Amateur radio, space, technology and other geeky stuff by Alexandru Csete
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.
Continue reading “First on-air tests of the Omnia SDR receiver”
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.
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.
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.
Few weeks ago I learned about the Omnia SDR project, which is a newly released softrock type transceiver kit. It has an on-board USB audio codec, which I consider to be a significant advantage, making it suitable to be used with embedded linux computer boards that do not have a good on-board audio codec. However, for me the Omnia SDR will form the basis for a remote controlled SDR transceiver, which I think will be a natural continuation of my remote rig project.
Few days ago, I have been playing with CuteSDR on Linux and Mac and came to think, would this work on a Raspberry Pi? While there is nothing conceptually impossible about running CuteSDR on the Raspberry Pi 2, I often run into obstacles trying to port Qt application to embedded devices, so here are my notes about how to make it work.
Continue reading “Using the RFSpace Cloud-IQ with CuteSDR on the Raspberry Pi 2”
First RF signal all the way through the mcHF.
Now it’s time to read through all the mods and have the radio tuned up 🙂
Every now and then, I get a good idea that makes my life easier. I let the pictures speak for themselves 🙂
Few weeks ago I have decided to resume building my mcHF kit. I have made good progress with the RF board and today I have tested the low-pass and band-pass filters.
Today we got the first storm warning of this season and so I went out to secure the DX-88 with 4 guy-wires. At the same time I did a new tuning round because I have noticed that some of the bands have moved since the last adjustment. This time I have managed to get 30 meters working.