How to use a rpi zero as a USB to Ethernet forwarder for Adalm Pluto

ZR6TG has written up a good tutorial on how to use a rpi zero as a USB to Ethernet forwarder for QO-100 satellite. This enables you to get rid of your active USB extender cable and makes it possible to place the pluto and dish far away from the shack. Click below to check it out.

https://www.zr6tg.co.za/2022/08/07/plutosdr-on-network-via-raspberry-pi/

How to adjust your parabolic antenna for QO-100 / Es’Hail amateur radio geostationary satellite

VIDEO. How to adjust your dish for QO-100 geostationary satellite:

  • Find Astra 28,2 degrees (strong signals in Northern Europe and Central Europe) with a low cost satfinder with sound / analog meter
  • This is one of the most eastern TV satellites that are very strong, so you can start east and move towards south until you find the first strong satellite on your satfinder (you should find Astra 28,2)
  • Now move a slight bit more to the south until you are out of the strong Ku band lobe of the Astra 28,2
  • You should point in the correct direction (elevation is the same in practice)
  • If you have a generic LNB the IF should be on 739,7 MHz. Your SDR should be able to tune to that QRG

Join our FB group (exclusively for licenced radio amateurs by the respective government administrations) https://www.facebook.com/groups/252645695661305/members/

Telenor 4G modem, IP camera, remote radio, remote SDR setup (Norwegian language)

Hvis du vil sette opp et 4G IP kamera, en 4G alarm, eller kjøre amatørradio via 4G remote så må du sette opp 4G ruteren din slik at datatrafikk UTENFRA kan komme inn igjennom 4G ruteren. For å kunne få dette til å virke må du kjenne IP adressen til 4G ruteren din. Ringer du Telenor support får du som regel et “god dag mann økseskaft svar”. Ringer du “telenor eksperten”, så får du ofte et nytt “goddag mann økseskaft svar”, men denne  gangen må du betale for det! Denne quick guiden omhandler Telenor D-link DWR-961 ruter.

Utfordring 1: Telenor har satt opp sine 4G rutere per default slik at du ikke har en egen IP adresse som er synlig på internett. Datatraffikk utenfra blir også stoppet (av sikkerhetsgrunner – som regel har ikke vanlige brukere behov for at traffikk utenfra skal kunne komme igjennom om den ikke er initiert innenfra først).

Løsning:

  • Logg inn på ruteren via kabel i LAN1, LAN2, LAN3 eller LAN4 porten (ikke WAN porten). Du har innloggingsdetaljene fra Telenor (ikke sant?)
  • Gå til “internett fanen”
  • Endre APN(Access Point Name) til internet.public  (med små bokstaver)
  • Restart ruteren
  • Nå har du en IP adresse som både er synlig utenfra og traffikk kan nå inn til ruteren din

Utfordring 2: IP adressen er ikke fast så den endrer seg hele tiden. Du aner ikke hvilken ip adresse 4G modemet ditt og det utstyret som står tilkoplet på innsiden har…. hvordan skal du da kunne aksessere dette?

Løsning:

  • Sett opp en dynamisk DNS
  • Viktig: Kun Dyndns (heter nå dyn.com) fungerer. Ingen av de andre dynamisk DNS tilbyderne fungerer.
  • Viktig: du  må nå betale for dyndns servicen fra dyn.com (ca 500 kr per år). Dette er det ingen vei utenom (som jeg har funnet i alle fall). Dyndns free service er discontinued så nå må du betale for tjenesten.
  • Gå hit https://dyn.com/dns/dyndns-pro-free-trial/ og registrer en gratis konto
  • Velg et passende sub-domenenavn  som f.eks pettersipkamera1.dyndns.org (fyll inn ditt valgte navn). Sub domenet er det som stør før første prikk, selv om det virker litt lite intuitivt at det står før prikken og ikke etter. Domenet er det som står etter prikken, men dette er jo forhåndsbestemt til å være dyndns.org
  • Gå til Advanced og DynDNS i oppsettsmenyene i Telenor 4G ruteren din (via web browser)
  • Fyll inn brukernavn, passord og hostname. Hostname er det du satt opp over når du registrerte kontoen hos dyn.com. For eksempel pettersipkamera1.dyndns.org 
    (selv om dyndns nå heter dyn.com så er dyndns.org fortsatt live and kicking)
  • Husk å klikke på DDNS så dynamisk DNS er skrudd på i ruterens meny
  • Nå vil pettersipkamera1.dyndns.org peke til IP adressen til ruteren din (SELV OM TELENOR SINE SYSTEMER ENDRER IP ADRESSE på 4G RUTERE INNIMELLOM!)
  • Så må du sette opp port forwarding, om du bruker egne porter. Dette gjøres i fanen Advanced / Port Forwarding. Du må vite den interne adressen til IP kameraet ditt. F.eks 192.168.0.123
  • Du må vite hvilken port IP kameraet ditt bruker
  • Så setter du opp hvilken port INN til 4G ruteren som skal forwardes til hvilken IP adresse (f.eks 192.168.0.123) og port inne på det lokale nettverket ditt
  • Lagre og gjør en reboot / omstart av ruteren
  • Og VIPPS, du ser og kan overvåke din eiendom / hytte / whatever på IP kameraet og er i høyeste beredskap til en hver tid! Alarmsystemer, sensorer, styringer osv kan koples til på denne måten.
  • (Om du er radioamatør, så ser du radiosystemet ditt og er klar til å kjøre remote radio).

