k5mo
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Just anecdotally I have had my two Kiwi I's on and connected to a dipole about 90 feet from a triband yagi sometimes powered with 1100 watts at 10/15/20M for years, without damage. I would not recommend doing this, but I mention it only to indicat…
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Hooray! This is good news, John. Thanks for the update John
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"There doesn't appear to be a cooling fan in this design" Christmas has arrived early :-)
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Surplus Lambda linear supplies are available on ebay all the time and they're not expensive.
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It would be really nice for those of us who use the KiwiSDR along with an amateur radio station without having to deal with an external switch. While an internal mute would be handy, there's some logic level driven relay boards available on the web…
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Thank you both for the inputs. I will be very careful (and keep an eye on the Kiwi2 availability just in case. :-). Might be a good idea to optically isolate the two.
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I just ordered a SV1AFN 4 port switch which looks handy for a SDR antenna switch (and quite affordable). This might be an interesting antenna switch hardware option since it's receive-only and tiny (and quite affordable :-) ) Thanks for all you d…
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>I'm working on putting the antenna switch in there too, Oh, this will be really good! Thank you. Is there a particular hardware switch I should be putting on order?
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Supplies are all still good. If anything happened there, it was a transient issue. I put a 6 ohm power resistor in the 5 volt line and let it run for an hour on all 3 supplies in turn. No issues (other than a warm wirewound)
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I've been reading Olaf's thread. In my case, when the BB is disconnected from the SDR I can see Chip Enable on pin 1, system 5V on pin two and 3.4 ish on pin3 on the TL5209. So, I think the BB's are fine . When I connect the SDR, Chip Enable an…
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Yeah, these have been running for about that time, one of them probably closer to 2 yrs.
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You're not filling the thread with noise! I appreciate the input. I know from earlier struggles that the power quality is key (I've redone my cabling as a result and power is the first thing I've checked. Summary again as I know it's easy for me t…
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OK. I set the bench Lambda to 5.25v. Inserted barrel connector. Measure exactly 5.25 v at the 5VE pin on the kiwi. 0.65 volts at the 5V pin directly adjacent it on the single kiwi I am testing in this configuration. One blip from the BB LED, then …
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Both BB's boot without the Kiwis being connected. "Boot" means LED's flicker and the heartbeat LED seems to be doing its thing. This is not good.
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I'll try powering the BB separately and see what happens. I'm assuming it'll have some sort of LED heartbeat indicator if it's alive....or at least a steady LED. Just to be clear, the two Kiwis were on their own Lambda supply, so there was nothing …
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Nice job on the new colormaps John! Looks good and I'm experimenting with what works best for me. Many thanks John B
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Thanks for that explanation John, and while it's not the QRSS-friendly answer I wanted to hear, it does explain what I'm seeing (or in this case NOT seeing). Let me know if you ever need a beta tester on that extension you describe :-) John
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Thanks everyone, and Glenn, you did interpret my poorly formed question correctly. I have used Argo as a 22m CW signal monitor for many years. I know I can usually SEE signals that I can't hear. I just don't know if Argo has some sort of intern…
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What does the blinking RED S indicate? I'm messing with this as I have one antenna that seems particularly better than the other (I've moved it between my two Kiwis) . One has 7 sat's it currently hears, the other one (the antennas are 5" a…
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Got it. That's a very clear answer and helps a lot. Looks like I'm good to go now! I really appreciate the timely answer.
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I did Component Engineering work for a good number of years. Keeping track of and evaluating an ever-shrinking supply of suitable alternate parts to keep legacy designs alive , paid my bills for a while. That job has not gotten any easier with RoH…
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Fan controller work is really nice. Great to see the actual data! Thanks for posting that
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Fans are here... they run quietly at 3.3v. Perfect for the job.
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As John suggested, it was indeed a power quality issue. In this case, I had some significant IR drop in the small leads from the PS to the SDR. I remade a decent cable and that cleaned up the whole issue. The BB would indeed boot without the Kiw…
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Thanks to you both... I'll investigate both approaches. Appreciate it! John
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Found a larger (2" or so?) 12V ball bearing fan in the stash. I have it externally powered by 5V (it starts fine) and blowing into one end of the kiwi. While I have no way to measure temps inside the enclosure, the external Kiwi metal box is c…
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I've been running on 20 and 30M using the Kiwis WSPR extension. Best DX was a 10mW picoballoon off the coast of N. Zealand on 20M.
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Thank you John, I'll give a go at finding a ball bearing fan in that form factor. If that doesn't work, I'll fab up a new end plate and do an externally mounted version to avoid the fidgety work of getting that tiny fan int here. It is a 5V fan. R…
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that kind of makes sense to me I'll parse your answer carefully and think about it some. Thank you!
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YES! Thanks! I set an admin pw to help simplify access (I hope)