Beta testing has recently identified a couple of issues, one of which impacted Expert 1K-FA amplifier operation. Both of these have now been resolved and are available in the latest Beta – Version 0.7.3 Build 1005. The issues are further described below.

DTR Support

Expert Controller and Expert Controller Plus both include support for wake and sleep of amplifier’s using the serial interface RTS signal. DTR support has now also been added to Expert Controller Plus. Either or both can now be enabled / disabled when defining an amplifier Connection.

Expert 1K-FA Interface Specifications

Beta testing also identified that, for the Expert 1K-FA only, the SET | ANTENNA configuration did not respond to navigation using the left/right arrow controls and SET button correctly. (Thanks to VK2NP for helping identify this). The issue was tracked down to a difference between the SPE Rev 2.0 interface specification and Expert 1K-FA firmware implementation.

To resolve the issue Expert Controller Plus now supports the following three interface protocols:

• SPE Expert Default
• SPE Expert 1K-FA (Rev 2.0)
• SPE Expert 1K-FA (Rev 2.0) Variant 1.

SPE are very poor at publishing and updating programming guides. The Programmers Guide for their current amplifier range was issued in 2015 and has not been updated to include later models currently supported such as the 1.5K-Taurus.

The Expert 1K-FA is a discontinued product; it’s unknown whether the Rev 2.0 specification was ever implemented in firmware and if so, in which versions. The only firm data-points are that a variant of Rev 2.0 is implemented in Series III firmware 21-12-09H and in the currently available SPE Windows software for both the Series II and Series III.

Andy