[Xastir] Soundmodem

[Andrew Errington]

On Thu, 28 Jul 2011 02:05:05 Dale Seaburg wrote:
> On 7/27/2011 11:00 AM, Andrew Errington <a.errington at lancaster.ac.uk> wrote:
> > On Tue, 21 Jun 2011 22:54:38 Andrew Errington wrote:
> >> >  I am pleased to say that my code for driving PTT with a GPIO pin on a
> >> > USB audio chip has been incorporated into soundmodem v0.16.  Currently
> >
> > I am further pleased to announce that I have successfully sent messages
> > between two instances of Xastir connected to two instances of soundmodem
>
> Andrew,  excellent work!  Do you remember where you got the USB audio
> dongles that had the GPIO pins exposed - non-epoxy blobs?  The ones I
> have are the SSS1623 die with the epoxy blob.  Perhaps only the latest
> are the ones with the epoxy blob - cheaper to make.

Hi Dale,

I know exactly where I bought them, but they don't have the same device any 
longer.  The ones I have are in a slightly larger case with volume and mute 
buttons on the top.  The two original ones, which I used for the experiment, 
have SSS1623 chips (packaged, of course).  Now this store has the same 
looking case, but with either CM119 packaged chip or some epoxied chip.  The 
case is made from a smoky black plastic, and I am able to see the chip 
through the case and the packaging if I hold a torch against it.  I can see a 
square edged bump or a rounded bump for the two versions.  The store also has 
the smaller cased units with no buttons.  These seem to all be epoxy-blobbed.

Even though the CM119 chips are packaged I can not test the software on my 
laptop because for some reason the HID driver does not create a /dev/hidraw0 
device.  I may have to upgrade the driver if I can figure out how, or upgrade 
my Mepis 8.0 Linux to Mepis 11.  Or something.

So, in summary, I can buy soundcard dongles with CM119 packaged chips, but I 
can't test them.  I have successfully tested SSS1623 dongles but I can't buy 
them.  I expect that no ebay or other retailer would be able to check and 
confirm what's inside whatever they are selling.

This is exactly the same problem that TheLinkBox project is experiencing, and 
doubtless other projects that have discovered the nifty GPIO feature on these 
chips- can't find the packaged parts.

Good luck,

Andrew