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Rubicon

Frequency-Control-Tool for the FE5680A-Rubidium-Frequenzystandard

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Problem
The most popular Version of the Rubidium Frequenzy Standard FE5680A is tunable over a wide frequency range (0.5 MHz ... 20 MHz). The frequency  adjustment is normally done by help of a terminal program and a pocket calculator. My software simplifies this procedure.   

This tool supports only versions of the FE5680A which are equiped with a PIC-microcontroller controlled DDS-board.
 
Solution

Connect the  internal RS232-Connector of the DDS-board of the FE5680A with the RS232-port of the PC. On modern PCs a RS232-USB-Adapter may be required.

Connect the FE5680A to the power supply.

Launch the Rubicon-software. After a click on "Connect" one has to select the correct COM-port. Then the software connects to the FE5680A and reads out its momentary configuration. At the big display the value of the generated frequency is shown. The Hz- stands for the decimal point. that means the display has a resolution of 0.01 Hz.

Now a new frequency can be selected at the big display (using the little up/down-arrows). For convenience some standard frequencies can be selected by the drop down selector (select a frequency). But generally every frequency can be selected in 0.01 Hz increments.

The lowest usable frequency depends on the bandwidth of the analog parts in the FE5680A. Without modification frequencies down to 0,5 MHz can be generated. The highest possible frequency is the half of the physics-package frequency. This is about 25 MHz. The user has to keep this limits in mind. The software will not really care for this limits.

By a click on "Set Frequency" the FE5680A will be tuned to the new frequency. But after a power-off-on-cycle the FE5680A would be tuned back to its old frequency.

By a click on "Store", the new frequency will be stored permanently in the FE5680A. Therefor the new value will be stored in the EEPROM of the PIC-microcontroller. This EEPROM has a lifetime of 10 million write-cycles. That means the store-function can be used practically unlimited times.

foto


The "Check"-button reads out its momentary configuration. This is exactly the same function, that is used after "Connect".

In the parameters-field the software shows the individual calibration constat of the FE5680A.
The data transfere between PC and FE5680A  is shown in the text-window at the rigt side of the program window.

The software is a single exe-file, and can be started directly (no installation required). It dont writes anything into the registry and will not store any data on the PC. Even the number of the used COM-port is not stored.



Download

Verbesserungen

V1.0 (27.06.2014)
  First-Light-Version.


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Autor: sprut
generated: 28.06.2014
last change: 28.06.2014