Got my KiwiSDR & official forum?

Hello,

I received my KiwiSDR. It is up and running fine. I'm curious if this forum is the official forum for the KiwiSDR, or should I be asking development questions else where?


-Freeman, N5FPP

Comments

  • Hi Freeman. This is the official forum, so please ask away. Bugs and feature requests are being entered on the issues list of Github:

  • My KiwiSDR was delivered to my office today. Hooray!

    My office is an RRI-rich environment and I have no active antenna handy, so I'm unable to do a shakeout test for HF reception. I'm trying to test the GPS using the antenna included in my bundle, and it looks like I'm unable to acquire a GPS signal. 

    The client web page displays the following:

    Config: v1.13, 4 SDR channels, 12 GPS channels | Uptime: 0:51:14
    GPS: acquiring yes, tracking 0, good 0, fixes 0

    The admin page is showing an acquisition icon for channel 0 (PRN 17, SNR 10), with the display periodically displaying something else (multiple satellites at least once, active RSSI at least once.) Seems to be nearly the same behaviour with or without the GPS patch antenna connected. :-(

    So...should I suspect a bad GPS antenna, or something else? Any recommended "next steps" to move forward?

    (Unit shipped with v1.12, I updated to v1.13.)

    Thanks in advance for help with this...I'm looking forward to getting the KiwiSDR fully up and running!

    -rbn
  • ...neglected to mention: GPS antenna has a clear view of the sky and 5+ satellites in view at all times. Stratux w/USB GPS about 5' away, same 4th-floor window sill, 3D GPS fix.

    -rbn
  • The GPS will have no reception unless the antenna is at a window with reasonable sky visibility. Better still if it's outdoors with a full-sky view. The SD-GPS receiver doesn't have all the magic sensitivity enhancement code that commercial units do. So it cannot be expected to perform indoors as well as even an old Garmin you might have lying around. This would be a great project for someone!

     An SNR below 16 or so essentially means there is no signal. If you have some RSSI and a non-zero (or non-blank) "hold" field that means nav data is being received which indicates a sat is there, even if not ultimately not strong enough to be declared good. So at least you know everything, including the antenna, is working.

  • Our messages crossed. It's a possibility that you got a bad antenna. Have you ever seen a non-zero "hold" field for any PRN?

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