KiwiSDR Enclosure & Fan - do I really need the fan?

BjarneBjarne
in Installation, Antennas and Interference
My Kiwi sits in an environment where the temperature rarely, if ever, goes above 20 C. Its small size + speed makes it somewhat noisy with a rather high frequency, so it would be nice to not hear it.

Bjarne

Comments

  • jksjks
    Try running without the fan and see what happens. But in that case it would be best to orient the enclosure vertically so free air can convect through the cutouts on the end panels. Remember that 5V @ 1.5A is about 7.5 watts. That is a significant amount of heat to be confined to a small box.

  • BjarneBjarne
    Thanks John. I've had it run a few hours now without the fan, and it seemed to get only hand warm. I later did place it vertically as you suggested, and in that position the box actually cooled off to near-fan temperature. An added benefit is that the blue LEDs are out of sight ;-)
  • jksjks
    I should probably have an option to turn the 4 blue LEDs off and not display any information at all.

  • BjarneBjarne
    Well, yes. Blue LEDs appear to be more "intrusive" than other colours, but everyone seem to want to use them these days.
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