Ok so I bought this because I wanted to analyze my end fed long wire, I wasn't confident that it was working effectively and wanted to understand what the SWR was across the different frequencies.
As I am familiar with arduino stuff I wasn't put off by the fact this device would not work out of the box.
I ordered this part from DX Engineering
https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/reu-aa-30zero
I am really liking them as a vendor, they ship fast and are very responsive to customer service type questions.
Update here - this works really well using a serial break out board and not as well using an arduino. my advice is ditch the arduino and buy a serial break out.
Ok so here is how I go it working with arduino
Step 1, solder on some header pins, I had a spare arduino duo lying around so I broke up the strip of pins to the right number, put them in the arduino and proceeded to solder them to the AA-30.
A note here, the use of the arduino is basically as a serial to USB converter, I had grand plans to add an oled or something to the setup which I may explore later.
Step 2, Problem 1 - Ok so I needed to upload a sketch to the arduino to make it work, I hit up the rigexpert page here
https://rigexpert.com/products/kits-analyzers/aa-30-zero/getting-started-with-the-zero/
and look there is a sketch to get it started, ok here we go,
Open the arduino IDE
paste in the sketch
ensure the board is set right and com port
upload sketch
FAIL
So the sketch on the site has errors something to do with this line
#include < SoftwareSerial.h >
The second example was using processing so I installed it and tried that example...Fail #2
So I tried googling etc and couldn't find any real info on why this was an issue but as I read the page more I notice this link
https://github.com/RigExpertDev/AA-30.ZERO
I noticed the example here had a different import statement so I tried that and it worked.
Ok now I had a sketch on the arduino....what now.
Step 3 do a test - the example site shows 3 commands to send to the board to run a test
FQ14500000
SW1000000
FRX10
I was able to send the commands to the board using a terminal emulator connected to the serial port and I got a response.
Ok what next the examples show some nice graphs..I want one of those :)
Step 4 make it pretty - Ok next I wanted a graph of the results, using processing had failed for me, I tried the example on the github repo and managed to get a blank screen so I abandoned that. I remembered reading about antscope and found the info on the starting part of the rigexpert page.
I found this link
https://rigexpert.com/products/antenna-analyzers/aa-30-zero/downloads/
Downloaded this and installed it on my windows machine. Followed the instructions once I set the com port for the arduino & the analyzer type there was a reassuring message that the analyzer was detected...woo hoo some progress
I plugged in my antenna, set the frequency range and away it went, there was the graph I was looking for.
A couple of side notes.
First I think it would have been easier to get a USB serial break out board and use that instead of the arduino, this worked a heck of a lot better and made it work with mac using a program called aaplot, which works with Rig Expert analyzers I like the graph in the windows app better
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