Two months ago I hooked up my VHF satellite receiver to the SatNOGS network. Since then, the receiver has been receiving many different satellites, including APT images from NOAA 15, 18 and 19.
Radios
Articles and blogs about radio receivers and transmitters. Both commercial off the shelf radios and home made DIY experiments by Alexandru Csete OZ9AEC.
Meteor-M N2 LRPT downlink
Tonight I tested the turnstile antenna and Airspy on the Meteor-M N2 LRPT downlink signal. It was a good, high elevation pass and it looks like the signal is strong enough to decode the transmitted images.
My first weather satellite images with a 137 MHz turnstile antenna
Some time ago I got a 137 MHz turnstile antenna from Jørn OZ6TA. We decided to build an automated NOAA weather satellite image receiver using a modern SDR device. He also had an Airspy he wasn’t using and so it became the SDR radio we were going to use for this.
Using the Omnia SDR with Quisk on Linux
Now that I finished my Omnia SDR for the 60, 40, 30 and 20 meter bands, I started looking into how I could use it on Linux. I remembered reading some emails on the project mailing list about using Quisk, which is a mature SDR transceiver application written by James Ahlstrom, N2ADR. I decided to give it a try.
Omnia SDR completed
Tonight I completed the TX part of my Omnia SDR for the 60/40/30/20 meter bands 😀
Omnia SDR build status 2016.03.20
Following the successful receiver tests yesterday, I continued today with the band pass filters completing the receiver chain. I decided to build for 60/40/30/20 meters, which can provide a good all round, day and night transceiver.
First on-air tests of the Omnia SDR receiver
I mentioned in my previous update that following my noise floor measurements I tried connecting antenna to the receiver input through C27 but did not have any signals through. Today I found out that I had a bad solder at L11 and so the antenna switcher wasn’t working.
Omnia SDR build status 2016.03.18
The receiver is now complete and only the band pass filters are missing. The local oscillator is working well as does the computer interface. I could measure the noise floor on all bands and check how much USB noise there is on the different bands of interest, see the screenshots below.
Omnia SDR build status 2016.03.15
Peter OZ7HVO has soldered the difficult parts for me, namely the CY8C32 PSoC, the PCM3060 audio codec and the SI570 oscillator. I consider the SI570 a bit difficult because it has 8 pads and the solder has to flow in below it, so best to let someone skilled do that.
Omnia SDR build status 2016.03.13
Today I have started assembling my Omnia SDR kit. Ideally, I would want to start with the difficult integrated circuits, in this case the Cypress CY8C32 PSoC and the PCM3060 audio codec, but the step-by-step guide starts with the power supply and so I did the same.