Tech Minds YouTube review questions #4
Questions from the Tech Minds YouTube review:
Ok I'm not shore this question is sensible, but what is the point of the clock input? I would have thought that with both gps and ntp you would have plenty of clock sources.
and
What external clock frequency is needed?
It's not needed, but optional. Some experimenters using Kiwi's where a very precise ADC clock is needed feed the EXT CLK input from a GPSDO (GPS disciplined oscillator) with much higher performance than the Kiwi's internal GPS-frequency-calibrated crystal oscillator.
The EXT CLK connector also serves as a self-test output you can loop back into the RF IN connector to test if the Kiwi RF frontend is working properly.
Hmm, the price is right, but i wonder... is the kiwi tweakable over SSH ?
Yes. The admin page even has a "console" tab that will give you a shell connection (you can disable this entirely, or limit it to a specific IP address if necessary). If there is a problem with the Kiwi server not starting, or a mistake in a configuration file, you can ssh into the Kiwi directly and fix it. The Kiwi-2 runs Debian 11 currently. The configuration files are all JSON plain text. You can reinstall everything by re-cloning and not disrupt your configuration which is kept in a separate directory.
I have an Airspy HF+ Discovery for VLF, HF and VHF, and an RTL-SDR for higher frequencies, accessible anywhere in the world via OpenWebRx+. Can anyone tell me how the KiwiSDR 2 is better? Serious question.
Not better. Just different. The goal back in 2014 when it was designed was to not be "just another IQ generator" like all the other SDR's, then and since. It was to be a wide band unit like the Twente WebSDR, which was never released as any sort of commercial product. And self-contained requiring no external pc, with or without graphics card (Twente requires a GPU).
Some people really like the fact you can view the entire 10 kHz - 30 MHz spectrum at one time. Lots of people like not having to install PC software and the associated nightmares. Other people like our level of support.
Everyone is happy they have so many SDR purchase choices!
