Adding a switch to the 403

1

It drives me absolutely crazy that I have to plug and unplug the USB cable every time I need to use the 403. Quite frankly, adding a simple switch would cost next to nothing. It could even be at the back of the unit, next to the USB port. Anyway…

Is there an “easy” way like cutting a trace or something in order to add a power on/off switch? Anybody tried it?

I know there are some USB cables/ hubs that have a switch but it’s not what I’m looking for.

thanks

W.

2

Just buy one of these (below) cut it open and put a toggle switch on a small project box to cut the power. Rejoin and heatshrink the data wires. Put it on the bench next to the QA403. Problem solved.

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3

Thank John but as I said I’m not looking into adding extra cables/boxes/etc for a 5V on/off switch. Thus, I’m thinking of implementing it on the actual 403.

4

Right. Another idea from me was to have a power jack for an externel power supply to get rid of an extra USB hub with power injection. My old Creative Tracker pre external sound card has this and a powerswitch at the headphone volume potentiometer. This is convenient. Unfortunately both is missing at my QA403.

5

There are a lot of hubs these days with built-in switches. And they are a huge help when developing the QA403 firmware. The switches on this hub are very short throw. The only thing a bit weird is the power goes off before you get the tactile ‘click’ but readily worked around once you understand it.

6

I don’t think I have this problem. It’s it because your computer goes to sleep and doesn’t wake up correctly? Mine just works apart from one time when all I would get was the atten led lit but couldn’t connect to it at all. Some combination of rebooting end time passing fixed that though.

7

It’s because I don’t want to have the 403 running 12 hours a day if I only use it a couple of times a week.

8

I simply load a setting from the QA40X application and the QA403 comes back on line without having to unplug/plug the USB connection.

I am running the application with mono in Linux Debian 13, Trixie.

9

Sorry but I’m not sure what you mean.

10

@YvesLegault Can you please outline how I can get the QA40x application to work on a linux/debian machine? I am prepared to take a win11 laptop and wipe it, just to get the QA403 to work on a non windows box. Thank you.

11

Find hereunder the content of the “QA40x Usb Install.readme” file.

I strongly suggest to read it a few times before actually doing anything.

The steps needed to make the Audio Analyzer known to

Linux are shown below. You might need to tweak

depending on your platform. When a flash update is needed, the

analyzer will re-attach to the system with a new VID:PID for the update.

Install MONO

See Install Mono on Linux | Mono

When you try to run the EXE, if you see a note that mono could not load windows.form, then

you might need to explicitly specify:

sudo apt-get install mono-complete

Install LibUSB. This might be already installed. Alternately, you might need the dev build

sudo apt-get install libusb-1.0-0

sudo apt-get install libusb-1.0-0-dev

Make the hardware known to the OS.

The QA402 VID:PID is 0x16C0:4E37

sudo sh -c ‘echo “SUBSYSTEM ==“usb”, ATTRS{idVendor}==“16c0”, ATTRS{idProduct}==“4e37”, MODE=“0666”” > /etc/udev/rules.d/51-qa402.rules’

The QA403 VID:PID is 0x16C0:4E39

sudo sh -c ‘echo “SUBSYSTEM ==“usb”, ATTRS{idVendor}==“16c0”, ATTRS{idProduct}==“4e39”, MODE=“0666”” > /etc/udev/rules.d/51-qa403.rules’

The QA402 and QA403 use VID:PID of 0x1fc9:0x0022 when in bootloader mode

sudo sh -c ‘echo “SUBSYSTEM ==“usb”, ATTRS{idVendor}==“1fc9”, ATTRS{idProduct}==“0022”, MODE=“0666”” > /etc/udev/rules.d/51-qa40xBootloader.rules’

Review the file(s) we just wrote above

cat /etc/udev/rules.d/51-qa402.rules

cat /etc/udev/rules.d/51-qa403.rules

cat /etc/udev/rules.d/51-qa40xBootloader.rules

Tell the device manager to reparse the rules

sudo udevadm control --reload-rules

12

There is no setting file already created.

So you need to create one.

Open the QA40x software.

In the top menu-bar, clic on “File” and select “Save Setting”.

Enter a file name like “default” as you have touched nothing else and save it.

Let’s assume the QA40x software display the orange message at the bottom.

Go back to the top menu-bar, clic on “File”, select “Load Setting”.

You should see your previously saved setting file.

Select it and load it.

For me, the QA403 get immediately recognized by the QA40x software and I can carry-on my testing.

Since it might be tedious to adjust the many settings properly for a given task, it is quite useful to be able to save them so you can recall them as easy as a few clics.

1 Like
13

I agree with you not wanting to use Windows 11. The attached YouTube link, if you’ve not already seen it, details what happened when a user had dual boot with Linux and windows 11. TPM, which is a chip in every newer computer basically directed a complete uninstall of his Linux partition. He then did some investigations find out why. I find his Banner of “ secret spy chip “ a little over the top but the information in the video is valid and I have performed a complete removal of all the AI components on several win 11 platforms. Linux is the only safe platform out there.

14

Wow, thank you. But I think it’s a bit beyond me at this stage. I’ll have to read it through several times after a few coffees.