can be found in the RDS specification of 2016. The RX014 will automatically adjust several windows when RDS2 is being received. The user may however also select the lay-out manually using this selection box.

  • Page 25: Logging

    1..0: error code block D The Error codes and indicator colors associated with block errors are listed in the figure below. The RDS Block Error codes and RX014 Error Color legend. Figure 14. No error; block data was received with matching data and syndrome.
  • Page 26 RX014-User Manual Page: 26 When you want to have a closer look at the details in the logging window, you can momentarily “freeze” the logging in the window by pressing and holding the Shift key on your keyboard and a the same time clicking inside the logging window with your mouse.
  • Page 27 The values in the column labelled “Not used by RX014” are always 00 00 and exist for compatibility with TRX011 log files. In stead of logging data to file, the RX014 can also log data to another PC via a network connection using a UDP protocol: When this option is selected a hew w pane appears as shown below: When the machine to log to is connected to the same “subnet”...
  • Page 28 RX014-User Manual Page: 28 When developing ODAs or checking special R(B)DS features it often comes in handy to log only selected groups. Selecting the different checkboxes allows you to choose which groups should be shown in the left pane and logged.
  • Page 29 Pressing the Close button aborts the entire operation. The Content report configuration will be stored for the next time. On the RX014 web site, and on the installation stick, a sample of such an Excel file can be found. A new and very powerful feature has recently been added on customer request!
  • Page 30 RX014-User Manual Page: 30 As can be seen in the RF picture, carrier 3 was added at a later moment in time. When no R(B)DS is being received, no data is entered and hence no logging takes place. For users who are for instance mapping the coverage area of a transmitter, an extra logging option has been added in the form of the Log RF to file.

  • Page 31: Statistics

    RX014-User Manual Page: 31 5.3. STATISTICS The Statistics button opens a window showing a breakdown of the received groups and blocks both in numbers as in percentages. From this breakdown a lot can be learned, not only in terms of reception quality but also on the transmission scheme of the operator.
  • Page 32 RX014-User Manual Page: 32 In this picture stream 1 is used for enhanced Radio Text and enhanced Radio Text plus (eRT and eRT+), stream 2 is used for additional TMC information and stream 3 carries paging data which was used for an Alert system.

  • Page 33: Basic

    Several new features are already present in the RX014 GUI. One of them is enhanced Radio Text or eRT for short. This is a free ODA to transmit text which is coded using UTF-8. In total 128 bytes are available for a single line of text.
  • Page 34 RX014-User Manual Page: 34 “real” A/B flag is not inspected. Reason for not showing it in the picture above is that in this picture I had chosen to show the eRT message rather than the RT message. eRT however has no A/B flag but uses another mechanism to notify the receiver of a new text.
  • Page 35 In each line of text 2 items may be “tagged”. In the RX014 GUI these tagged items are shown by different colors (red and blue). When you select one of the text lines, the details on the tags are shown at the bottom of the window.
  • Page 36 RX014-User Manual Page: 36 The top section of the pictures shows the details of the 2 ODA’s which are used to transmit eRT and eRT BTW: the messages were received over air and created and sent by the TRX011 (www.TRX011.com). With this device you can easily create eRT messages by using “copy and paste”...

  • Page 37: Eon

    RX014-User Manual Page: 37 5.5. Enhanced Other Networks (EON) is an extremely powerful feature of the R(B)DS system. As the name already implies it is only used in cases of networks which are in some way linked together, like for instance in the UK by Radio1, BBC2, BBC3, etc.
  • Page 38 RX014-User Manual Page: 38 programme you were listening to. Even when you were listening to another source (CD, MP3 or so), your radio would mute that source, switch to the “Traffic program” when you activated this function and would revert back to the original program when the message is done. Quite often you, as a regular user, can also set a different volume level or offset to the current volume for these types of messages to make sure you do not miss them.

  • Page 39: Tmc

    RX014-User Manual Page: 39 5.6. TMC is short for Traffic Message Channel and should not be mixed up with the traffic information provided by the TP and TA flags. The traffic information provided by the TP and TA flags is audio information and is being broadcast as spoken text, whilst the TMC information is a coded signal mainly intended for navigation systems.

  • Page 40: Tuning Formation

    RX014-User Manual Page: 40 In the ODA group itself (8 in the figure above) the Service Provider Name (SPN) is made known for user information and several details which only are of concern to the navigation system. 5.6.2. TUNING FORMATION Similar to the programme following feature using the AF list and PI code, also the TMC system provides information where the same information is being broadcast.

  • Page 41: Message Information

    RX014-User Manual Page: 41 selected to show its details, and the mapped AFs are displayed. 5.6.3. MESSAGE INFORMATION In this window, the contents of the actual messages are shown. The TMC Message Information Window. Figure 21. The TMC message source is a message carousel from which entries disappear and to which message are added.
  • Page 42 RX014-User Manual Page: 42 Diversion | Group number. Diversion: indicates whether drivers are advised to find and follow an alternate route. Group number: the message number in a “multi-message” message. Dir and Extent Direction and Extent: Indicates the number of segments, adjacent to the location, affected by the situation, and where appropriate, the direction concerned.

  • Page 43: Eas

    RX014-User Manual Page: 43 The Emergency Alert Tab is fully dedicated to the system that has been used in demonstration projects in the U.S. Gulf Coast area in 2014. This demonstration project was been initiated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and was designed for an at-risk population who are hard-of-hearing and profoundly deaf.

  • Page 44: Identity, Af & Geo

    RX014-User Manual Page: 44 5.7.2. IDENTITY, AF & GEO Each message can be identified by a large number of categories and descriptions as shown below. The details of all the possible codes are described in the specification which can also be found on the installation stick.

  • Page 45: Message And Timing

    RX014-User Manual Page: 45 5.7.3. MESSAGE AND TIMING In this window the actual message is presented as well as some timing information on when the message was originated and how long it will persist. The EAS Messages & timing Window Figure 24.

  • Page 46: Additional

    I am continually improving my products. Customer requests for additional features are welcomed. As usual, all updates are free for the RX014 purchasers, and can always be freely downloaded from the download page of the site www.RX014.com...

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