Håper dette var til hjelp. Ønsker du hjelp til en kommersiell installasjon, IoT eller liknende så kjenner jeg firmaer som kan hjelpe med dette. I så fall ta kontakt så kan jeg formidle info.

New front end for use of the Red Pitaya in SDR applications

The Red Pitaya SDR board is based on the Xilinx Zync SOC and has 14 bit external A/D converters. However, for SDR usage on the HF bands from 0.1-30 MHz (and for that matter up to 50 MHz) the Red Pitaya is a bit “deaf” in the stock configuration. I have made a broadband amplifier that has a fairly high gain and very good IIP3 properties. Below I have posed some pictures of the prototype amplifier.

20160424_153046-1This is the prototype amplifier. I inserted a ferrite ring on the input lead to roll off the VHF / UHF sensitivity to reduce problems with nearby broadcasters etc. There is a also a PI network attenuator on the ouput and I have inserted a couple of beads in that as well to roll of the outpu response when frequency increases. The other components in the lower part is a input pi attenuator I used when I did some VNA frequency response measurements. This as well as the RCA plus is not used (RCA plugs are surprisingly good for low level RF signal routing in the HF bands and nice to use in the lab).  I used a more professional attenuator with a large attenuation range and flat response to determine the proper attenuation level after the preamp into the Red Pitaya. Reducing gain after the first amplifier has very little effect on the noise figure. Reducing it before the first amplifier directly adds to the noise figure. I added some protection diodes over the input to reduce the risk of strong RF signals or static voltage build up damaging the input. Below I am measuring the response of the attenuator with the DG8SAQ VNA. It was flat from 0-1,3 GHz.

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Red Pitaya SDR TX / RX

The Red Pitaya hardware is the first low cost RX / TX capable SDR hw to come onto the market that is open source and can match the Ettus Research USRP periperhal. It has a combined CPU and FPGA signal chain with  two channels 14 bit 125 MSPS A/D and D/A. It also has a Dual core ARM Cortex A9+ FPGA (Xilinx Zynq 7010 system on chip). Only a few years ago this caliber of hardware had to be custom designed and was typically used in radar antijamming systems, radar signature classification systems, ultrasound, sonar and in high end vibration analysis tools (as examples). The ARM CPU on board can run Linux and it has GNU-Radio support. For fast data transfer there is a GBE (Gibabit Ethernet) interface to other host systems. With a a RTOS on the ARM core or a zero copy IP stack under Linux it should be possible to approach fairly close to 1 Gbit/sek transfer rates to host systems (if needed).
References:
http://www.rs-online.com/designspark/electronics/eng/nodes/view/type:design-centre/slug:red-pitaya
http://wiki.redpitaya.com/index.php?title=Hardware_Overview

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HDSDR trackerball VFO project

I have been working on a trackball based controller for my HDSDR SDR project lately. This is a small R&D project that is run on my spare time where the goal is to determine if it is possible to use a trackball as a VFO for software defined radio (SDR) in contests. The project started out based on a demand for a more ergonomic way to operate a mult receiver in a contest environment that is less fatiguing during 48hours duration of a major contest like CQWW or CQWPX. The goal is that it should be possible to operate all radio functions you need from one hand only: VFO, speed of vfo, band, mode, filter width, volume, gain. I have modified a Marconi trackball and the controller is a Trinket Pro controller (Arduino)

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SdrDx and Funcube dongle. Receiving airband traffic

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You should download and try out the new SdrDx console. It is compatible with your Funcube dongle. Finally a more advanced SDR console that has many of the features you need including several notch filters, memory functions, a very good and intuitive GUI. In fact I like the GUI style on this one! One minus is that it is not open source. The image above is a screen dump of Funcube receiver set to a QRG in the airband. The AM detector works very good. The SdrRx can be downloaded here at fyngyrz’s site  http://fyngyrz.com/?p=915

How to install SdrDx: Download zip. Unzip. Make a shortcut to the .exe file. If your Windows firewall gives you a warning, tell it to open up for that program. Make sure you have a new firmware installed on your Funcube (see other post for how to update).

HF converter for SDR Funcube dongle

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Tony CT1FFU and Diogo CT2IRW has released a converter for the Fun Cube dongle. The design is a based on the old NE602 workhorse. One new approach is to use a wideband MMIC amp in the front end. The unit is powered via a USB connector. Looks like this may be a good add on if you want to do some basic HF monitoring with the Fun Cube. You can find more information here: http://www.ct1ffu.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=178&Itemid=104

PowerSDR and Flex-Radio offerings becoming prime contest tools

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FlexRadio systems is launching new products and new improved software all the time. I have been following the SDR scene for several years now and experimenting with the Softrock 40 and softrock RX-TX as well as some earlier VHF SDRs has been fun.

I must say that the offerings from flex-radio is now becoming more tempting than many offerings from traditional suppliers like Yaesu and Icom. My FT-2000 with the latest software is surely a great radio (the best I have had so far) but I think a FLEX-5000A with diversity RX and the newest PowerSDR software must soon be tried in a serious contest effort. The filters, diversity functions and FFT bandscope functions are simply great. One thing that lacks are the feel of real buttons and controls. But that has also been taken care of (read below)

Here you can see a video from Flex-Radio where they take the new tracking notch filters (TNF-RF)  for a spin:

In case you lack the feeling of a real radio, DH1TW is here demonstrating the use of a DJ controller for adjusting VFO and other radio functions:

Surely great stuff! Stay tuned!