Quickstart Guide for Windows

 

vna/J 3.1.8 available

The new version 3.1.8 of vna/J is released.

The application JAR can be downloaded from here as usual. The following updates are included in this version:

  • Driver for metroVNA extended
  • Fixed display bug for metroVNA in calibration load/save dialogs
  • Upgraded to jna-4.2.1.jar
  • Upgraded to purejavacomm-0.0.28.jar
  • miniVNA driver optimized for new serial library
  • miniVNA pro driver optimized for new serial library
  • miniVNA Tiny driver renamed to match physical device
  • miniVNA Tiny driver various bug fixes
  • miniVNA Tiny driver optimized for new serial library
  • Cable length measurement should now work for miniVNA again
  • Cable loss dialog extended
  • Number of over samples is now stored inside calibration block
  • Bugs fixed for metroVNA driver

Problems with vna/J on some Windows machines

Three users reported strange problems on their Windows machines. They have exception on the Windows command line like "java.long.Error" which leads to the problem, that no longer any serial ports are displayed in the "Analyzer setup" dialog.

Known bugs

The following bugs are in release 3.1.8 of vna/J.

  • In the data analysis dialog you can open two Smith-charts. When you move the cursor in one Smith-chart and then switch the focus to the other Smith-chart, the cursor is moved back to the starting frequency in both charts.s
  • Auto-scale checkbox is not stored to and restored from a preset file
  • There may be something wrong with the GD scale - has to be verified

"I spend a lot of time tuning filters so that the GD measurement option in V3.1.4 has been quite valuable - prior to this I had to export to Excel and calculate therein. I had updated the GUI to V3.1.5 about a month ago and found that the GD scaling has become unusable with the plot producing negative values and the auto/manual scaling just ramping to some impossible limit which you cannot alter to usable values. I reverted to V3.1.4 so as to enable the correct and very useable scaling.

Can you please confirm these last 2 updates have the observed GD error and perhaps enable a fix - I use XP Pro although I don't believe that this has anything to do with it.

Additionally, is there any reason why the GD function is not enabled on reflection (S11) data? You've probably no apparent reason for doing this (I suspect that a variation of this is used for cable length testing) but in fact it is a very useful parameter in passive filter work. Could this be enabled as it is the same calculation a the transmission (S21) data just a different data set? "

These bugs will be fixed in the near future.

vna/J 3.1.7 available

The new version 3.1.7 of vna/J is released.

The application JAR can be downloaded from here as usual. The following updates are included in this version:

  • Bug fixed in preset loading
  • Group delay scale bugs fixed
  • Graphic export now also works for group delay data
  • Port extension now also works with negative lengths

 

vna/J 3.1.6 available

The new version 3.1.6 of vna/J is released.

The application JAR can be downloaded from here as usual. The following updates are included in this version:

  • Erik, SM3HEW has again updated the Swedish translation
  • Tony, F4GTG has finished the French translation
  • Toshiyuki, JP1PZE has translated vna/J into Japanese
  • Fixed marker data in diagram export

 

Japanese manuals updated

Toshiyuki (JP1PZE) has again provided translations of vna/ manuals into Japanese.

The updated user guide can be found here and the new miniVNAtiny driver guide can be found here.

Or simply use the Documents menu to find all manuals.

 

vna/J 3.1.5 available

The new version 3.1.5 of vna/J is released.

The application JAR can be downloaded from here as usual. The following updates are included in this version:

  • Erik, SM3HEW has updated the Swedish translation - thanks again for his dedication to the community
  • Tony, F4GTG has done the first translation to French - thanks for your work!
  • Bug fixed in calibration for miniVNA and miniVNApro
  • Bug in frequency calibration for miniVNAtiny corrected

 

Japanese driver guide for the miniVNApro

Toshiyuki (JP1PZE) has again provided another translation for vna/J.

Please find the "Driver guide for the miniVNApro" translated to Japanese for download in the manual section!

vna/J 3.1.4 available

The new version 3.1.4 of vna/J is released.

As a new feature it supports now overscan in calibration mode 1. Please check chapter "User defined" on page 98 of the user guide.

The application JAR can be downloaded from here as usual.

Samples

Here is a collection of measurements I've done with vna/J.

vna/J version 3 on Mac OS X

Bootloader

I'm experiencing problems with the serial library on Mac OS X machines - the XON/XOFF protocoll, which is required by the new bootloader, is not working as expected.

I'm doing some research on this problem ... But you can use the latest version 3 JAR also on Mac OS X except the firmware load function for the miniVNA tiny analyser!

If you want to update the firmware on the miniVNA tiny please use a Microsoft Windows (XP, VISTA, 7, 8, 8.1) based PC.

App permissions

if you get a message from the OS X, that this developer is not valid, try to switch the App-Download permissions on the security tab in the system settings to "Mac App store and verified developers".

JAVA 8

Since JAVA 9 some internals for MAC OS X have changed. To get vna/J 3.3 on MAC OS Xrunning, it is necessary to install a JRE / JDK > 8.

You can download the JDK i.e. from ORACLE.

For details on this change check this document.

 

Headless application

Since version 2.9 of vna/J a command-line version of the vna/J GUI is available (I call this version also headless).

This command-line version can be used to execute automated scans, when no GUI is needed or graph-ical screen output is available.

Details can be found in the user guide for the headless application.

vna/J version 3 available

The new version 3 of vna/J is available for download. This is the first version which also supports the new miniVNA tiny. It can be downloaded as usual from here. 

A driver guide for the miniVNA tiny is not available, but will be provided in the near future.

Due to lack of time, the current version is only tested on Windows - Mac OS X is currently under testing.