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Timestamp on S-Meter [extension]

PowernumptyPowernumpty
edited August 2020 in KiwiSDR Discussion
This may have been discussed before but I couldn't find it on a quick search.

The S-Meter extension is great for spotting trends in QRM but where the speed is slow and timescale wide, it is hard to work out when a change or event happened. E.G. I have a noise source I don't really recognise on 40m, I want to leave the S-Meter running and look for changes around people arriving home or "on the hour" etc.

Would it be possible to have a timestamp (hint) on the scale?
Dot at UTC points would be enough, large on the hour, small at X min etc.

Or an option on the Marker Rate as "UTC hour". "UTC 30min" so that the markers line up with hour, half hour etc.

If anyone has a good way to do it already I'm happy to hear.

I could screen capture the display with clock at set intervals I suppose....

Stu

Comments

  • n6gnn6gn
    wsprdaemon is a nice way to get this same information over an entire day. It also plots noise by band which gives even more insight into noise time and other characteristics. Because there are two algorithms, even more information is possible than just continuous, RMS noise, e.g. T-storms have some characteristics that can be seen.
  • PowernumptyPowernumpty
    If you read the wsprdaemon thread you might find that I have been (clumsily) running it for a good while.
    I totally agree with it's superb features but some things it misses.
    I have some intermittent drifting switcher type noises that I want to track down.
    It might be the small battery/solar lamp about three feet from my antennas, probably should just take the battery out and see if it goes away.

    Could do with a way to log sunshine against the noise too, tiny VCO controlled by solar panel voltage on a t-piece maybe.
  • WA2ZKDWA2ZKD
    In wsprdaemon...
    You could do a simple mod to excecute a script on schedule. It already knows about sunrise/sunset so you could doing something based on time . Or, you could mod it to run a script on every cycle and check for sunshine and act.
  • n6gnn6gn
    risking some thread drift, I might add that it can be very revealing to process a sample of wideband AM or IQ from a section of spectrum that appears to be 'white' noise, yet elevated above ITU values - which is the case for many if not the vast majority of Kiwi sites. I've found that very often an FFT analysis, easily done with Audacity, often reveals heavy mains components. This is consistent with higher harmonics of SMPS noise.
    By the time one looks at higher harmonics, which may still be relatively low HF, the spectral width is such that these lines overlap and tend to hide their nature and SMPS source. Sometimes this can be heard in wideband AM as well as seen in analysis. There can be a telltale growl as contrasted to the nice 'pop' and 'crackle' of propagated noise.
    Combining self-correlation of this sort of noise along with absolute S-meter levels can be very helpful in identifying and better understanding both their presence, location and techniques to mitigate their couplings into Kiwis.
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