DIP Switches and Solder Jumper Settings:

There are 10 DIP switches plus 6 solder jumpers used for configuring various optional functions of the Mode-S Beast. Currenlty not all of them are in use and foreseen to further extensions.

At minimum one solder jumper is always needed at the TX-Data multiplexer: In most cases it is the solder jumper named USB, which connects the serial output of the FPGA to the USB interface. The other possible selections are Xport  and BlueTooth. Multiple connections are possible for TX-Data.

RX-Data currently is not used.

RTS-Handshake Signal is only used if you observe loss of data due to a large number of frames or due to a slow PC. It is explained later. It must only be connected to one of the output devices

The default or fallback position of the DIP switches is all off, means towards the LED: 1MBit/sec over USB, no special funtion activated.
In case of any problems with the Mode-S Beast, I always suggest falling back to this setting.

The 10 DIP switches on the component side of the PCB

DIP Switches in short:

DIP Function (if set to ON)
1,2 Baudrate
3 AVR Format for transmission over Ethernet
4 DF11/17 filter: The Mode-S Beast only decodes DF-17 and DF-11 frames
5 MLAT timestamp enable
6 CRC check disable (for DF-11 and DF-17)
7 DF-0/4/5 filter: The Mode-S Beast does not decode those types (mostly used when having performance problems)
8 RTS handshake enable
9 1 bit forward error correction disable
10 Mode-A/C decoding enable

DIP Switches:

Baudrate SW1 SW2 Usage
3 MBit/sec (*1) open open USB serial interface (with USB over FT232R only)
921600 Bit/sec on open Bluetooth interface (with Lantronix Xport or/and FT232R USB) (*2)
230400 Bit/sec open on Lantronix Xport interface (with BTM222 and Lantronix Xport)
115200 Bit/sec on on common standard for all interfaces

(*1) Until FW version V1.15 this baudrate was 1MBit/sec. It became changed to 3MBit/sec in FW Version V1.21
(*2) This setting can be used when operating USB and Ethernet in parallel

Note that depending on your local traffic rate the interface baudrate is the real bottleneck of your system! So if you see a significant miss here, first introduce the DF-0/4/5 filter with DIP #7, and if that does not help, switch on DF17/DF11 filter with DIP#4.

The Mode-S frames capability of the different baudrates is about

Baudrate rough number of frames per second maximum
3 MBit estimated more than 2000
921600 Bit/sec 1100
230400 Bit/sec 550
115200 Bit/sec 300

These are very rougth estimations!!!
Mode-AC frames are transmitted with lower priority, so if your interface is already conguested with Mode-S frames, you will see less or no Mode-AC frames, too.

Planeplotter UDP Input Format SW3 Usage
disabled open Standard output:
 
56 Bit Mode-S frames: *02E99619FACDAE;
112 Bit Mode-S frames: *8D3C5EE69901BD9540078D37335F;
Mode-A/C frames: *7700;
(Mode-A/C frame values are octal)

with MLAT information:
56 Bit Mode-S frames: @016CE3671C745DFFE7AB7BFCAB;
112 Bit Mode-S frames: @016CE3671AA88D00199A8BB80030A8000628F400;
Mode-A/C frames: @016CE3671C747700;
 (Mode-A/C frame values are octal)

The distinction between Mode-S and Mode-A/C is only done due to the length of the frame.
enabled on Only necessary/used if
   1. Lantronix Xport is used for network data transfer AND
   2. UDP data transfer towards Planeplotter is used
       (there is also a COM port emulation for the Lantronix Xport, using TCP/IP between the Xport and the computer,  which does
        not need the 'AV' prefix)
Planeplotter then needs a prefix 'AV' in order to distinguish the data from other network data.
Standard output:
AV*02E99619FACDAE;
AV*8D3C5EE69901BD9540078D37335F;
AV*7700;
with MLAT information:
AV@016CE3671C7423FFE7AB7BFCAB;
AV@016CE3671AA8A800199A8BB80030A8000628F400;
AV@016CE3671C747700;

DF-17 only SW4 Usage
all standard data formats open The Mode-S beast will decode all data formats that are currently used:
DF-0, DF-4, DF-5, DF-11, DF-16, DF-17, DF-18, DF20 and DF-21
Note: DF-0, DF-4 and DF-5 can extra be filtered off with SW7
only DF-17 frames on Only DF-17 or DF-11 frames are decoded. Use this for example if you experience severe performance problems on the serial interface.

MLAT enable SW5 Usage
MLAT information off open No MLAT information is provided, data frames are initiated with '*'
MLAT information on on MLAT information is provided using a 12MHz (83ns resolution), all frames are initiated with '@'.
Note: On a later version I am planning a 100MHz resolution timer with 1PPS reset 

CRC disable SW6 Usage
CRC on DF-11 and DF-17 open DF-17 frames are checked for a total match of the CRC
DF-11 frames are checked for all but the lower 6 bits, which are the Interrogator ID and not usable for checking
no CRC check on No CRC check is done for any frame. This can be used in conjunction with the CRC and biterror correction PC software driver or Planeplotter's FEC correction in order to get a higher frame rate.

DF-0/DF-4/DF-5 filter SW7 Usage
not active open if your setup is able to handle high load, this selection should be used
filter all DF-0, DF-4 and DF-5 frames on These frame types are the ones with least useful information and so they should be the first ones that can be masked in case of interface or Planeplotter processsing overload.

RTS Handshake enable SW8 Usage
Hardware handshake disable open As long as you do not experience any data loss, hardware handshake is not necessary to be enabled.
Hardware handshake enable on In case of a high frame rate and/or togehter with a slow PC, it might be useful to configure and enable RTS hardware handshake.
It should be mentioned already here that this handshake is acutally not done between Planeplotter and the FPGA, much better it is done exactly between the interface device and the FPGA. More about that later.

1 Bit FEC disable SW9 Usage
Forward error correction enable open The CRC checksum of Mode-S frames allows a correction of up to 5 bits. 1 Bit errors are those appearing most often and are corrected with this feature by the Mode-S Beast.
disabled on There is no bit error correction done in the Mode-S Beast.

Mode-A/C frame decoding SW10 Usage
disabled open No Mode-A/C frames are decoded by the Mode-S Beast
enabled on Mode-S beast also decodes Mode-A/C frames
Frame format see DIP#3


Solder Jumpers (back side):

Solder jumpers are used to configure rarely changed functionalities as there are:
  • the interface that you are using towards the PC (left hand solder jumpers)
  • the solder jumpers SJ1, SJ2 and SJ3 are currently not used
    (FW Version 1.0, 1.1)

Solder jumpers are located on the bottom side of the PCB, RxData on the left, RTS in the center and TxData on the right 

The picture shows the full routing of signals for USB, as I normally do it before shipping. Note that RxD is optional and not

NOTE (1): TX-Data can be routed to all output devices in parallel, so for HW Version 1.1 this jumper block will be removed anyway. But mind NOTE (2)!

NOTE (2): If you intend to use Lantronix Xport, the outgoing RxD and TxD are swapped in HW-Version 1.0! That means that the outgoing TxD signal nees to be routed with a wire to the pad in the RxD multiplexer, like shown on this picture:

Wiring of the Mode-S Beast for output using Serial-over-USB and Lantronix Xport at the same time.